First off I am a SanFran fan. Shaun Hill will be the starting QB and Frank Gore will dominate the league this year. So that's that. I have not been an Eagles fan since the whole T.O. McNabb incident, but I will NOT root against them this year. I want them to excell and I want Mike Vick to be an integral part of there success. I'm not sayn' I'm just sayn' sporty nation.
Today, Chris Rock was on Dan Patrick's show and he had some incredibly insightful things to say see below...
Rock had interesting comments on Michael Vick. He said if he could interview him, he would ask him what dog-fighting meant to him growing up. Rock says these things are always relative. Rock said the Kennedy's were drug dealers. They sold alcohol during prohibition. But it doesn't seem that bad from a different perspective years later.
Rock said that maybe Vick grew up in a situation where dog-fighting wasn't so bad.
"Dog-fighting's very prevalent in the South," Rock said. Rock also pointed out that we hunt, and many people consider that wrong.
"Why is a dog so much better than a deer?" Rock asked. "I see no difference between a dog and a deer."
Rock said look at marijuana ... it's illegal now, but who knows. "In our lifetime, pot will be legal," Rock said.
"I don't think marijuana is any different than selling beer," Rock said. "We know there's more deaths related to alcohol than marijuana."
Rock said the NFL doesn't care about animal rights. That's not what this is about. "The ball is made of pigskin," Rock said. "They don't care about animals."
Rock says this is all about convenience. "We want to cite the law when it works to our advantage," Rock said.
Again, it's not about defending Vick, but rather truly thinking about happened. He made a huge egregiously heinous mistake, he lost hundreds of millions and two years of his life. However, it is reasonable to say that he received a punishment disproportionate to the crime. Two years of his life for his calculated mistake. Hundreds of millions of dollars for his calculated mistake.
What would have happened if he shot a lion or an elk or a bald eagle or caught a Manatee? What would happen if he ate a dog (it does happen)? What would have happened if he were white? Are these circumstances significantly different? And, how do you decide what is worse?
Culture, society, and the media are responsible for the outrage and his ridiculous sentence and penalties. Remember we live in a society of second chances, and Vick definitely deserves a second chance. Far worse members of society have received second chances.
I hope that things work out for the better. I hope that Vick is wiser and can make meaningful contributions to society. And, I hope that he is left alone an able to live his life like we all would want to be able to do. There undoubtedly are SIGNIFICANT racial undertones within the Vick case, and I'll be the first to point them out, but that is for a later date. I hope that these undertones can be minimized and we as a society can move in the right direction. I know I'm hoping a lot, but let's keep hope alive.
Sportynation, this is my Minority Report.
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