I just tracked down some information - a news story, which also gave a link to Vick's sworn statement to police in which he plead guilty.
From what I could find, Whoopi Goldberg was not saying that Vick had been hard done by or treated unfairly. She was simply saying that in his environment while growing up, this sort of thing was commonplace and acceptable. She did not say that this is acceptable, in fact she said it was not. But she DID say that for Vick, he simply didn't understand, until he had to see it in perspective, that what he did was not OK. She did say that this was a very sad thing, that someone can grow up to think that this could be OK.
From what I have seen of the case, I think she could be right - when he realised that this was a practice considered unacceptable by most people, he plead guilty.
This, of course, does not bring back to life the many dogs slaughtered in such a cruel manner. Whether it does anything to send a message to a lot of other people who are continuing this practice - I simply don't know. Do such people even watch the news?
Bullfighting is culturally acceptable in Spain. The running of the bulls in Pamplona is also a tourist attraction, despite the trauma it causes to the animals. We have tourist holidays which include a trip to Pamplona, a lot of young Aussie males make the trip purely to run with the bulls. It's a rite of passage. And at some stage, laws could be passed making it illegal. I suspect a lot of young men would get caught by such a law.
There are other sports, similarly barbaric, sometimes legal and sometimes not. I visited a man who was on a committee I was also on - we needed his signature for some paperwork to be distributed - and on his wall was a magnificent zebra skin. "Yes, I shot it myself," he told us proudly. "I was on a safari, I paid a lot of money to be taken hunting for that zebra. But it was worth it."
We got his signature and got out of there, not daring to ask him how he had got the contraband skin into the country. Or maybe it was before our Customs put a moratorium on such imports.
We used to be able to import from India, stuffed mongoose and cobra, in tableau indicating a fight to the death. I remember being shown one, belonging to the father of a friend.
They are now illegal to be brought into Australia, but they still get in. In some countries, they are not illegal imports.
To acquire these artefacts causes a lot of pain and suffering to the animals involved. In a lot of cases, the animals are also endangered. The sheer principle of hunting/fighting animals for sport is anathema to so many of us that we forget - for many in the world this is a moral livelihood.
Perhaps the best thing that could come out of this is for someone like Michael Vick to become a spokesperson for animals, to come out and say, "I did this, I was wrong. Don't do what I did - find some other way that isn't so cruel and isn't illegal."
To simply say, "Let's attack him. Let's boycott everything he's ever done, ever stood for," doesn't solve anything really. What works best is to try to turn attitudes around. The best way to do this is NOT to become like the thing you hate.
Marg
