On the Road to Vicktory...

1) The Eagles signing Michael Vick is not about grand ideals such as redemption or forgiveness or second chances. It is about green, and not Eagles green. It is about money.

2) It's time for all the wannabe social workers to shut up with their psycho-babble. Enough about Vick's "rehabilitation." First, prison in this country is NOT about rehabilitation, it is about parking the nightmares someplace far away from where the righteous among us sleep. Second, what Vick operated was a vile, systematic process of torture and death, with money as an additional motive. To do what he did requires a complete fracture inside, a total disconnect between right and wrong, humane and inhumane, benevolent and malevolent. He is broken, and prison cannot fix that break. So shove this rehabilitation angle up your asses, you naive, bleeding heart morons.

3) Vick did not make mistakes, unless that's what you want to call getting caught in the first place. If he was driving down the road and a neighbor's dog ran out in front of his car and he failed to hit the breaks in time and he hit the dog and killed it, then he would have made a mistake. But what Vick executed was a premeditated, organized, ruthless business plan that just happened to involve the torture, fighting, and various other abuses of dogs. That is not a mistake, that is a state of mind. It is a way of life. It is a life-view.

4) Far be it from me to attempt to judge the worth of Vick's alleged remorse, but on referring back to #3 on my list, I'm not sure that a man with the psychological and emotional warping needed to do what he did is actually capable of what most of us would consider genuine remorse.

5) To those pointing to Vick's involvement with The Humane Society and other charitable organizations and noting how it evidences his moving away from The Dark Side, allow me to call you a clueless cancer on the organs of society. Vick is following this path for one reason only: it is the path mandated as part of his sentence for the heinous crimes he committed. It does not spring from generosity or care or regret. Anyone who really believes he is speaking for these organizations because it's what he'd really rather be doing than lounging in his crib with his doting posse is simply too stupid to live anyplace except Utah.

6) I want to ask a few questions of the bleeding hearts and those who see the Vick signing only in the context of how he can help the Eagles win. Do you have a dog? And if you do, would you want a man convicted of Vick's crimes living next door? And if you saw the man hooking battery cables to your dog, or beating him with a bat, or bashing his head with a shovel, or hanging him in the air with a chain by his neck, would you be thinking about redemption or forgiveness? No, not if you have a metaphorical ball in that metaphorical fleshy sack between your legs. But hey, it's okay to have the guy playing for and representing the football team for which you profess to bleed green, right?

7) On the flip side, can we stop using Vick's name in the same sentence, paragraph, or even chapter as misanthropic monsters such as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, bin Laden, and even Manson? What those men did, in varying degrees, defies the most basic tenets of man's tolerance of his fellows. As twisted and, sure, even evil, as Vick's actions were, to compare them to the atrocities perpetrated by history's most infamous, demonic screwheads is disingenous at best, and dangerously unperceptive at worst.

And so...

Michael Vick committed some damned horrible crimes. He was caught, and sent to jail, and served his assigned sentence. And in fact, he is serving it still, with post-release conditions being followed, and to a tee, I'm sure. And now that he is out, he has a right, like every other felon who has spent time in prison and then returned to the outside, to earn a living.
But here's the thing: what Vick did, and the crimes and horrors he undertook, illustrate just who and what Michael Vick is. He is a man priveleged to have experienced the best of what celebrity offers an individual in this country and morphed that sense of entitlement into the perceived right to plan and execute systematic breeding, training, torturing, fighting, and killing of dogs.

Vick can have his second chance. There are thirty-one other teams in the NFL that I would have been perfectly content to deride as misguided when they signed him. The fact that it is the Eagles, the team I have cheered and booed and cried about and thrilled about for over forty years, who signed Vick makes me realize that there many, many things more important than watching grown men playing warrior games and making millions of dollars on a Sunday afternoon.

Just like I wouldn't want Vick living next door, I don't want him playing for the Eagles either. But then, the callous effetes running the team just don't understand that comparison. They're forcing people to make a choice. And for a good person, the choice can mean compromising your principles. But then it is all about the green, right?