I don’t think it’s about his “having courage just because of the media circus”, I think it’s more about him overcoming his own (significant!) flaws and failings.  That’s my take, anyway.

That’s not the definition of courage, IMHO. No one is cheating Vick out of anything; he’s got a job, and so many other languish in correctional facilities who didn’t have 1/10 of the sadism Vick exhibited in gaming over maimed and mishandled dogs.

I know this topic has polarized many, and I in no way feel anyone will change their minds over the Vick case, but I don’t see any rewards are needed since he’s gotten out of the pen.

Training people to fight: respectable profession.

Training dogs to fight: two years in the slammer and the opprobrium of the entire country.

I don’t think the Eagles are the ones that need their moral compasses adjusted.

He didn’t carry children out of a burning building.  He met the bare minimum of penance for a crime he committed.  Why does he deserve a cookie for that?

But, of course, Vick hasn’t done anything like rescue children from a burning building.  He has resurrected his career, apologized for his previous brutality, and—apparently—resisted the urge to attach jumper cables to dogs and toss them into swimming pools since his release.  All that’s good, of course—I hope he has improved himself, and am willing to take him at his word when he says he has.  But none of that, as Pam points out, is courage.  It’s just doing what human beings normally do.  The fact that he hasn’t done anything unbelievably sadistic recently isn’t really something to give him an award for.

People give it a rest.  Seriously the attack on Vick was nothing more than witch hunt.  He is a Black male celebrity and so many others have committed the same crime that we have not punished.  Justice is when EVERYONE faces the same penalty.  Furthermore, he did his time and so the persecution needs to end.  One of the reasons we have such a high recidivism rate is the continues persecution of people after they have done their time.  Perhaps, you would be happier if you could just stand in a line and personally collect a pound of Vick’s flesh.

He was caught committing an offense against society. He paid the prescribed penalty, including his loss of millions of dollars. He has behaved in exemplary fashion since. As far as society is concerned, case closed.

What more do you want from him?

At least he is not a youth molesting pastor who is shielded from penalty and is still allowed to continue his “good works”. That happens every day in our country.

I think there are more egregious situations that you could be addressing.

Leave Michael Vick alone. He has done a great job of picking himself up and moving forward, in a positive way after falling hard.

I suspect much of that award is about positive reinforcement.  It’s also a recognition that much of the dog-fighting and killing miasma is mostly about white people who want the chance to be racist without being called out for it.  This is not to say that what Vick did wasn’t bad, but

1)  Dude was the fall guy, and very much a notch on the prosecutor’s belt.  Most of the people who did the real wrongs got off by blaming upwards.  He shouldn’t have been involved, and this sort of thing is exactly what happens when you do.

2)  Dude was punished way more than most people were for the percieved crime (and in some states is not even a felony).  He was convicted on gambling charges.

3)  I’d invite you to visit football forums of teams with black quarterbacks.  I suspect many people would be surprised and revolted by how much many people would rather lose with a white quarterback than win with a black one.  Pretending that black quarterbacks are horrible people is pretty common-place, for instance JaMarcus Russell (who is a bad quarterback).  Pretending that black quarterbacks aren’t as good they actually are—Michael Vick actually is a common example of a quarterback whom people do their best to forget how good he was (because he was mediocre at passing the ball). 

4)  No such social penalties are ever given to people like Tom Cable, who is a wife beater.  Nor are there serious penalties given to football players who go out and *kill* people through their negligence.

Considering this was an award from his teammates, I’d say this was a case of ‘there but for the grace of god go I’. Maybe not in terms of the specifics of Vick’s transgression, but in terms of there being plenty of transgressions to go around in the NFL.

That’s like giving an OJ an award for courageously coming back from the travails of his criminal and civil trials for murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Disgusting.

Yeah, it did bother me that Vick got the worst of the sentences handed out for the dog-related crimes.

But Courage award… I dunno.  I don’t think it takes courage to be yourself, yet I’m told it does.  So maybe first glance at this we don’t see that they’re awarding him for facing up to his crimes rather than fighting them and not coming back to try to repair the damage.

That is something that should be rewarded more in our society, I think.  Being brave enough to fix your mistakes.  It’s something the last Administration wouldn’t do.

Well let’s just say the word courage has been cheapened if Michael Vick doing the right thing by not killing dogs after serving his time is equivalent to, say, those who risked their lives going into the burning Twin Towers on 9/11.

Yeah, it is just like the OJ thing, as long as you equate human life to the dogs. C’mon dude!

It might be the same thing to you, but luckily, in the eyes of the law, it is not.

”You ask certain people to walk through my shoes, they probably couldn’t do it”

Yea, like maybe the other 7.299,999 people in prison, If Vick was a stockbroker I don’t think we’d be seeing this live and let live attitude. He was a target because he was successful. If you don’t wanna be a target stay in the shade, manage a Subways’ or something.

Shah8 wrote:

I’d invite you to visit football forums of teams with black quarterbacks.  I suspect many people would be surprised and revolted by how much many people would rather lose with a white quarterback than win with a black one.  Pretending that black quarterbacks are horrible people is pretty common-place, for instance JaMarcus Russell (who is a bad quarterback).  Pretending that black quarterbacks aren’t as good they actually are—Michael Vick actually is a common example of a quarterback whom people do their best to forget how good he was (because he was mediocre at passing the ball).

The NFL is about as unracist a place as there is, because everyone is interested in only one thing: winning.  Winning is how people keep their jobs and get greater rewards, while losing is how you get to meet the Jerry Glanville standard: NFL = Not For Long.

Quarterbacks who get designated as the starter get more chances than anyone else, the previously mentioned JaMarcus Russell being a prime example.  Donovan McNabb has had some pretty rough spots for the Eagles, but they’ve stuck with him.

Leave Michael Vick alone. He has done a great job of picking himself up and moving forward, in a positive way after falling hard.

Is that you, Chris Crocker?  Is this me?

Or, as Chris Rock might have put it: “‘I didn’t kill any dogs this year.’ You’re not supposed to kill any dogs!”

But the NFL gave Vick his cookie.

But hey, the Eagles are in the playoffs.  All is forgiven. Right, Gypsy? (WARNING: Graphic photo, trigger warning, NSFW, etc.)

No, baseball is the most unracist.  There, stats pretty much *can* tell you everything you need to know, and it’s quite easy to shut covert racists up and give them plenty of chances to be overt.

Football, on the other hand, is so thoroughly a team sport that most individual player stats are of very limited utility.  For example, Josh Nesbitt, who plays QB for my college team, is one of the better, if not one of the best QBs in the college football, but he has relatively pedestrian numbers because much of his effectiveness goes into team stats like time of possession, total offense, that sort of thing (still has perhaps, I haven’t checked recently, better stats than Tim Tebow).  The degree of interrelatedness and shear complexity of the game has meant that it’s easy for a blowhard to say whatever he wants to say and it’d be difficult to rebut it.  The challenges are almost exactly the same as Climate Change in public discourse.

It *is* interesting that you’ve brought up Donovan McNabb.  Most football forums, even at heavily moderated forums like FootballsFuture, has at least one or two trolls that whines constantly about Donovan McNabb and wishes for the young white QB to replace him soon.  In healthy places like the above mentioned forum, you’ll have the whiner speaking in code and all the people who’s got a lick of sense speaking “code” right back, and nobody got any illusions about what the actual topic is.  Zillion times worse in heavily trafficed unmoderated forums.  But let’s go to the substance…

Like, oh, McNabb is very close to being a lock fo the Hall of Fame, and uh, um, weeeeelll, there wasn’t ever anything like a “rough” spot rough enough that the Eagles ever thought about letting him go.  Every black quarterback gets fewer chances with expectaction to more with fewer weapons.  It’s a fact of life, and it’s amazing that incoming black quarterbacks still acts like the NFL is as sheltered as college.

I think this Yahoo! blogger actually has a pretty good take on it.  Yes, he’s working to redeem himself, but he’s got quite a ways to go to really convince people he understands what he did was wrong.  This award is way premature.

BTW, if you missed Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker article looking at the parallels between football and dogfighting, it’s worth a read.

I take a broader view, which is that it is completely fucking ridiculous that professional football players are voting at all on how “courageous” they are.

Firefighters rushing into a burning building are courageous. Mountain climbers above 20,000 feet are courageous. Cave divers scuba diving hundreds of feet deep are courageous. Infantry soldiers in shootouts with the enemy are courageous.

Football players can no more exhibit “courage” in their jobs than I can sitting in my fucking office browbeating post-docs and grad students.

And by the way, just to clarify my perspective: I love pro football, and think its players are awe-inspiring athletes who exhibit remarkable mental and physical talents and skills. I just find the “courage” frame nauseating when applied to professional sports.

Without addressing Vick specifically it’s cases like this that make me question our justice system and what some people expect from it.  The guy did his time.  Paid fines or whatever.  Would you rather he was still in prison?  Should he just be executed?  And again, this isn’t about Vick exclusively.  I see commentary like this all time on a wide range of crimes.  Either we have a justice system for something or not.  If every criminal should just be locked up forever then I would suggest we can probably get started building more prisons to hold all these people.

Your thoughtful comments are appreciated.

I wouldn’t give him any “courage” award, to be sure.  Maybe “Most Improved”....

The thing I found foulest about Vick’s nasty little predilection was the simultaneous excoriation of Vick by the Villagers while decrying any talk of pursuing those elites who tortured and killed actual human beings.

Shah8 wrote:

It *is* interesting that you’ve brought up Donovan McNabb.  Most football forums, even at heavily moderated forums like FootballsFuture, has at least one or two trolls that whines constantly about Donovan McNabb and wishes for the young white QB to replace him soon.

Philly fans are tough, and every backup quarterback the Eagles have had has been better than Donovan McNabb in some people’s minds.  Some of that stopped when Kevin Kolb got his chance, and he stunk up the joint.  You can find just as many who want to get rid of that horrible white coach, Andy Reid, despite the fact he has a batter record than any previous Eagles coach.

But, even though I live in northeastern Pennsylvania, I’m a Raiders fan, and it’s been a rough several years, but at least we beat the Eagles. 

Without addressing Vick specifically it’s cases like this that make me question our justice system and what some people expect from it.  The guy did his time.  Paid fines or whatever.  Would you rather he was still in prison?  Should he just be executed?

It’s a tough question, because we have a prison system that gives lip service to rehabilitating people but in actuality only punishes.  We’ve kind of lost the notion that maybe we can prevent people from returning to a life of crime if they get drug treatment, mental health treatment, educational opportunities, etc. and have scaled way, way back on the programs offered.  Unless you want to join Chuck Colson’s little cult, you’re pretty much SOL in terms of being given the opportunity to rehabilitate yourself in jail, and good luck finding anything that can help you once you’re released.

There’s also that good old American impatience.  We want Vick to either be totally rehabilitated or a total loser, and we want it NOW.  We can’t wait, say, five years to see how it goes and if he genuinely seems to realize the harm he did.  We want to know NOW.

I’m sure Pam has a better idea of who, on the Philadelphia Eagles, deserves the award.

*CRICKETS*

Yeah…

Hell, the whole team deserves it after losing Defensive Coordinator Jim Johnson before the season, but that’d be super cheesy.

I’m sure Pam has a better idea of who, on the Philadelphia Eagles, deserves the award.

*CRICKETS*

I dunno—maybe someone who’s not a convicted felon?  But I don’t really follow football so, for all I know, the Eagles are like the Raiders and it’s hard to find one who isn’t a convicted felon.

i think the courage award should be given to all the folks posting here arguing that the simple act of not giving him the award would have been a terrible punishment, great enough even to rationalize his doing something that sent him back to prison.

That is something that should be rewarded more in our society, I think.  Being brave enough to fix your mistakes.  It’s something the last Administration wouldn’t do.
Comment #13: Crissa on 12/24 at 03:19 PM

When people do the wrong thing, and then they change up and do the right thing, it’s not going to stick very well if they get nothing extra out of it. 

They’re especially likely to quit if they keep getting reminded of how shitty they used to act.

Yet giving props to someone who changes often pisses off the people who were doing the right thing all along.

It’s the parable of the prodigal son.  I don’t know if the Bible has it right, but it certainly shows that this isn’t a new problem.

That is messed up.

I got lost inside Vick’s quote. It meandered here and there, it didn’t travel anywhere purposeful, and the grammar was a train wreck. It was like trying to follow Sarah Palin’s quotes.

I think the biggest thing working against Donovan McNabb - a truly GREAT quarterback - is that he’s playing in the same era as Brett Favre, Tom Brady, and Peyton Manning - three of the GREATEST quarterbacks to ever play the game…

Having said that, I don’t think that continued stigmatization of ex-convicts is desirable, helpful, or just.

I don’t get the impression that people are trying to continue stigmatizing this guy for being an ex-convict—we’re just objecting to him being *lauded* for, basically, being an ex-convict. I think he did his time and that is sufficient, but the team is acting like doing your time is so amazingly above and beyond what any mere mortal could accomplish. It’s ridiculous, and insulting both to the *actual* brave people out there (the ones who refrain somehow from murdering animals for fun and profit) as well as to the dogs, who were the real victims (not bullshit “victims” like Vick who suffered those mean, scary *consequences* for his own *actions.*)

Ed Block Foundation exists to oppose abuse; it’s a real foundation headquartered here in Baltimore.  And I think Vick’s own self-pitying comments about his own predicament speak for themselves.

Mind you, I am not on the Pile On Vick crew, just that you don’t get an award for courage for completing your fucking probation and becoming a high-earner.  You want to see courage?  I would award it to the first fucking dog who bit back at Vick.

On the other hand, this kind of award was structurally going to favor people like Vick getting it.  It was always going to be mostly a crappy thing because how many players really demostrate courage?  Not the destroy-your-body-by-playing-with-injuries sort of courage, but actually going out of your way to help someone?  It’s not as if it even really improves people’s images!  For example, Terrell Owens actually played Samaritan and helped a reporter after a pedestrian-car accident, without receiving or expecting much credit for it.  He still has a vainglorious team cancer image that he’s trying to work down during his exile in Buffalo.

The fact is…The Ed Block award was always a lame one, and one that typically rewards players who recovers from injuries.  Michael Vick is actually one of the better canidates (because seriously, I’m fed up with the macho play-through-pain bull in football) in that someone other than Vick or the Eagles will benefit from what “courage” Vick is exhibiting—and on a certain level, Vick really *is* exhibiting a certain kind of courage, even if his acts are pretty much compelled by lack of finances.  It always takes an enormous degree of courage to try and rise from falling so far.  Let’s not exhalt the voluntary rescue cats from trees variety of courage too much over the get-up-every-morning-and-do-what-you-gotta-do kind of courage, hey?  Even if it’s pretty common, it’s still like water!

Lastly, Vick was voted this award by his peers.  There should also be a minimum degree of respect for their opinion of him.  Not too too much, but it still says something…

This is not to say that what Vick did wasn’t horrific, and that what he did and was a part of should always be a part of Vick’s story.

Only two winners from this year (that I’ve seen links to) are heroes in the image of what the Block Foundation stands for…

Israel Idonjie
http://www.chicagobears.com/DailyBlogs.asp?DAILY_BLOG_DATE=11/25/09

Mike Furrey
http://www.clevelandbrowns.com/article.php?id=10193

Most of the rest are comeback from injury awards.

http://www.edblock.org/content/ed-block-courage-award-recipients

And Bruce Godfrey?  Then Osama Bin Laden is a hero.  Or maybe an anonymous water fowl that brings down a jetliner.

It may have taken courage to come back into the public eye, knowing that many people would see him not as a sport’s star, but a dog-killer.
But he didn’t say that in the speech excerpt.

If he really thinks most people couldn’t survive 18 months in prison, he needs to get his ass in gear for prison reform. Not make a “pity me” speech with no specifics, just patting himself on the back for being oh-so-much-tougher than, for instance, some quiet, pacifist kid who got caught smoking a joint. Or an abused woman who fought back. There are people in prison who shouldn’t be in prison, who are a lot more fragile physically than some big football player.

No one so far has complained his prison sentence wasn’t longer. He just has done too little to be a hero. And just getting through life isn’t courage. A lot of people with disabilities get damn sick and tired of being called courageous, because there’s really not a cowardly option available, unless you really want to give awards for not committing suicide. OTOH, I do think staying professional in the face of injury is an act of courage. Whether or not it’s wise is a question worth asking, but I come from the theater tradition, and you don’t let down the fans and your team, because the show (game) is bigger than you are.

Mr Vick has been out of prison for half a year now, doing public service work as well as playing football.  I’d have to ask: how log does he have to be out of prison, doing what he is doing, without any transgressions, before Pam and others accept him as having paid his debt and done enough good to be welcomed back into society?

People give it a rest.  Seriously the attack on Vick was nothing more than witch hunt.  He is a Black male celebrity and so many others have committed the same crime that we have not punished.  Justice is when EVERYONE faces the same penalty.

Name a white celebrity who personally funded a dog fighting ring that extended through at least two states and I’ll take your comment seriously.  We collectively despise Vick because he is Vick, not because he’s black, an athlete, or some other non-issue division.  Essentially the posts in this reply thread deal with the fact that he funded a criminal enterprise, got to go back to his multi-million dollar sport (mainly to pay off his personal legal debts, not for some ASPCA fundraiser),  and now is being rewarded because he technically didn’t commit further crimes and generally acted like a decent human being for a bit over a year. 

Regardless of what Philly thinks of him, he isn’t a role model we need to look up to.  If he came back hat-in-hand to the NFL and did private ASPCA work then I would say something has changed but up to this point he’s done what was mandated of him and limited himself to that.  He’s a millionaire and if he continues in the NFL so be it, but it doesn’t mean we need to call on him as some sort of misbegotten hero.  Regardless of what individual black americans choose to love him in it doesn’t make him an alright person, it makes him lucky.

Oh, poor Michael! A rich, pampered celebrity gets caught doing unspeakably cruel things to animals, pays for his crime like any other common criminal, and now he’s some kind of fucking martyr or role model? Lots of people commit crimes, do their time, and go on to lead a law-abiding life without the fabulous fortune and extensive support system Vick enjoyed. The fact is, Vick’s rehabilitation was infinitely easier than it is for most ex-cons. Hell, the man even knew he’d likely have a multi-million dollar a year job waiting for him shortly after he served his time. Courage? Shit. If it applies to Vick, the term has no meaning…

Isn’t fighting what pitbulls were made for? Perhaps we should get rid of that genetic abomination.  (inb4 Godwin)

My thoughts on Michael Vick are as follows: You don’t have to be white or poor to be a stupid fucking redneck.

Xeranar wrote:

We collectively despise Vick because he is Vick, not because he’s black, an athlete, or some other non-issue division.  Essentially the posts in this reply thread deal with the fact that he funded a criminal enterprise, got to go back to his multi-million dollar sport (mainly to pay off his personal legal debts, not for some ASPCA fundraiser), and now is being rewarded because he technically didn’t commit further crimes and generally acted like a decent human being for a bit over a year.

Regardless of what Philly thinks of him, he isn’t a role model we need to look up to.  If he came back hat-in-hand to the NFL and did private ASPCA work then I would say something has changed but up to this point he’s done what was mandated of him and limited himself to that.  He’s a millionaire and if he continues in the NFL so be it, but it doesn’t mean we need to call on him as some sort of misbegotten hero.  Regardless of what individual black americans choose to love him in it doesn’t make him an alright person, it makes him lucky.

Mr Vick did come back, “hat in hand,” to the NFL: even after he completed his sentence, he had to apply for reinstatement to the league.  And if “generally act(ing) like a decent human being” isn’t a good enough standard, then most of us should be condemned.

Dana:

Since when is acting baseline-normal considered worthy of praise? I’d be far more impressed if Vick had made some kind of serious restitution over and above what was legally expected of him. As it is, this is a frivolous award for someone who is essentially working on a clean slate. Even Barack Obama had done more than just get elected by the time the Nobel Peace Prize announcement had been made (viz Turkey and Armenia diplomacy).

Well, I’m inclined to let Vick have his strawberry iced cookie, in peace.  It really does hurt nobody for him to have the award, now, does it?

Performance reminders of one’s public guilt is just a tad more about affirming status than about justice, whether that be about dogs or people.

he’s paid his debt to society, so what? he’s making a darn fair buck playing a relatively meaningless game, hardly couragious. had he not been michael vick, with lots of cash, he’d still be in jail. if out of jail, he’d be living on the streets.

the award he’s truly earned is the lesser known “deon sanders bloated ego award”, given to the player who epitomizes his own sense of self-absorption.

Shah 8, what the fuck?

BrianX asked:

Since when is acting baseline-normal considered worthy of praise?

Since it has become less common than we expect. 

If ex-cons are ever going to have a chance in our society, we have to be willing to praise simply obeying the law; if we set a standard for ex-cons which is higher than the bar set for those who do not have a criminal record, then we have pretty much condemned them to a life on the margins, and a probable return to prison.  Michael Vick is famous, and a tremendous athlete, which makes him the exception to the normally faceless ex-cons trying to make a living in the real world, the ex-con with the much better chance of success at staying out of jail, but the faceless ones can also see what is going on, they can also see how Mr Vick, even though he has paid his legal debt to society, can still never be accepted by a lot of people.  Constantly slamming Mr Vick has an impact on them as well.

Here I thought it was supposed to be we evil reich-wingers who were supposed to never give an ex-con, especially a black ex-con, a break, never supposed to let him try to get on with his life after prison.  Yet here, amongst the mostly good-hearted liberal Pandagonistae, anything good that happens to Mr Vick is condemned, and many here would have denied him his chance to use his skills like anyone else to try to get ahead after prison, many here would have assigned him a societal penalty far in excess of what the law demanded for his crime.

One out of every three black men in this country will have some sort of “contact” with the criminal justice system, contact in excess of a traffic violation.  More black men in this country will go to prison than go to college.  If Mr Vick is the exception, in that he is wealthy and famous and amazingly talented, he is also, in a way, the representative: if we will not treat him fairly, if we are unwilling to give him a second chance, or do so very grudgingly, all of the not-wealthy and not famous black men in our society see that as well.

Dana, the end you seek would be better sought by ending the War on Some Drugs, and your thesis “Let’s forgive Vick for the sake of all ex-cons” would be better served by my suggestion that your loopy rationalizations in defense of Mr. Vick.

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