Michael Vick. What a punk. The guy's an unrepentant sociopath (I guess to be a sociopath sort of implies that you're incapable of being repentant). I didn't buy his crocodile tears or his 'heartfelt' regrets. I couldn't swallow his vow to turn his "mistake" into a crusade for good. It was clear that this was all (poorly) rehearsed, born from the best spin-meisters money can buy. Years spent torturing dogs for pleasure do not add up to "a mistake."
But I finally begrudgingly said that I'd give the guy some time. I didn't root for the
Eagles like I had in the past, but I wasn't necessarily always rooting against them. Well, a few months have gone by and Vick's having a hard time keeping the sociopath in his core from bubbling up. It makes an appearance in every interview I've seen him in. And played a starring role in the one I caught on ESPN tonight.
Now, I'm not a card-carrying
PETA vegan (though I happen to agree with their many of their core beliefs). I'm a carnivore. I like a tasty steak and dig a decent burger. I also try not to be hypocritical: dogs are not inherently better than beef cattle simply because I live in a society that keeps the former as pets and kills the latter as food. Slaughterhouses are grim means to an end. But the difference is that we generally don't treat them like Disneyland, where people come and get their jollys watching animals die. And though far too sizable a percentage of these places do cause more suffering than is necessary, but that's the bottom line driving that. Not an excuse - in fact, I personally find it reprehensible; an example of money as the root of all evil. Still, the suffering itself is an unfortunate by-product, not their reason for being. That's the difference between slaughterhouses and dog fighting. Dog fighting is pure, unadulterated sadism.
Well, eight more games to the season. Eight more opportunities for the opposition to really lay the hurt on Vick. I'm not a sadist, I don't want him to suffer unnecessarily. I'll take the least painful route to a career ending injury for Mr. Vick.
Where are the
Hanson Brothers when you need them?
Speaking of sociopaths, I see one of my favorite childhood television characters is featured in a movie newly arrived to Cinemax. I speak naturally of
Ron Howard's
Frost/Nixon. Though he never made an appearance himself, Nixon was nevertheless omnipresent during the Watergate Trial that played out for me after school on the tube (hey, kids: in those pre-cable days, you couldn't simply switch to the Cartoon Network). Nixon is the primary reason I became interested in politics, and is perhaps the greatest influence on my current political bent (that's right, Tricky Dick molded me into a liberal).
Frost/Nixon is great theater and
Frank Langella really embodies the man in all his complexities. (Is it just a coincidence that Langella also embodied
Dracula so well 30 years ago?) Let's remember that for all of Nixon's warts (and god knows the guy was virtually one big wart), he was cunningly intelligent and we shouldn't minimize the progress he made in our relations with China (our future overlords given the rocketing monetary debt to them we've been amassing).
Who am I kidding? China was
Kissinger's doing. Nixon could have cared less about "The Red Menace" - he was too busy doing lines of coke off the floor of the oval office while ordering hits on the heads of the Girls and Boy Scouts of America for subversive activity. Or so I heard ...
Well, Vick and Dick. The evening started watching an interview with Dick on ESPN, which precipitated this rant, and is ending switching between the Broncos/Steelers game and Frost/Nixon. Who could ask for a better Monday?
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