Embattled Falcons QB Michael Vick “represent everything left to fear in the ancient image of the animalistic, hated colored man; the barbarous negro running wild in a stadium too-near to you,” writes The Starting Five’s dwill, who wonders why the Falcons QB is Public Enemy No.1, while the Seahawks’ Patrick Kearny has been treated with relative kid gloves after a woman claims she was raped in his Buckhead, GA home last March.
In the Kerney rape case we have the immediate premise of innocence for the Seahawks defensive lineman; his female neighbor tells us so. We have a œthin police report. It is so thin, that it barely exists in the police™s consciousness. In the sports blogsphere, the rape was alleged.
As we know, Michael Vick had no such luxury as the presumption on innocence. There was no œalleged in sports blog headlines. And no one was sought out to speak in his behalf. Kerney proclaimed his innocence without as much as a sniff of a challenge. Vick, like Kerney, proclaimed his innocence, It was met with abject derision.
Kerney™s house was never scoured for evidence. Neither Kerney, nor anyone who was at his house that night was taken down to the police station and questioned. Kerney™s flimsy story that he was asleep was never challenged by the police or by the local press.
There are between 20,000 and 40,000 people in the U.S. who participate in dog fighting activities. If we average the two numbers, one percent of the U.S. population is involved in dog fighting. By contrast, 31% of women in the U.S. – about 49 million – report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives. Nearly 25% of U.S. women – about 38.25 million -report being raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, or date at some time in their lifetime.
Dog fighting or abuse of women? You tell me which issue is more important.
You tell me why Tom Lantos (D-Ca.) feels the need to speak out against Michael Vick and dog fighting, but not against Patrick Kerney or his friends and the rape and physical abuse of women?
You tell me how Michael Vick is being held accountable for the alleged actions of his cousin Devon Boddie and Tony Taylor in a house that Vick bought for his cousin but did not live near, but Patrick Kerney is not being held accountable for the rape that took place in his house while he allegedly lay asleep in another room?
I don™t hear about Patrick Kerney being forced to tell police investigators who was in his house that evening. No psychological examination was performed on the woman to explore the possibility that she might actually be protecting Kerney. To date, no DNA evidence has been gathered from either the rape victim or Kerney, or anyone else allegedly involved with the case.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell hasn™t called Patrick Kerney into his office. In fact, Goodell has issued not one public statement regarding Patrick Kerney or the Kerney rape case.
Just to play devil’s advocate for a minute — as I agree with either point dwill might wanna make (ie. the powers that be are either racist fucks or they think rape’s no big thing) there are some slightly less sinister reasons why Michael Vick makes a far easier target. For one thing, he’s an iconic franchise QB as opposed to a defensive lineman. Even without taking into account his other (alleged) violations of common decency, his quality of play is polarizing enough.
And at this point, the words “sexual assault” and “NFL” go together like “Scott Weiland” and “court ordered treatment”. While on the other hand the dog fighting allegations, while perhaps not a big deal to Clinton Portis, represent perhaps the final frontier in career suicide.
Lots of us down in this dark well, ya jerk…
His math is wrong too. 30,000 out of 300,000,000 is 0.1%, not 1.0%. I’m not sure if this adds to or subtracts from his argument.
Nicky-
Actually, it’s .001%… it was corrected, sorry. But it looks like math doesn’t do either of us any favors….
and GC-
I addressed how fame should not come into play with the disparity between Vick and Kerney…. And I do agree that we’re desensitized to thinking, “oh, it’s just rape.” However, that’s an incredibly sad statement and is a stronger indictment on U.S. society than any indictment my article contains….
dwill –
hey, I’m not saying that fame should be the determining factor any more than I’m denying there’s a racial component to the way Vick is trashed by much of the media and blogosphere. But it doesn’t surprise me that Vick’s troubles with the law are deemed far more newsworthy than Kearney’s. If both players suffered serious injuries, I’m fairly sure Vick’s condition and physical rehab would garner more column inches, too.
And beyond whatever moral grounds Roger Goodell might stand on, his actions of late are soooo about pandering to the press and making sure everyone knows who runs the asylum. I mean, I have no idea where the commish really stands on rape or dog fighting. My guess is he’d prefer not to be thought of as cavalier towards either. But I am very certain he’s going to focus more on whatever case, rightly or wrongly, generates the most heat
I don’t buy it. First, the Vick story wasn’t that big until people started coming out of the woodwork saying Vick was actually involved in the dog fighting/breeding. Remember the weekend of the Draft, right after the story broke? People seemed to be buying the “hey, it was my cousin, I was never at that house, I need to surround myself with better people” line. The shit really hit the fan when ex-teammates started basically saying, “Oh yeah, Vick is totally into that!”
The frequency of allegations of sexual assaults by athletes (or their compatriots) absolutely has something to do with the lack of attention. And that cuts a lot of ways. Isn’t there a part of you that greets allegations of sexual assault with at least some cynicism or at least ambivalence, given the fact that a not insignificant number of such allegations are probably false? Plus: one of the biggest names in pro sports allegedly gets his kicks having half-starved dogs tear out each other’s throats. On its face that’s much more interesting than a little-known defensive lineman’s home serving at the location of an alleged rape.
Also, I think certain people (like the Congressman from California) are speaking out because, let’s face it, in certain circles dog fighting is not only tolerated, it’s celebrated. Sexual assault is fucked up in its prevalence, in the U.S. and everywhere else, but it’s not like there web sites dedicated to a sexual assault culture, and thinly veiled boosterism of sexual assaults in pop culture. W/r/t dog fighting, there are.
“it’s not like there web sites dedicated to a sexual assault culture”
the satisfied subscribers of meninpain.com would beg to differ!
Yikes.
You know, as soon as I hit “submit”, I thought, that’s not probably not true, there are probably sick fucks out there who operate and regularly visit a site very much like the one I describe. And that appears to be the case.
In any case, a thought exercise. Take Michael Vick out of the dogfighting story and insert, say, Tom Brady. Are you telling me the media doesn’t cover that version of the story with just as much gusto? Are you ‘avin a laugh?
(last two questions are rhetorical)
rhetorical question or not, I think you make an excellent point. However, there might be a different presumption of guilt/innocence on the part of the print media, chat radio screamers, bloggers, etc. if Tom Brady’s home was allegedly dogfighting HQ.
Between the bird flipping, the water bottle and the herpes case, it could be said Mike Vick had a credibility problem before the dogfighting thing came up. I don’t think it should be necessary to compare rape to dog fighting on the outrage richter scale — I mean, I hope most reasonable persons are bothered by both and not looking to make excuses for either.
At the same time, I don’t think there’s a huge stretch in saying prominent white athletes (and Patrick Kearny isn’t that prominent) are treated somewhat differently. Brett Favre, despite a history of chemical dependency, is considered a viable enough commercial pitchman to do TV ads for Prilosec. A Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist this week had to defend herself against charges she was too soft on LeBron James having kids out of wedlock, yet I’ve seen no such controversy in the Boston area where Tom Brady has apparently knocked up some actress-slash-whatever whom he’s not married to.
Michael Vick is apparently capable of ANY kind of cruel treatment. Just have your sister stay at his house. There is more to come out of this.
Here we go with the race card crap again! When Don Imus was crucified for his ignorant remarks and fired, were you also crying for the horribly sexist and derogatory lyrics spewing forth from the hip-hop artists be silenced as well? Of course not! The double-standard with the race baiters out there is laughable today!
Yes, there WAS rape at Michael Vick’s house in Va. They had ‘rape stands’ where a female dog was held down while the other dogs bred her.
I know you don’t find this an issue, but you would defend anything a black person does. That’s just your sick nature. Your pointing fingers at others for being racist is simply ridiculous. YOU are the racist one. The race card has been overplayed buddy. You should save it for the cases that ARE actually racially motivated. This isnt one of em.
Ms. –
are you addressing this to me or dwil? Because if yr talking to me, I would like to stress the following :
a) at the time of the above post, evidence had not yet been submitted regarding the “rape stands”. So there’s nothing incorrect (at the time) in saying no’s been raped at Michael Vick’s place.
b) I do find it to be an issue. I don’t share, for example, Clinton Portis’ opinion that dog fighting is no big thing, and I would like to see anyone convicted of the crimes Vick is charged with, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. That doesn’t however, mean he isn’t innocent until proven guilty.
c) I’d not defend ANYTHING a black person does. I would however, encourage dwil and any other concerned journalist to continue pointing out double-standards in how the media deals with this kinda thing.
not to dismiss the seriousness of animal cruelty charges, but there might’ve been a rape at Pat Kerney’s place, too. If you’re uninterested in that, I will assume you’re just being selective. As opposed to say, racist or unconcerned about the plight of humans.
Anybody that thinks that a breeding stand now being called a “rape stand” by animal extremist is an ignorant fool!! Please lets remember that animals are just that animals NOT people. It is a breeders choice whioch of his animals he will breed to retain certain traits. Do you think we should ask the females if the care to be bred?? This is dangerous territory when people try to humanize an animal. This is infact Petas ultimate goal….to erradicate peoples choice to even own pets or animals. Irroniclly enough they get all their money from pet owners who have no idea that they are contributing to an organazation looking to strip away their rights.
Don,
my yellow lab vs. you in a spelling bee. You’re going down.
Michael vick : past incidents and active participant
Kerney : no priors and not implicated as a participant
Why not bring up ray lewis or michael crabtree?? Kobe bryant?? Oh.. no?