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.