People are peeeyissed off after Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Dwain Carraway gave a key to the city to Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick while the convicted dog murderer was visiting that city during Super Bowl festivities.
Mayor Tom Leppert spoke with the Dallas Morning News and expressed regret about the honorary key: “We don’t condone it and clearly didn’t approve it.” (Hey, mayor, you’re an “I” not a “we.”)
The entire key presentation might have flown under the radar except that local radio personality Richard Hunter captured it on his cellphone video. Hunter, who adopted a pit bull that was rescued from one of Vick’s dogfighting facilities, showed up at the Dallas event seeking to talk to the quarterback.
Vick shunned him. His bodyguards blocked and cursed at Hunter, and one of them is heard saying, “We don’t care about the dog.”
Vick served a year-and-a-half in prison after being convicted on federal charges related to running a dogfighting ring across state lines in 2007. He lost his credibility, endorsements, and his football salary. He filed bankruptcy in 2008.
Now he admits his mistakes and talks to kids about it. He returned to football and showed courage and leadership on the field this season. He presents himself as a changed man.
But Dallas residents and online commentators are skewering Vick, Caraway, and the city, apparently convinced that the first thing Vick will do with his ill-gotten key is to sneak into animal shelters at night, strangle puppies, and eat their hearts.
Caraway, politician that he is, backpedaled on the key ceremony and apologized once the dog poo hit the fan. (He’s seen on Hunter’s video practically kissing Vick’s feet while giving him the key.)
ESPN reported on the “uproar.” USA Today discussed the “outrage.” Other media outlets used similar adjectives.
Americans are a forgiving bunch when people do their best to make amends for past sins. Caraway chose to forgive. The question is, has Vick done his best to make amends?
Hunter doesn’t think so. In a phone conversation this morning, Hunter (aka “Big Dick”) told Blotch that Vick is a sociopath incapable of feeling remorse for brutalizing, hanging, drowning, and otherwise murdering dogs — Vick is only sorry for the problems it caused him.
“A mental disorder isn’t something that fades,” Hunter said. “Anybody who takes the time to read the public record of Vick’s confession and the eyewitness testimony will see that…on two separate occasions he took his own children’s [pet] dogs and threw them into the fighting pit and [the fighting dogs] shredded them, and he laughed about it. A sociopath lacks empathy.”
In December, Vick said he’d like to own another dog. Hunter has also heard the quarterback say he sometimes thinks about the dogs that were victimized as part of his fight ring.
“My going down there was thinking he might like the opportunity to talk to one of the primary caregivers of a victim,” Hunter said.
Vick didn’t take the bait, and he looks like a weasel in the video. On the other hand, he’s probably been heckled and jeered so often in the past few years that he wisely avoids engaging in combative questioning on the street.
Hunter is planning to attend tomorrow’s Dallas City Council meeting and ask the city to demand the key’s return.
Michael Vick is a thug plain and simple and he;s only saying what he needs to say to make people think he’s reformed. Richard Hunter is right about Vick being a sick SOB. The NFL should have given him a lifetime ban.
“Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.” — Indira Gandhi
Help people, save dogs, eat cows. I love perfect people.
Americans are a forgiving bunch when [white] people do their best to make amends for past sins.
Fixed that for you.
America hasn’t even forgiven OJ Simpson and he was found not guilty.
Michael Vick was convicted of taking money from people so that they could watch dogs trained to hate – that he paid to train – tear each other apart. I don’t have a problem with Michael Vick trying to get his job back, that is what people will do. I have a problem with the people who hired him – because we know that being a football player isn’t entirely about running into other people for money. If you didn’t count the character of the players, and their influence on people – their “courage and leadership,” as stated above, football would be more about watching people trained to try and tear each other apart. An accountant who embezzles $60 won’t be allowed to do damage with money again; but that doesn’t mean they don’t try for a job in finance. Michael Vick did damage to the dogs, and by hiring him, and then REWARDING him, these other people (for the race card thrower- I will say the largely WHITE people) are not only putting honor in the wrong place, they are taking it away from all the honorable, courageous leaders who work with kids without committing crimes first. So, yeah. We’re pissed about the key.
Why aren’t white people entitled to an opinion ? Is the color of the dogs at issue ? From what I heard they bled red. Anyone who NEEDS color as an excuse, has already lost the argument. Face it, if Vick wasn’t famous as a football player, he wouldn’t be free yet. Let’s just agree to let people vote their own opinions/conscience and decide for themselves when/if to forget/forgive Vick.
Richard “Big Dick” Hunter lived up to his promise to fight the icy roads and cold weather this morning and make his way to City Hall and demand that the Dallas City Council ask Michael Vick to return the key.
Caraway, the guy so quick to hand out the key in the first place, wasn’t there to hear it: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/local-politics/20110209-city-hall-blog-man-who-adopted-michael-vicks-dog-addresses-dallas-council-meeting-asks-mayor-to-take-back-key-given-to-vick.ece