When the Michael Vick dog fighting story broke a few days ago, my first reaction was to recoil. What kind of a sicko trains his dog to kill other dogs, and then kills his own dog if it's not vicious enough?
Since that first day, though, I keep thinking, "No, really. What kind of sicko would that be?"
He's not in it for the money, obviously. The guy is a multimillionaire, and getting richer with every pass. He doesn't need to do it to satisfy his competitive urges. Presumably he's getting those needs met on the football field.
So...why?
Where in a person's upbringing or socialization or value system (have I hit them all?) would make anyone think that it would be a fun hobby to take a housepet and train it to fight to the death?
Could you imagine Cuppy and MelonKiwi locked in a death battle?? Uhhh...hmmm...no. Although now that I think of it, I may have to ask Lori to photoshop a picture of the Cuppy vs. Melon Smackdown.
But...I digress, as usual. Clearly Michael Vick doesn't engage in this "hobby" alone, so there must be a sizeable group of people who find dogfighting to be a viable entertainment option.
Hmmm...I wonder if their mothers know. Because that's the real test of morally ambiguous behavior. If you're doing something that you wouldn't want your mother to know you're doing, you probably shouldn't be doing it.
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Last night on the news they interviewed a typical Southern Illinois camo-wearing red-necky young guy who was showing off his pitbull. Except that this particular pitbull was a stray he'd found, covered with wounds, scars and evidence of dogfighting (and homemade stitches) and bearing a mouthful of broken teeth. The young man who found the dog had big, un-red-necky tears welling up in his eyes when he said, "I'm going to make sure this little guy gets a chance to have a life where he never has to fight again."
I also heard that Nike has decided to "delay" the release of new products in their Michael Vick line (big of them) but they have no plans to pull the Vick products already out there (not so big of them).
I sort of wish that "swoosh" would be the sound of corporate greed and moral ambiguity going down the toilet. It won't be, of course, but a girl can dream.
I always wondered how animal protection services came to be an organized institution before children's protective services came about. We think it's okay to put all sorts of sports above general education in our schools, it's okay for two men to get into a ring and cause brain damage to each other, it's okay to exploit little girls by dressing them up in makeup and small versions of women's clothing when they're two but today we take exception to a sport that has gone on for ages. I hate dog fighting; I'll make that clear up front--I hate everything to do with fights between animals, not to mention humans. When you breed anything for a specific purpose and it goes bad, its not economical to keep it living. Don't we more or less do the same thing with race horses? My dad use to breed, train, and fight pitbulls, so I know just how big of a racket it is. So much inbreeding goes on with a fighter that if he can't fight he isn't much use for anything--a "good" fighting pit bull will not make a good pet; they're crazed and attack everything. Until we all can agree on the barbaric nature of all contact sports, then I'm sure we'll all keep hearing these kinds of stories.
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