No Free Pass on Vick Case

I really had no plans to address the Michael Vick case again.

The less said about this "man," the better, I thought.

But suddenly, as with everything else in Atlanta, it became a race thing. Today, for instance, the Atlanta NAACP had a "rally" telling us not to pre-judge Michael Vick, and not to withhold him his living before a jury has spoken.

Needless to say they wouldn’t be talking this way about a white defendant accused, say, of killing a black man because of his skin color. No, that’s a hate crime, and I agree with them on that point. If a white cop is indicted for murdering a black man, he shouldn’t be on the street before trial.

Same thing here.  This was a hate crime, maybe not in law but in fact, a hate crime. 

R.L. White (above), a radio preacher in the entrepreneurial Baptist faith, is grabbing a little publicity for himself with this. But he is doing no one any favors, least of all Michael Vick.

Vick has a problem, one which is surprisingly common it turns out. He’s
a violence junkie. He has been in the dog-fighting game since he signed
his first Falcons contract. It is what he is.

Dog fighting does not just hurt a few dogs. It can kill you, or your
children, or your mother. Many of these dogs get loose and wind up
roaming neighborhoods, wind up joining packs, wind up reproducing and
teaching their own life lessons to their offspring.

By defending this violence junkie, encouraging him to "hang tough" even
after a co-defendant has plead out, Rev. White is encouraging a
delusion that could get Vick a maximum sentence. Already, with one
co-defendant ready to give state’s evidence against him, Vick has lost
the race to the courthouse. Any deal he cuts now will include jail
time, and a felony rap. That means at least a year inside, probably an
added year’s suspension from the league on top of it, the loss of his $130 million
Falcons’ contract and maybe, just maybe, the hope that, say, the Oakland
Raiders will take a chance on him in 2009.

Vick’s only choice right now is to give up every other dog handler he
knows, every spectator, every kennel. His only choice now is to sing.
Sing or die like a dog, Mike. Those are your choices.

This is how it  should be, because what Michael Vick has done is to commit mass
murder and put the lives of millions of people at risk from dog
attacks. All for the adrenaline rush of watching two canines rip each
other to pieces. He’s a sick, sick individual.

By defending such sickness, because the sick man happens to be black,
Rev. White cheapens his own organization and its noble history.

The Atlanta NAACP does indeed have a noble history. One of the first men I
met at my present house was John Shanks, who helped found the DeKalb
NAACP and who, after his passing, got his name on the group’s
citizenship award.

Mr. Shanks was a true hero. When he was working, before the Civil
Rights Era, putting your name on an NAACP letterhead was an invitation
to death. But Mr. Shanks did it. He never bragged on it. I didn’t learn
of his work until after he died.

All I knew while he lived was that
his dream coming out of the Army after World War II had been to learn
TV repair, a career my own father had and rejected on Long Island. That dream was denied Mr. Shanks because his skin was black, and the G.I. Bill didn’t cover black men in the South in the 1940s.

The
revelation brought me up short, and still chokes me up. It humbles me. It’s one reason I gave my son the name John. When you meet saints on this Earth, remember them.

Rev. White, you dishonor John Shanks and all our other heroes with this
nonsense. Stop enabling. Defend the defenseless, not the abusive.

You get no free pass from me.