Just A Song And Dance Man

I was trying my hardest to avoid writing about the Michael Vick saga. The web is inundated with stories on him anyway, plus I didn’t want to come off as too preachy, what with the hot flames I breathed upon Rick Pitino just a few days ago.

My position on Vick is pretty clear, even without me stating it and just letting you read between the lines. I WAS an Eagles fan up to a couple of days ago, am a dog owner, became a vegetarian and stopped buying leather, suede, etc. due to my moral beliefs, and believe a “mistake” is something that you do once, not an ongoing practice that continues until you get caught and are forced to stop and repent. So hopefully that makes my view on Vick clear without spelling it out explicitly.

What changed my tune about writing about Vick signing with the Eagles is the issue of “second chances”. As predictably as death and taxes, all parties involved in this situation – Vick, the Eagles, the fans, media, the NFL – are spouting off about how this is all about giving the convicted dogfighter a second chance. Which is all really just self-serving rhetoric. What this is really all about is our insatiable need for entertainment. Ask yourself this question – are you really interested in giving Michael Vick a second chance or are you only interested in seeing performances like this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=
VxNMM8_mfOg&hl[/youtube]

Say Michael Vick got injured in prison and couldn’t play anymore – would anyone be interested in giving the man a second chance, outside of maybe the Tony Dungys of the world? Of course not. People only care about Vick because he entertains us and sells newspapers and makes people read our blogs. If Vick was a plumber or teacher or construction worker, no one would be scrambling to give him a job. And there sure wouldn’t be any moral outrage over denying this man an opportunity to earn a living and feed himself.

This is just further proof that the most important thing in our society is entertainment. We don’t bestow $20 million salaries on the people who teach our children or come up with cures for cancer or lead our countries. We give these amounts of money to people who entertain us – athletes, musicians, actors. If you are lucky enough to be talented in one of these fields, you will always have the opportunity of a second (or third, or fourth) chance given to you. We can say all we want about other things being more important in our lives, but money talks, and the money says that we care most about being entertained. Michael Vick entertains us, therefore a team like the Eagles are willing to pretend they are being charitable by giving him a second chance, when in actuality they are just using him to make money by entertaining us.

The second Michael Vick stops being able to perform and entertain us, we’ll forget about him and toss him to the side – which is probably fitting, considering that is exactly what Vick did to his underperforming dogs.