Hatin' On Mike
To anyone who says that the federal indictment of Michael Vick and three other idiots is being driven primarily (or even solely) by race:
SHUT THE HELL UP.
At some point, this has GOT to stop being about 400+ years of injustice (thanks, Chuck D.) and about one individual making choices that came back to bite him in the rear end (pun intended).
However, I will say that race will figure largely in his trial...at least, it will if Vick's lawyer has an ounce of sense in his head. Right now, as I speak, Vick's mouthpiece is reading the O.J. Defense Playbook written by the late Johnny Cochran (and there is no truth to the rumor that Satan now has Cochran on retainer...but I digress).
If Vick's lawyer didn't just fall off the law school truck yesterday, he is going to do his level best to confuse, obfuscate, and otherwise cloud the issue with racial overtones.
If there's a problem here, it's only in how this will play out in the public arena. I have a word which may be appropriate here: ugly. This will get publicly ugly. Black men who have been unfairly harassed by police will be joined in four part harmony by white men who are guilty about all that they have (never mind that 99.99% of these weepy-eyed liberal white dudes have never owned as much as a "Slave" album, let alone the genuine article), statistics both legitimate and spurious are going to be thrown about again, including that old chestnut about more black men being in prison than in college. We'll probably see our old friend Harry Edwards bemoaning the social aspects of young black men and sport. We'll definitely see Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in various capacities because the two are drawn to television cameras in much the same way that flies are drawn to feces.
Rap music will be played as background music. Pants will sag. Bling will, dare I say, bling.
And, thank goodness, none of it will matter.
At the risk of repeating myself from earlier writings, these are the feds. The feds convict 97% of the time. The feds took down The Black Hand, Tony Soprano be damned.
The feds are not going to let a jury get blinded by Vick's dark skin, or all that that skin may or may not represent in this society. They are not going to get sidetracked into defending themselves against charges of racism like the L.A.P.D. did during the O.J. Fiasco, er, Trial. (And if Johnnie Cochran is indeed on retainer for Satan, it's only because he owes Big Red a big favor for giving the world Mark "Der Fuhrer" Fuhrman, a/k/a Exhibit A in the Racist Cop Show...but I'm digressing again.) If nothing else, the O.J. Fiasco, er, Trial is practically a primer on how not to prosecute a high profile black suspect. The mistakes and missteps that the L.A.P.D. and their benighted prosecution made will not be repeated by the feds.
No, the feds are going to put the focus of the trial squarely on the victims that cannot speak for themselves: the 50+ dogs that were taken from Vick's property. They will put evidence on trial that the jurors can handle for themselves, like the rape stand, used to breed unwilling females. They will be made to understand how dogfighting really works, and what's in it for the dogs themselves.
Ultimately, the dogs only get to die, and soon if they are lucky. Otherwise, it's a life of testing, weighing, and fighting to live another day, until one day a claw slips or a grip fails to hold and it gets beaten, where it will then die at the fangs and claws of another dog...or where it may be shot, drowned, hung, electrocuted, or slammed into the ground the way that other losers at Bad Newz Kennels were.
The same black folks who were happy when Mayor Diddy Kwame Kilpatrick got re-elected in Detroit (talk about getting what you deserve...) will be the same ones raising sand about Michael Vick getting indicted, and they couldn't be more wrong.
This is not about the color of a man's skin, but the content of a man's character (thanks, Dr. King).
Michael Vick is not getting prosecuted for dark skin as much as for dark deeds.
SHUT THE HELL UP.
At some point, this has GOT to stop being about 400+ years of injustice (thanks, Chuck D.) and about one individual making choices that came back to bite him in the rear end (pun intended).
However, I will say that race will figure largely in his trial...at least, it will if Vick's lawyer has an ounce of sense in his head. Right now, as I speak, Vick's mouthpiece is reading the O.J. Defense Playbook written by the late Johnny Cochran (and there is no truth to the rumor that Satan now has Cochran on retainer...but I digress).
If Vick's lawyer didn't just fall off the law school truck yesterday, he is going to do his level best to confuse, obfuscate, and otherwise cloud the issue with racial overtones.
If there's a problem here, it's only in how this will play out in the public arena. I have a word which may be appropriate here: ugly. This will get publicly ugly. Black men who have been unfairly harassed by police will be joined in four part harmony by white men who are guilty about all that they have (never mind that 99.99% of these weepy-eyed liberal white dudes have never owned as much as a "Slave" album, let alone the genuine article), statistics both legitimate and spurious are going to be thrown about again, including that old chestnut about more black men being in prison than in college. We'll probably see our old friend Harry Edwards bemoaning the social aspects of young black men and sport. We'll definitely see Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in various capacities because the two are drawn to television cameras in much the same way that flies are drawn to feces.
Rap music will be played as background music. Pants will sag. Bling will, dare I say, bling.
And, thank goodness, none of it will matter.
At the risk of repeating myself from earlier writings, these are the feds. The feds convict 97% of the time. The feds took down The Black Hand, Tony Soprano be damned.
The feds are not going to let a jury get blinded by Vick's dark skin, or all that that skin may or may not represent in this society. They are not going to get sidetracked into defending themselves against charges of racism like the L.A.P.D. did during the O.J. Fiasco, er, Trial. (And if Johnnie Cochran is indeed on retainer for Satan, it's only because he owes Big Red a big favor for giving the world Mark "Der Fuhrer" Fuhrman, a/k/a Exhibit A in the Racist Cop Show...but I'm digressing again.) If nothing else, the O.J. Fiasco, er, Trial is practically a primer on how not to prosecute a high profile black suspect. The mistakes and missteps that the L.A.P.D. and their benighted prosecution made will not be repeated by the feds.
No, the feds are going to put the focus of the trial squarely on the victims that cannot speak for themselves: the 50+ dogs that were taken from Vick's property. They will put evidence on trial that the jurors can handle for themselves, like the rape stand, used to breed unwilling females. They will be made to understand how dogfighting really works, and what's in it for the dogs themselves.
Ultimately, the dogs only get to die, and soon if they are lucky. Otherwise, it's a life of testing, weighing, and fighting to live another day, until one day a claw slips or a grip fails to hold and it gets beaten, where it will then die at the fangs and claws of another dog...or where it may be shot, drowned, hung, electrocuted, or slammed into the ground the way that other losers at Bad Newz Kennels were.
The same black folks who were happy when Mayor Diddy Kwame Kilpatrick got re-elected in Detroit (talk about getting what you deserve...) will be the same ones raising sand about Michael Vick getting indicted, and they couldn't be more wrong.
This is not about the color of a man's skin, but the content of a man's character (thanks, Dr. King).
Michael Vick is not getting prosecuted for dark skin as much as for dark deeds.
Labels: Bad Newz Kennels, dog-fighting, Michael Vick, NFL
posted by van walker | 4:28 AM
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