Piling On

Trust Michael Vick to take all the shine off Posh and Becks' W cover...

In arenas across the country, music is used as a way to fire up the home folks and poke fun at the visitors. In Michael Vick's case, it is nearly scripture that "Who Let The Dogs Out" will be played ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

This cannot be.

Thus, I have taken it upon myself to suggest songs that any stadium deejay can play when he finally gets sick of The Baha Men. They are, from number 10 to number 1:

10. Craven Choke Puppy, Bob Marley
9. Puppy Love, Paul Anka
8. Too Many Puppies, Primus
7. Big Dog Daddy, Toby Keith
6. Dirty Old Egg-Suckin' Dog, Johnny Cash
5. Dog Eat Dog, AC/DC
4. Hair Of The Dog, Nazareth
3. Black Dog, Led Zeppelin
2. Hound Dog, Elvis Presley
1. Atomic Dog, George Clinton

I look forward to your suggestions as well.

Boy, nothing like having a little insurance like Matt Schaub on your bench right about now, eh?

Oh, that's riiiight...back in April, right around the time Ookie and the Three Idiots were killing dogs in ways straight out of Eli Roth's Torture Porn For Dummies, the Falcons traded Schaub to Houston for...what, exactly? I don't recall, and I can't hear the answer over the belly-laughing coming from Houston...

Say this much for Joey Harrington: after leaving Detroit, he might have found in Atlanta the only place where his meager skills are not merely tolerated, but desired...

And that will be Joey Ballgame lining up under center with the first team on July 26, when the Falcons training camp opens, because the other guy will be wearing a suit in a federal courthouse on that same day...

It sez so right here that Falcons owner Arthur Blank was busy figuring out if he could get some of that bonus money he spent on Vick when he was shoved aside by a fed named RICO...

This just in from the Adding Insult To Injury Department: Al Sharpton (!!) has publicly denounced another black man.

That's right, he and Russell Simmons have written a letter condemning Vick's actions and demanding action from sponsors of the NFL.

That should tell anyone with a pulse how bad it really is for Michael Vick, because I'm pretty sure that I was watching Jeopardy! when I learned that Al Sharpton throwing another brotha under the bus was one of the signs of the Apocalypse...

(I'll take Rectal/Cranial Inversion for $200, Alex.)

(Name the year that Michael Vick was drafted number one overall into the National Football League.)

(2001.)

(Correct. Go!)

(Rectal/Cranial for $400, please.)

(Name the year that Michael Vick founded and funded Bad Newz Kennels.)

(2001.)

(Correct again. Make a selection.)

(I've gotta go with Rectal/Cranial Inversion for $600.)

(How unlikely is it that Michael Vick was never at the property in Surry County, Virginia?)

(About as unlikely as you not showing off your superior pronunciation of French, Alex.)

(Tre magnifique! Select again.)

(Rectal/Cranial for $800.)

(Where is Michael Vick's cousin, Davon Boddie, the idiot who lived in the house?)

(Playing solitaire with The Eraser and warming up his singing voice.)

(Right! And you look like you're about to run the category...?)

(I'll take Rectal/Cranial Inversion for $1000.)

(You've hit the Daily Double. How much would you like to wager?)

($137 million, Alex, the whole pile.)

(Alright, here's your question: how stupid would you have to be to forfeit millions of dollars in NFL paychecks and endorsement money for the sake of torturing and killing helpless animals?)

(Pretty f**king stupid, Alex.)

(That's correct, and you have control of the board.)

And I'm just getting warmed up...

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.

The Complaint, Part 2

I intended to address some of the more salient points of the federal complaint filed against Bad Newz Kennels, when the feds one-upped me and indicted four individuals with regard to dog-fighting, including Michael Vick.

I have read the 18-page indictment fully. It is not a difficult read

Neither is it pretty.

The federal indictment against Vick and his cohorts at Bad Newz Kennels details in dull, bureaucratic prose the horrors of dog-fighting.

Worse, the case against Vick and his cohorts is so absurdly easy to make that only incompetence on the magnitude of Gerald Poindexter's put the issue into question in the first place.

The first piece of the puzzle is the money. None of this happens without the money man, in this case Vick. Vick provided vast sums of money for the purchase of training equipment, property, and animals in support of this venture.

And what venture are we talking about? The fighting of dogs to the death, eventually, either at the fangs and claws of the other animal or at the hands of the losing owner. An animal that failed in testing was killed, and an animal that lost a fight was also killed.

The second piece of the puzzle is the eyewitness testimony. There are four cooperating witnesses for the federal government, each of whom has provided concrete evidence to the authorities that leaves no question about Vick's personal involvement in every aspect of the dog-fighting operation.

Including the execution of dogs that failed to meet his standards for fighting.

That's right, Michael Vick did not merely put up the money to support this enterprise, which in itself would have been foul enough, nor did he merely gamble on his dogs to win, which is worse, but the blood of animals that failed to meet his testing criterion literally stains his multi-million dollar hands.

The federal indictment alleges that Vick participated in the killing of 8 dogs in April of this year, by "hanging, drowning, and and slamming at least one dog's body to the ground."

It is my sincerest hope that Michael Vick is at least suspended by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell for at least one year. It is my further sincerest hope that Vick is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, is rightfully found guilty, and is sentenced to the maximum sentence allowable under federal law.

Anyone who can hear of these things without being horrified has long since lost touch with genuine humanity, because no real man can stomach the thought of deliberately torturing animals, let alone doing it for something as base as gambling.

There is nothing to excuse here. There is nothing to explain away here. There is nothing to make excuse after excuse for here. People have been apologizing for Vick ever since his freshman year at troubled Virginia Tech. Were one to listen to the talking heads at the Worldwide Fearless Leader in Bristol, one might be amazed to find that Vick is even in trouble. Here is a problem that even a man with blazing speed can't run away from.

Thankfully, the truth has come out. Now we know exactly what kind of man Michael Vick is: the kind of man who would keep a secret compartment in a water bottle; the kind of man who would pass on an STD without informing his partner until he was forced to in a court of law; the kind of man who would derive pleasure from the death of an animal.

May he rot in a jail cell, and that right soon.