Cruel, Inhumane Sport Continues To Demand Penance From Cruel, Inhumane Dogfighter

Michael Vick spoke with the creases of James Brown's forehead yesterday. Again we were treated to the spectacle of a man who has profited off a brutal, inhumane sport nonetheless claiming the moral high ground. I refer to James Brown. A flock of father confessors has surrounded Vick since his release from prison, all of them demanding that the quarterback perform a rite of penance before their eyes for the sin of dispatching dogs into a ring to maul each other. First there was Roger Goodell, the self-dramatizing moralist who responded to Vick's bid for reinstatement by making a public show of being tormented, then by demanding that Vick demonstrate "genuine remorse." Then there was Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, who said he wanted to see self-hatred in Michael Vick, wanted to know that the player his head coach and quarterback both wanted for the Eagles could grasp the "cruelty, the torture, the complete disregard for any definition of human decency" that d...