Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Michael Vick: And the big losers are...

hunters.

The groups leading the charge against Vick (PETA and the Humane Society) are also vehemently anti-hunting. So as they use Vick's trial as a platform, it also gives them credibility in their work to ban and restrict hunting.

Vick apologists play the same game. Listen to sports talk radio as they yak about the case and you will eventually hear someone float the idea that dogfighting is part of Vick's culture just as hunting is for some white players. Rarely does anyone argue the other side.


Here's an example of what is coming:

Morning Rush
By Michael Silver, Yahoo! Sports
August 13, 2007

The franchise quarterback had just suffered the most crushing defeat of his career and he needed to get away from it all. So the peeved passer headed to the backwoods of Mississippi, where he cleared his head by killing a defenseless animal.

Sorry, PETA, but the gun-toting quarterback in question was not Michael Vick. In fact, it was Peyton Manning , whose aim with a hunting rifle apparently is as true as it is with the ol' pigskin.

In January 2003, a couple days after the Indianapolis Colts ' 41-0 playoff annihilation by the New York Jets , Manning went to a 12,000-acre spread in central Mississippi owned by a family friend and got his mind right. As he told me later that year, "You're out there hunting for deer and ducks, just you and your gun. It's peaceful and totally quiet, no cell phones or anything like that. It's a good detox, the type of thing that gets your batteries re-charged."

In other words: Bad news, Bambi.