Derrick Z. Jackson, The Boston Globe’s fine columnist, offers an interesting take on the Michael Vick case that raises some serious questions about society’s complicity in what essentially is the business of animal cruelty.
Jackson makes the connection between Vick’s offenses and the legal sport of dog racing.
You can go down last month’s 18-page federal indictment against Vick and his codefendants and see plenty of snippets such as these: “train and breed . . . for. . . competitions”; “destroying or otherwise disposing of dogs not selected to stay”; “executed at least one dog that did not perform well”; “executed at least two dogs that did not perform well”; “Vick possessed. . . approximately 54 American Pit Bull Terriers, some of which had scars and injuries.”
Of course, you can apply the same phrases or similar ones to greyhound racing. Yet dog tracks operate in about a quarter of our states, including Massachusetts.
Jackson, of course, is onto something. The outrage over Vick’s involvement in organized dogfighting is warranted, but “rings a bit hollow,” as Jackson says.
It feels a bit too easy to condemn only this fool sick enough to throw away a 10-year, $130 million football contract with the Atlanta Falcons and his residual millions in endorsements for his mad dashes as quarterback.
Jackson raises the ethical bar by raising questions about greyhound racing.
There is no difference between this and what Vick did, other than that dogfighting is illegal and greyhound racing remains legal in many states.
I think the same qestions can be asked about other sporting activities. How ethical, for instance, is it for us to breed and raise horses for the sole purpose of racing them? Thoroughbreds are treated fairly well, but isn’t there something unseemly about it?
Courtland Milloy follows a similar line of logic, bemoaning the hypocrisy surrounding the Vick case.
For the most part, we revel in a culture of blood sports in which people and animals are pitted against each another. The knockout in boxing, the knockdown in football, the crashes at Daytona and Indianapolis — those are the draw. Without the video images of tigers ripping the hides from zebras, cobras fighting mongooses and other bloody contests played out in the wild kingdom, the Discovery and National Geographic channels might as well go off the air.
More to the point, perhaps, Milloy raises questions about horseracing that we rarely ask:
Consider Barbaro, the horse that broke his leg during the Preakness Stakes last year.
“Caution: Tears will flow from watching ‘Barbaro,’ the HBO Sports documentary,” TV critic Richard Sandomir wrote in the New York Times on June 6. Crocodile tears, maybe.
“Barbaro became a tragic hero whose injury reports were given like presidential health updates,” Sandomir wrote. But wait. Sandomir goes on to say that the documentary’s producers “do not delve into why so few horses get Barbaro-level care when they break down.”
Anybody care about that?
“Like the other innocent animals we love, horses ‘trust us, live alongside us, honoring our many commands,’ the narrator, Liev Schreiber says,” Sandomir reported. ” ‘And when we ask them to — they run.’ “
And when they don’t, well, they die.
Barbaro’s leg could not be fixed, so he was eventually euthanized. For many broken-down racehorses, that can mean anything from lethal injection to having their throats slit — killed just as surely as a wounded dog that can no longer fight.
Not a pretty picture.
And what of hunting or even sports fishing? We no longer live as hunter-gatherers and our diets are no longer tied to the need to track and kill deer, bears and other wild creatures. How ethical is it, then, to track and kill these animals for sport?
I suspect I’ll be hearing from the hunters out there, but that’s OK. I truly want to understand the ethics of this issue. I believe the issues need to be discussed, that questions need to be answered.
Why are we so disgusted with what Vick did? Is it the obvious cruelty to the dogs? Or is it because we have designated dogs as housepets and friends? And why is it that many are willing to endorse the tracking and killing of deer — or bear, or birds, etc.?
Doug Pike attempts an answer on his Hook and Bullet blog:
Recreational hunting is recognized by wildlife experts as the most effective and beneficial population management tool available to them, whereas dog fighting provides no benefit whatsoever to dogs, especially those that cannot or will not fight.
Recreational hunting is heavily regulated by state and federal law to ensure that it does not adversely impact wildlife populations, whereas the only regulation on dog fighting in civilized jurisdictions is the one that makes it illegal. (If only there could be laws against stupidity.)
Recreational hunters pay hundreds of millions of dollars for license fees and dedicated taxes, then donate millions more to conservation organizations for use in programs to benefit wildlife and their habitats, whereas dog fighters bet $50 in sweaty, crumpled bills that the gray one kills the spotted one.
Recreational hunting produces tons of lean, nutritious meat, whereas dog fighting produces mutilated, crippled and dead dogs.
These arguments fail to address the basic ethical question and are kind of circular — hunting is OK because society says it is and here are some other tangential reasons that have little to do with anything. (Lean, nutritious meat? We’re hunting to put food on the table? Please.)
And then there is this column in the Wisconsin State Journal, which makes the case that hunting is a fine and honorable sport because it is a fine and honorable sport and that fine and honorable people have always engaged in it. Bret Fahvre, for instance, the upstanding quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, is an avid hunter.
Deer hunters should feel proud that Favre shares their passion and discusses it publicly. Although few Americans have strong feelings on deer hunting, they’re likely intrigued that someone with Favre’s heart, sincerity and love of family is also a dedicated hunter. Besides, only those on society’s fringe criticize him for hunting.
If Vick and his pals were dedicated hunters, we’d have reason to fret.
Why?
This brings up a tertiary issue in all of this mess. The impact of race and class on the discussion. The hunters mentioned by Pat Durkin in his Journal piece all happen to be white; Vick, of course, is black. I mention this not to diminish what Vick has done — throw the book at him, I say, but to point out the racism lurking in the debate.
This element is explored with interesting results by Tobias Peterson on PopMatters. Peterson compares dogfighting to Balinese cockfighting, relying on the noted essay “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” by anthropologist Clifford Geertz. Might dog fighting — like cockfighting — be an expression of strength and empowerment among the powerless classes? Is there a cultural divide — split along the axes of race and class — that determine how we react to the Vick story and how we react to the sport of hunting?
Again, I raise these issues not to condemn the hunter — and certainly not to apologize for Vick’s egregious and disgusting behavior (what was Stephon Marbury thinking?) –but because I am having trouble understanding what I perceive as an ethical disconnect. The answer seems to be that society says it’s OK to hunt, provided it’s regulated, so hunting is OK. That’s a bit too circular for me.
Someone, please enlighten me.
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Hank Kalet 