Reply #76: At best, it was clumsy

[PurityOfEssence]

Vick is not to be praised as a human being. The idea of training dogs to rip each other to shreds for the sport and betting profit of the audience is truly sick. Obama should know better, and considering how serially cautious he is, its surprising he made this stumble.

It plays into all sorts of sore spots for all kinds of people, and what you're observing here is not surprising. Animal rights activists exist on this board in abundance. Those who are disgusted at the double standard enjoyed by the rich and famous are pretty disgusted by this, too. Those who are tired of sports being elevated to something transcendent and exempt from rules of comportment are sick of this. Those of us who are by nature bored silly by the mind-numbing fixation on sports are annoyed.

There's also a racial element to it, since he's a prominent black quarterback in a world where that is still a bit of a rarity, so that prompts some of the defense of him that wouldn't otherwise be there.

It's a medium-sized deal, and sadly, many of the flare-ups that really make a dent in things are about things that aren't high crimes. It's a publicity fuck-up, and it could have easily been avoided. It SHOULD have been avoided. What's screwy is that someone so neurotically risk-averse as our President made a misstep like this.

None of your yearnings for the acceptance of ex-cons is served by this: Vick is a rich, famous sports celebrity; he lives by other rules than the mere rabble. To me, I view it through the prism of privilege, which I dislike intensely. Still, there's a price to fame, and it gets charged at unexpected times. Bummer.

Someone as attuned to people's feelings as this man seems to be should have never made such a tone-deaf move, and it's news simply because it's news.

Judging from the subject matter of other dust-ups here, I'm not really viewing this as anything particularly surprising; the reactions seem predictable and appropriate, and the defenses are somewhat understandable, if a bit self-righteous. Both sides are being plenty sanctimonious, and it seems to be sorting out appropriately.

Why the big surprise?