Pass/Fail Test

This is so sad:

Dogs From Vick’s Kennel Have to Pass a Behavior Test

The fates of the dogs seized from a property owned by Michael Vick hinge on the recommendations from certified animal behaviorists.

Prosecutors have asked the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to evaluate the 53 pit bulls taken from Vick’s kennel. …

Ed Sayres, the president of the A.S.P.C.A., said that because the case was so high profile, the government had taken extra care to keep the dogs alive and save those that were safe enough to return to society.

“There is a low percentage of rehabilitation, but the potential is there,” Sayres said in a telephone interview. “I’d estimate that about 10 to 20 percent can be rehabilitated.” …

Pass, live.

Fail, die.

Forget the Wonderlic. There should be a behavior test for pro athletes.

Michael Vick channels Martin Luther King, Jr.? You Cannot Be Serious!

Hawaii wrote in Culture Club:

And one more topic switch. I miss DP. Just saying.

We hear you loud and clear.

We miss him, too. We also miss The Usual Suspects: Reills, The Dalai Lama, The Greatest Three-Point Shooter in NBA History, KO ….

And Michael Wilbon, too.

Wilbon had another great column yesterday on the Michael Vick case, A Long Way to Go. I guess I’m about as sick of the case as the next normal (i.e., not rabidly pro-Vick nor radical animal liberationist) person, but some really good writing has been generated by it.

It was disturbing to read in Wilbon’s column about how some of the pro-Vick people decided to show their support:

… the people singing Negro spirituals and “We Shall Overcome” outside the courthouse yesterday …

That’s almost sick.

That is sick.

I grew up watching news footage of black people peacefully marching for the rights that white Americans took for granted and being attacked by police. My family got both Life and Look, and these magazine published pictures of police setting their dogs loose to attack blacks, of firehoses being turned on peaceful protesters. I’ve put on a lot of years since those days, but my admiration and respect for African Americans was shaped to a great extent by the things I saw and read and heard during my childhood. To serenade Michael Vick with “We Shall Overcome” is downright insulting to the people who worked and died during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

It’s sad that some people are judging Vick not on his character but by the color of his skin. Black = Innocent does not compute.

Equating Vick’s dogfighting saga with that of the Civil Rights movement means that the Campaign to Save Michael’s Image has begun. Expect him to do the “Please Forgive Me, I’m Actually a Nice Guy” confessional on Oprah. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon ….

(NB: Text and video of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, from American Rhetoric. This should be required reading and viewing, at least once a year.)