A Dent in Keith’s Wallet?

Rare Honus Wagner 1909 baseball card sold for record $2.8 million

Kohler said the new owner wishes to remain a private collector for now, but might identify himself at a later date.

Culture Club, part deux

Whoopi Goldberg has apparently joined the Michael Vick Culture Club, giving him a pass on dogfighting:

Whoopi replied, “but this is a kid, kid to me . . . this is part of his cultural upbringing.”

Vick wants to redeem himself, but it might be difficult given the parade of people who conitnue to make excuses for him. These enablers are too invested in the cult of celebrity (they are Atlanta Falcon fans) and/or the cult of race (Vick is in trouble only because he is black) and/or the cult of culture (he’s just a good ol’ southern boy) to understand that what he did was wrong. He’s going to have a hard time straightening himself out unless he stays away from these kinds of people.

Barb wrote in Pass/Fail Test:

Sad, yes. The article says that Vick agreed to pay for the long term care or euthanasia of the dogs. Why not make him pay for their care for the rest of their lives?

“Life in prison” doesn’t sound as bad as “death sentence,” but the dogs were never properly socialized, as evidenced in this article, Menacing Dogs From Vick Case Await Their Fate:

• “You don’t take two out at the same time,” said Kevin M. Kilgore, the chief animal control officer for Hanover County. “They would just start going at each other.”…
• “One of them may make a nice pet for someone that is an expert in pit bulls and knows exactly what they were doing with it,” …
• Most of these dogs charge the front of their cages and gnaw at the metal that surrounds them when they see or smell another dog. …
• [On Friday, John Goodwin, the deputy manager of the Animal Cruelty Campaign for the Humane Society of the United States, said that fighting dogs were bred to have boundless energy. When they are placed in confinement, he said, their condition rapidly deteriorates.

  [“They can’t burn off their excess energy in their pens, and they start to demonstrate neurotic behavior and oftentimes tear their kennel run to pieces,” Goodwin said. “They tear the fencing and destroy any blankets or toys they are given.

  “This is why we favor quick judgments about what will happen with seized fighting dogs.”]

It’s not much of a life, but it’s better than dying in a dogfight.

And at least they are getting some decent care in the short time that most if not all of them have left:

“They have put on a lot of weight since they got here, and that is good,” Kilgore said. “It may be diet. Some have gained 7 pounds, some 10. We may feed them more. We have probably catered a little more to them because of where they have been and what they have been through.”

It would be the greatest of ironies for Michael Vick to be reborn as a pitbull.