Adding to my post on the topic from a couple weeks back, a buddy of mine forwarded me this article about Michael Vick the other day that I highly recommend.  It’s written by a co-founder of Best Friends Animal Society, which is a non-profit animal welfare group that has cared for some of the Michael Vick dogs.  In my view, this piece is spot-on in both its assessment of Vick as a person as well as its questioning of the NFL and the Philadelphia Eagles.  Really good stuff.

Vick may have paid his legal debt to society, but how does one begin to assess his heart and mind when he has done little more than say what he had to say to get his job back?

More than anything, this episode demonstrates what little regard our society has for nonhuman life. We compartmentalize violent, antisocial behavior according to the species of the victim.

Vick personally drowned, electrocuted with jumper cables, and body-slammed dogs to death, when he could have paid a veterinarian to put them down with lethal injections. After all, he paid someone to meticulously remove the teeth – roots and all – of Georgia, one of the dogs now at Best Friends, so she could be bred without endangering her male partner.

Would someone who expressed that level of aggression and violence against another person, even without a death involved, ever be considered for immediate readmission to professional sports?

By the way, I donate to Best Friends and you should too.  There’s nothing better than good people doing good work.