I wrote this back when the whole Vick thing was going down for a local Spartanburg Magazine called The Root. 

A few years ago there was a famous commercial in which an assortment of people, young and old, black and white, etc, looked into the camera and declared, “I am Tiger Woods.” The point of that commercial, aside from selling more Nike products, was to assert that all of us could revel in the personal and professional excellence that Tiger Woods represented as he played his sport. It was life affirming and reminded us of our inner ability to strike out toward our own greatness.

In 2007, I believe there is a need for a new commercial along similar lines but with the opposite purpose. I believe we need a commercial in which various individuals, young and old, black and white, etc, look into the camera and declare, “I am Michael Vick.”

We all know Vick’s story by now and I assure you this is not another in a long line of articles redundantly repeating the obvious fact that Vick’s role in dog fighting was abhorrent. Instead, this article focuses on a sort of meta-issue surrounding the Vick saga, which is: what does our reaction to Vick’s inhumane behavior say about us as a society?

When news of Vick’s involvement in dog fighting first came out it was immediately met with universal condemnation. From news anchors and pundits on down to folks gathered around the water cooler, there was unanimous agreement that Vick was decidedly in the wrong. Even those that attempted to defend Vick didn’t attempt to defend dog fighting itself. Rather, they simply tried to rationalize Vick’s deeds by saying that they were a product of his culture as an African American man growing up in poor circumstances. So everyone, from his harshest critics to those sympathizing with his plight, agreed that the actions in and of themselves were absolutely, unequivocally wrong.

What is striking about this reaction is that such universal agreement on anything is exceedingly rare. America has always been about individual freedom, which allows for diversity and therein makes a universal opinion concerning just about anything difficult to arrange. I would argue that this is typically a good thing. After all, the framers of the Constitution wanted to legally enshrine the individual freedoms that allow for, and even foster, diversity so as to prevent a tyranny of the majority. And America’s desire for a heterogeneous society with a free and open marketplace of ideas, I believe, is the keystone for the success our country has reaped. However, certain situations arise in which dissent from the majority opinion is nonexistent. Usually these situations present themselves in times of crisis. During World War II for example there was widespread solidarity in regards to the ‘goodness’ of America’s aims and actions. More recently, on 9/11 and the following days there was widespread agreement that the attackers were morally bankrupt, even evil, entities unfit for the moniker ‘human beings’. Of course those instances of solidarity were not only justified, but productive and beneficial. They strengthened the resolve of a nation under pressure from outside threats. Typically only moments as monumental as those two are enough to herd the collective moral conscience of a diverse country into a singular opinion, which is why the Vick case is so strange since it is clearly no where near as monumental as those events. So why then does this bring about the same lack of dissent? What sort of crisis are we undergoing that we need to come together as a people to repudiate, with heightened vigor, an NFL quarterback?

From the onset it was clear that this news item would dominate the headlines of cable news, local news, national news, and sports news. And no matter how many people from various networks and from various journalistic backgrounds weighed in, their verdict was always the same. But it wasn’t just the unanimous opinion concerning Vick that was exceptional; it was the fervor with which people voiced their disapproval. When leveling their criticisms about Vick, people did so with gusto that lends itself only to those who speak with an unquestioned certainty of their viewpoint. Since there was no one defending Vick’s actions, one could rant and rave against those acts to a cartoonish degree and remain undaunted by even the mere possibility that the argument they were spouting might be proven incorrect or over the top. With universal opinion fully entrenched, no disparaging remark was too far, no amount of outrage unwarranted, and no amount of media coverage and punditry about the issue was excessive.

So why did Vick receive such rigorous and universal judgment? The answer is simple, literally. I believe that the reason Vick’s actions drew such immense media coverage, such enormous public outcry, such widespread and universal condemnation was because the case was so utterly simple. It was clear, it was unchallenging, it was easy, and it broke down into a black and white morality. And in a world that is increasingly complex and integrated and confusing, people crave simplicity. To me, that is our crisis as a society, as a country. We feel that things have gone so far, become so global, and fostered such a leviathan of government, economic, and social institutions that things not directly inside our individual autonomous realm of existence are simply out of our control and thereby not of our concern. So in this world where, to quote Yeats, “the falconer can no longer hear the falcon”, we are anxious to latch onto any subject that presents a clear sense of right and wrong. Dog fighting lends itself to the black and white mentality for which we nostalgically long. Vick’s case was simple and that simplicity allowed for a sort of escapism from the far more complex world around us.

In many ways, the history of philosophy is a stream of writers proving through reasoned argument that our moral duties as human beings are vast, far-reaching, not always easily discernable, and, quite frankly, physically and mentally taxing. Our crisis is that we have adopted an aversion to anything difficult or challenging as a response to the realization that the world is increasingly complicated. Therefore, the unanimity and fervor pertaining to Vick’s actions were the result of us reaching out for some semblance of moral certainty without having to do the legwork of sorting out our own moral duties in a complex world.

I recognize that this is quite an assertion, but I think the evidence to support this claim lies in the hypocrisy that is rife in our supposedly easy and irrefutable denouncement of Vick. He drew public ire because he abused animals. Yet, if one looks closely at the way animals are treated on factory farms, then the treatment Vick doled out appears to be somewhat dulled. Large factory farms that are responsible for putting the meat on our dinner plates do not remotely resemble the Steinbeck like images of a farm that we may have. On these large factory farms, animals are kept in pens or cages that severely restrict their freedom of movement. Of course with veal, baby cows will actually have their extremities bound to prevent any movement at all. Chickens are sealed in cages only slightly larger than their bodies and transported across the country. Moreover, these animals are often put on restricted diets, leaving them perpetually hungry. In instance after instance leading up to their deaths, usually performed by slitting the animal’s throat, animals raised for food are treated with intense cruelty.

However, it isn’t as if these factory farms are treating animals with such irreverence for pleasure. Rather, this deplorable treatment is simply the result of cost cutting measures. Better treatment for these animals would increase the cost of productions, thereby increasing the cost of the finished product. And that’s where we come in. We could fight to change the treatment of animals, but we don’t because such a change would hit us in the wallet. As a society we seem to have weighed the options of treating animals cruelly or paying more for meat, and decided to put up with the cruelty. We’ve forfeited morality in order to save a few bucks.

And this is not so unlike what Vick did. Presumably, dog fighting gave Vick some sort of pleasure. He enjoyed it, and enjoyed it enough so that the cruelty inflicted upon the animals in his care was outweighed by his own pleasure. Meanwhile, the same society that enthusiastically railed against Vick remained complicit accomplices in the horrible treatment doled out to animals on factory farms because the alternative would be higher meat prices. Like Vick, the pleasure we derive out of not having to pay more for a meat product is deemed higher than the harm inflicted on those animals.

Given our hypocrisy on the issue of Vick’s cruelty toward animals, clearly something much deeper than just our concern for animal rights is going on. It seems to me that my original hypothesis, we jumped to the moral high ground to run down Vick because it was, unlike just about everything else in the world, simple, is the best explanation for our public reaction to his crime. Our collective and universal demonization of Vick and his actions seemed to validate our own morality and sanctity. The idea that the guilt of one somehow means the innocence of the rest. The idea that that one moment of moral clarity can justify our refusal to see the opaque moral universe for what it is.

Of course, I say all this as someone who derided Vick, who eats plenty of meat despite all the things I know about how it gets onto my plate, and, most importantly, as someone who could do the extra work to find meat products from local and small farms that allow for free-range grazing but doesn’t. And so even though I might be the one pointing out our societal hypocrisy concerning the Vick case and explaining it by pointing to a society wide aversion to moral difficulty, I’m forced to admit: I am Michael Vick.