MICHAEL VICK & SERIOUS CARNIVOROUS ACTION EVERY SUNDAY
Hey there, sports fans! The above pic shows me
in Peru overawed at the prospect of downing alpaca, lamb (spelled "lamp"
on the menu), and guinea pig.
Here's a question for ya: how many TONS OF ANIMAL MEAT are consumed
every Sunday during football season?
I can't find that exact answer fast enough. (Let
me know if you find it.) But, according to the People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, "More than 25 billion are killed
by the meat industry each year, and they're killed in ways that would horrify
any compassionate person."
At tailgate parties before games, how many murdered, plucked-clean chickens
are slapped over fiery grills after having a can of beer rammed up their
butts?
In some cultures (ie, superwealthy athlete subcultures of the southeastern
states of America), the practice of gambling most people's annual income
on the outcome of a dog fight is common.
In other cultures (ie, rural areas everywhere), the practice of purchasing
rifles and ammo and camo and cruising out into the woods (fathers and sons
often do this in American Minimalist Fiction of 1980s) on seek and destroy
missions, shooting dead all sorts of innocent animals, is common. In Tolstoy,
one of the most vivid, memorable scenes involves hunting pheasants, with
dogs. And there's another great scene involving a fox hunt.
Shooting animals with rifles is OK because these animals are "game,"
not "pets."
In 2006, in Philadelphia -- an urban area in a state so rural that some
call the areas west of the city "Pennsytucky" -- 344 of 406 homicides involved
firearms.
Vick killed dogs and now he's in a city nicknamed "Killadelphia" for
its history of inhumane treatment of humans.
So it seems a little screwed priority-wise to worry so much about a
few dead dogs when HUNDREDS OF HUMAN BEINGS (mostly in Vick's 18 to 35
year old African-American demographic) are murdered each year, right?
It is not a sort of cultural condescension (and hypocritical) to continue
to judge Vick so harshly after he's served 18 months in prison when millions
of football fans PAY GOOD MONEY every Sunday to consume
the wings of gazillions of brutally murder chickens?
Just because these chicken parts are prepared in the undeniably tasty
Buffalo style (don't get me started re: what the American settlers -- most
likely relatives of those who enslaved Vick's forefathers -- did to the
buffalo: "it
is estimated that over 7.5 million buffalo were killed from 1872 to 1874")
doesn't make poultry genocide any more just.
Really good stats over at PETA: "Raising animals for food requires more
than one third of all raw materials and fossil fuels used in the United
States."
Really, it just strikes me as hypocritical BS that millions of Americans
overstuffed with bird and cow and pig (and sometimes ostrich) judge Vick,
a man who did the time for his crime re: a handful of unfortunate pups.
I love dogs, by the way.
Here's a relatively recent picture with the new family pup, Dreyfus
(thus named 'cause he looks sort of like a lion and my parents got him
around the time of the stock market collapse).
In no way do I want to eat him, though I do occasionally jaw his jugular
when we wrestle. I also realize how he immediately became a loved one,
an essential part of the family for the next ten years or so.
Dogs define family eras. And for football-obsessed dudes, so do quarterbacks.
As a lifelong Eagles fan, we look forward to watching a renewed Vick
morph from dog killer to supreme wildcat.
And now, after writing this, I wonder whether I'll eat those chicken
breasts in the fridge. Probably. Meat is murder, but it's so damn good.
Maybe one day I'll morph from an idiot carnivore into a self-righteous,
environmentally enlightened, morally sound vegetarian . . .
