Michael Vick, Tucker Carlson: Analyst Out of Line Calling for Vick's Execution
Carlson also took a jab at President Barack Obama. Carlson finds it hard to believe that President Obama would endorse Vick’s second chance based on his past.
Carlson issued the following: “I’m Christian. I’ve made mistakes. I believe fervently in second chances. Michael Vick killed dogs in a heartless and cruel way. I think, firstly, he should have been executed for that. The idea the president of the United States would be getting behind someone who murdered dogs is beyond the pale.”
The sad thing about Carlson’s comments is there are some who embrace his line of reasoning.
Regardless, the NFL and the Philadelphia Eagles organization felt Vick deserved a second chance. Now he has it, and he is taking it all the way. But let’s keep it real. Vick is getting a second chance because he is helping his team win games. His MVP-type play this season is putting butts in the seats.
What would the media write if the Eagles were 6-10 and out of the playoffs?
Personally I am over what Vick did in the past. But a segment of white America still cannot embrace a man who shot, electrocuted and drowned dogs getting a second chance.
Vick paid his societal debt. He continues to speak out against dog fighting and is playing great football. Despite the latter, he is still scrutinized by the likes of Carlson for moving on with his life.
What more can Vick do to atone?
While it is next to impossible to apply logic to idiotic statements from the likes of Carlson, I will attempt to provide clarity to illustrate his utter lunacy.
To put Vick’s actions into perspective, it is vital to reflect upon a time in American history where unthinkable crimes were committed humans. Unlike Vick, no one to date has ever been brought to justice for those crimes. Nor has anyone suggested they should be executed.
In many segments of American society, it’s never talked about because the subject is taboo. The most monstrous crime ever committed in American history is allowing the institution of slavery to thrive in a so-called free democratic society.
One might wonder what slavery has to do with sports or Michael Vick. Well, if history is properly examined, it is clear American slavery set the stage for much of what we see today in society and sports.
During the rise of American slavery, human beings in Africa were kidnapped from their homeland, stripped of their culture and language and forced into a life of servitude.
During the early 1600s upon slave ships, Africans weren’t treated as humans because there were considered chattel. The chattel was aboard those ships headed for America for the purposes of providing free labor for their masters.
Slaves were chained together with barely enough room to move an inch. During their voyage slaves were forced to eat their own defecation if they refused to eat food provided on the ship. If they still refused, slaves were beaten, tortured and then thrown overboard into the sea.
Child and infant slaves who refused to eat were beaten to near death. If they were deemed to be disobedient, planks were tied around their little necks, and they were thrown overboard into the sea like the elder slaves.
These were human beings, mind you, not dogs.
Once upon land, slaves were taken to the “breaking grounds” in the Caribbean. Those slaves who survived the voyage were forced into submission by way of torture. Methods employed were extremely heinous.
One specific tactic oppressors utilized was to tie slaves’ limbs (arms and legs) to adjoining trees tightly. If they refused submission, the ropes were cut, thus ripping their limbs from their body. This act was performed in front of their family and other slaves to instill fear.
Another method involved pregnant slaves. They had ropes tied around their ankles and were hung upside down from a tree. With other slaves and the woman’s family present, the slave’s stomach was cut open with a knife. Once the baby fell from the mother’s stomach to the ground, the offspring was stomped to death, and the mother’s fate followed.
Once in America, slaves were forced to tirelessly work from sunup to sundown with no compensation. This arrangement went on for over four centuries.
We are talking about human beings, mind you, not dogs.
Read The American Slave Trade by John R. Spears for more specific accounts on the heinous institution of American slavery.
The debilitating and criminal deeds perpetrated by slave masters were allowed to flourish on the watch of the “Founding Fathers.” Thomas Jefferson was busy authoring the Declaration of Independence, yet simultaneously he had slaves in his backyard and fathered seven children by a slave.
Such heinous and consistent crimes of kidnapping, murder and criminal confinement have never been talked about to any substantial degree in any public forum, the public education system or institutions of higher learning.
It’s bewildering that a segment of this country can be in such an uproar over some animals compared to the millions upon millions of slaves killed and the others that were treated as subhuman for centuries.
A more contemporary example is what’s been happening in Darfur the last eight years. No one talks about the slaughter of approximately 500,000 Africans in the name of genocide. China funds the Sudanese government, which in turn buys weapons that they utilize to kill innocent Africans.
Yet America allowed its athletes to participate in the Olympics in Beijing, China in 2008?
Hypocrisy.
How would Carlson characterize the bitter cruelties human beings endured for which no one has ever been brought to justice, like Vick was for killing dogs?
Does Carlson believe a dog's life has greater value than an African-American life?
It is agreed Vick’s actions were despicable. But if what Vick did in the past is so heinous, how would Carlson characterize what transpired during the rise of American slavery?
Carlson, though ignorant, has the right to express how he feels. But if he believes Vick should be executed for killing some dogs, he should be asked for reaction about America's checkered past.
I believe Carlson’s comments about Michael Vick and the President of the United States were totally out of line. I know there are some who agree with my assessment.
The sad thing is there are those who embrace Carlson’s vantage point as well.
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