The thing with Vick is he wasn’t just “involved” with dogfighting. As noted, the general cultural objection to that is just that: cultural. When viewed through the lend of his background, it’s easy to see why he may not have the “proper” civilized revulsion to the act that many people do.
However, what he did went beyond that: he was involved in the hanging, drowning, and electrocution of dogs. Needing to put an animal down is one thing – I’ve been a pet owner all my life, and have had to do that more times than I would have liked. But it’s to be done humanely. If nothing else, and you don’t want to do the full-on injection routine with a dog that’s “just” bred for fighting, at least put a bullet through the thing’s skull so it’s over quickly.
The comparison to eating meat is completely spurious. Even those of us who don’t eat only organic, free-range, yadda yadda masturbate yadda meat don’t directly participate in the torture of the animals we eat. Yes, there may be an argument that we are “morally” culpable for their behavior, but for the most part we don’t actively consider, cause, and take part in the torture of our food; we go to the supermarket, buy a shrink-wrapped pack of chicken breats, and throw them on the grill. We don’t say “ah yes, take this chicken, keep it in brutally cramped conditions, living in a wire cage covered in filth and shit so it gets foot infections and lung infections and dies an unhappy, miserable beast just so I can eat it” before we take our food home.
What Vick has done is fundamentally that. And that is what’s fucked up, and what pisses a lot of people off.
Has he earned grace for what he’s done after his crime? Of course. By all measures, he’s served his time, he’s made restitutions, he’s actively trying to distance himself (at least publicly) from what he did and denounce it for what it was. I do not begrudge him an attempt at a career comeback, and I’m willing to “forgive” him, to an extent, for what he did.
But because of the latter – going far beyond just being “involved” in dogfighting – and the mental damage that I feel must go with being able to accept the painful, unnecessary death of an animal for whose wellbeing you are responsible, I think he is an absolutely intolerable douchebag, I worry about what he might do in the future, and I enjoy it every time I see him get crushed on a football field. (Which is nothing similar to condoning the torture of animals, before anyone gets started – for starters, he’s willingly subjecting himself to the hazards of his career.)
If over time he manages to demonstrate a changed mental condition, and appears to not be inflicted with the sort of sociopathy that enjoys hurting animals, my opinion will be altered.
