alasdairm said:
you have no idea of the opinion of bowdenta (or anybody here for that matter) on the subject of bull-fighting so your point falls flat.
My post was not directed at bowdenta.
I may not know how anyone on this site feels about bullfighting, but I do know there isn't a Bullfighting thread with 30 replies calling for all bullfighters to be castrated for engaging in animal cruelty. And while that is purely anecdotal evidence, it can be extrapolated to encompass the larger issue: which is that the public outcry against Vick is totally out of proportion to his crimes.
Much of my previous posts was hyperbolic nonsense, but I do feel the people calling for him to be "dealt with in the style of roman justice" or "shot in the back of the head" are the kind of people who allow themselves to be consumed by reactionary media hype and I despise groupthink. Certainly, dogfighting is brutal, ugly and inhumane... but it is not any more inhumane than bullfighting or the living conditions of chickens who are destined for a KFC bucket. Yet, there is no thread and very few mainstream news articles lambasting these practices. When PETA mounts a campaign to bring attention to them, most people consider it annoying bleeding heart liberal rhetoric.
But Vick is a celebrity, a public figure, and as such he is a lightning rod for negative attention. Of course, the door swings both ways here, but it just irks me when people appear to lose perspective amid a media frenzy and suddenly an issue (in this case the unethical treatment of animals) which had previously received very little attention becomes a hot button issue for 3 weeks and then melts away into oblivion. When this blows over, the issue will be forgotten and everyone who was up in arms today will have a new moral dilemma to fawn over. And just to preempt you Alisdair, I don't know this to be true for every person on this site, but I do know there is an overwhelming amount of data that can support this claim with regard to the general populace.
The main thrust of my original post, therefore, is not supporting what Michael Vick did; it's condemning the public overreaction as I see it.