The consensus this past week was that Vick did well with his public apology following his guilty plea in federal court to dog-fighting charges. He looked straight into the TV camera, never revealed a flicker of insincerity and apologized to all the right people-leading with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and eventually getting around to those “young kids” whom he had failed as a role model.
It was impossible to tell if the apology was heartfelt or if he had simply memorized a script. It is not unlikely that both are true. Obviously Vick can still afford the best public relations/crisis management advisers and would be foolish not to avail himself of their counsel. That doesn’t negate the possibility that he believes every word he says. And even if he doesn’t, he will have plenty of time to think about it, as he himself suggested, and for those regrets over his own rapid and precipitous fall from grace to evolve into something heartfelt. (If I can nitpick, I would suggest Vick drop that irritating habit athletes have of referring to themselves in the remote third person. The “I” is so much more convincing. Next time he is tempted to talk about “how to make Michael Vick a better person,” he should try “how I can become a better person.”)
Goodell too will have a long time to think about sins and the possibilities of redemption. Personally, I found Vick’s crimes horrifying-cold, calculating, soulless acts of cruelty. Yet that doesn’t convince me that he shouldn’t have another chance to earn a living in the NFL. We’re talking about the NFL here, not sainthood, though our society too often confuses the two. A year, possibly longer, in prison, another season’s suspension, the loss of all endorsements, the public humiliation; these seem sufficient punishment. It would be piling on to use the “gambling” connection in these crimes to justify anything more severe. And I find it slightly ridiculous that some sense exists that lying to the NFL commissioner compounded the crimes. Vick was entitled to all his legal rights, including a vigorous defense. There is no way he could proclaim his innocence and contest the charges while confiding to Goodell, “Just between you and me.”
After Vick does his time, even a ’60s throwback like me is willing to let the free market run its course. If an owner wants to risk hiring the tarnished star, who will be only 30 years old in 2010, and the fans want to cheer his return, I can live with that. He may serve the public far better as a chastened and repentant figure in the limelight than as some pariah banished to the sidelines. He would be a welcome reminder that even the biggest superstars can-every once in a blue moon-be held accountable for their actions.
Finally, though it probably never crossed his mind, Vick did all of us a huge favor by pleading out. I’m not talking about the specter of a long, gruesome trial. I am talking about the giant racial divide in this country, of which the Vick case threatened to become the latest chapter. If you watched Vick emerge from the courthouse, you couldn’t miss the crowd, largely African-American, cheering his way. If you watched the Atlanta Falcons this week on Monday Night Football, you couldn’t miss the large contingent of fans, mostly African-American, still wearing Vick’s number 7 jersey. Some of that support is just mindless hero-worship. But some of it is a reflection of something far more serious and alarming, something that Vick’s plea didn’t really change (though it may have made it moot in this matter). It doesn’t appear to be concerned with Vick’s guilt or innocence. Rather it is concerned with what black Americans view as an unequal system of justice, in which it is the black man up high who takes the big fall.
After my last Vick column, following the announcement of the plea deal, a correspondent wrote me: “The Justice System has never played fair with men of color. I don’t think Michael Vick has been given the benefit of proving his innocence. The media crashed down on him as if he is a terrorist! I know what he did is not pleasing ’to the public,’ which basically is not people of color. The Animal Rights Activists care more about animals than they do the starving children right here in inner city America! If they would concentrate their efforts on human rights, we wouldn’t have so many children killing each other and bring guns to schools etc.”
He signed the letter “An African-American Brother ‘D’”. When I wrote back suggesting that Vick was the wrong man around whom to make his case, he responded quickly and dismissively: “It’s a ‘Black Thang.’ I wouldn’t expect you to be understanding.”
While I began with the notion that three years can be an eternity, vivid and difficult memories linger from such racially divisive chapters as Don Imus (last spring), Katrina (two years ago) and O.J. Simpson (amazingly, almost 13 years now). I don’t exactly know what wounds the Vick trial would have opened. But I suspect they would have been more painful, plentiful and varied than we might originally have suspected. Right now I am mostly just thankful that we were spared all that.
