One embarrassing mark of our society is that we boldly attempt to understand the lives of those who live, work and play in higher circles and do far more interesting things. In that way, we create celebrities. The nice things they have and do certainly wouldn't be as nice if we didn't place the values on them. But within our own circles, we seem to know everything we can know about some private elements of certain people's lives, which is why it is most appalling to sports fans when an athlete's "dark side" is exposed.
Some in the opinion sector of the sports media have said that dogfighting is a "cultural thing" when explaining Mike Vick's legal troubles to those who may not understand, and I won't deny that it is. I myself, a black man, see and hear dogfights every day. I even see many dogs I know are ready for a fight at any time. The main point, my main point, is that the issue and it's stigmas and outrages have nothing to do with football, and have ruined a possibly great football career. If sports coverage was limited to what happened between the lines, then most important things could be covered in an hour of our day, leaving us to watch our games without the annoyance of twenty-four hour coverage of things that real fans have already seen. But ESPN empowers fans into a false omniscience. We are given knowledge that is so fragile because it is really never that solid until gameday, just as what we were fed about Mike Vick before his incarceration wasn't solid on the day of his sentencing. Nothing we ever know is really true until we see the truth for ourselves.
Those who attempt to stand on these fragile bytes of information fed to us so that we may sound exactly like the television at our office water cooler feel that they know athletes personally, white or black, so they never truly understand when an athlete egregiously breaks the law or simply lives outside of it. If I've already mentioned that I live amongst dogfighters, then I must also live amongst compulsive gamblers, petty thieves, extortionists, violent criminals and abusers of every type, and so have all of the professional athletes who were raised in an inner city. In addition, they've come to only spend their money with those in their communities who can spend in those same places: druglords, numbers men, preachers, and any men making illegal money in their communities or making legal money off of it. Most of those individuals are making both legal and illegal money at the same time. Some are operating along blurred legal lines. Some shoot other people just to get their points across. Others may say the word and the shooting is done for them.
Mr. ESPN though, who cites "Pardon the Interruption" as a credible source of information thinks that it would be absurd for so-and-so athlete..
to be in that place
(gasp)
with a gun of all things
(gasp)
and what? cocaine?
(gasp)
and he was like, shooting at a crowd of people?
It isnt easy for those trapped in what they think is an endless pool of information on a person (when really the only endless information should be on their play between the lines) to accept that this information meant nothing, and that this person keeps the type of company they'd never keep.
Well for starters, this person is nothing like you. They truly don't care what ESPN says or does. Their own lives are all the truth they need. For some, the company they keep places them in illegal situations daily. Others are the ones placing their company in illegal situations, using the positive information pool that the sports media has created to cloud the minds of fans, causing them to say "no, not him, he'd never be guilty of that," and any trial in the court of public opinion will be held off until more facts surface or the attention span of the American sports fan buries the story entirely. So please think that possibly dogfighting and guns aren't the problem. We have a societal problem, made worse by the fact that the more its put in society's spotlight, the less society understands.
