When you read Michael Vick’s quotes to GQ Magazine, he isn’t saying anything that is blatantly incorrect. He is spot on in a lot of his comments.
The problem is that once the words get twisted by the media they will attempt make him look bad. Ironically that is what he is trying to point out in the interview.
Here are a few of the quotes via Deadspin.
Vick on how the only people that still seem to care about the dog-fighting are reporters:
“They are writing as if everyone feels that way and has the same opinions they do. But when I go out in public, it’s all positive, so that’s obviously not true.” The media, Vick implies, still act as though he used to sneak into suburban yards, steal golden retrievers, and set them on fire. As if he were a lone actor, a single rampaging menace, a canine serial killer with no context, motivation, or backstory. As if he is the only person in America associated with dogfighting.
…on people not understanding where he comes from:
“Yeah, you got the family dog and the white picket fence, and you just think that’s all there is. Some of us had to grow up in poverty-stricken urban neighborhoods, and we just had to adapt to our environment. I know that it’s wrong. But people act like it’s some crazy thing they never heard of. They don’t know.”
I ask Vick if he feels that white people simply don’t understand that aspect of black culture. “I think that’s accurate,” he says. “I mean, I was just one of the ones who got exposed, and because of the position I was in, where I was in my life, it went mainstream. A lot of people got out of it after my situation, not because I went to prison but because it was sad for them to see me go through something that was so pointless, that could have been avoided.”
Another interesting quote from Vick was that he had to be convinced by Roger Goodell to sign with the Eagles, he wanted to sign with the Bengals or Bills so he could start immediately.
As far as the dog fighting, I have said many times that in impoverish communities dog fighting is ignored by the police, they don’t even care. Vick definitely committed a crime, but it wasn’t like he committed a crime that warranted the venom he has received.
It isn’t that I want to censor Vick, but I think he doesn’t have to continually explain himself. It happened, he did his time and it is time to move on. If people still want to talk about it years later they are just bitter lonely people.
Let them talk. The best way to shut them up is too stay out of trouble and keep performing on the field.
Keep smiling and let them be mad.