Our favorite neighbor in our three years here in the palatial Ballston Park apartments was a young lawyer named Sam. We used to sit out on our shared back porch on summer evenings doing what most twentysomethings after work - drinking beer and complaining about our jobs.Sam worked in labor law and often expressed amazement at how many rights potential clients thought protected their jobs. They often wanted to sue because they were forced out due to mean, inflexible bosses. But they got no satisfaction from Sam, who told them that short of discrimination or sexual harassment, most workers are employees at will who can be fired for virtually any reason. (A coworker at The McLaughlin Group was once fired for no reason - "Personal prerogative" barked Dr. McLaughlin, as he insisted on being called.)
I've thought of Sam often in the past few weeks as I've heard a steady stream of talking heads espouse Michael Vick's alleged rights - the right to right to work, the right to earn a living, and even the right to the benefit of the doubt.
Why all of the above either do not exist or were forfeited by Vick himself - and why they won't matter soon enough, anyway - after the jump.
Let's make a couple of things clear before we delve into details. First, I'm not a lawyer and could certainly be wrong on some of the finer points - if I am, I hope you correct me in the comments below. And second, as our lawyers often reminded us in counseling journalists to give things like libel and slander a wide berth, just because you haven't actually broken the law doesn't mean you haven't left yourself vulnerable to having to defend yourself in a costly lawsuit.
THE RIGHT TO THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
Especially when it comes to the transgressions of athletes, commentators often confuse our legal system's presumption of innocence with some sort of general right to be given the benefit of the doubt. Exhibit A - Barry Bonds. You'll often hear his apologists defend him by exclaiming, "The man hasn't been convicted of anything!"
Well allow me to retort: So what?
Not having been convicted of anything doesn't equal innocence. And even if Bonds is legally cleared someday, when it comes to public figures, protections against false allegations made in public are surprisingly thin. The plaintiff often has to go beyond simple negligence to prove actual malice - that you weren't just careless but made an accusation you knew to be false. Most successful cases involving public figures surround celebrities who can prove tabloids deliberately made up stories out of whole cloth or explicitly violated their privacy rights. Considering Barry Bonds' feet have grown from size 11 to size 13 and his head has grown two full hat sizes, can anyone definitively say they know he didn't wolf down human growth hormone like Rosie O'Donnell demolishing a pint of Ben & Jerry's?
In the court of public opinion, Barry Bonds has no legal protection against me thinking he juiced and Michael Vick has no legal protection against me believing he's an animal abuser.
THE RIGHT TO WORK
I've often heard people say the NFL and Falcons can't touch Vick until his case plays out. Fortunately for both, Vick gave them an easy way out of this one, lying to both Commissioner Roger Goodell and Falcons owner Arthur Blank about his involvement in dog fighting.
Again, even if Vick had been found innocent, who's to say an NFL team would want to employ him as the face of their franchise? In an age when the NFL draws most of its revenue from TV contracts, image is more important than ever. And there's no law that says all able-bodied quarterbacks must be allowed to line up under center every fall Sunday.
The "right to work" has a close cousin ?
THE RIGHT TO EARN A LIVING
Friday afternoon I heard ESPN Radio's Colin Cowherd asking whether groups like PETA would stop protesting Vick after he's released from prison. "Will they try to deny him his right to earn a living?"
Spoken like a man who's never been unemployed. I wish I'd heard of this little-known right in the summer of '06 when I went weeks without a paycheck following my aforementioned short stint with jolly Johnny McLaughlin. When CNN told me they'd picked someone else for a producing slot, I'd have shouted, "What about my right to earn a living?!"
Just because you've been through the criminal justice system doesn't mean people have to like you or want to see you on their TV screens. Our legal system considers OJ to be an innocent man, but I don't hear Cowherd urging Hertz to resume featuring him in its commercials.
Unfortunately for Vick, all of the above is just so much talk radio fodder. Once he's out of prison, he'll be in his late 20s, a time in an athletic career when pure speed begins to ebb (unless your name is Darrell Green). Vick will have to rely more and more on his pocket passing, work ethic, and preparation - attributes he's so far been unable or unwilling to improve.
So what do you do with a running quarterback dragging has-been legs and a never-was arm? If he was a dog in Bad Newz Kennels, he'd be executed in the most brutal, inhumane way possible. Much as he deserves it, Vick will avoid that fate.
But how does the Arena League sound?
By coping a plea Vick is admitting to specific violations of the law. Any reasonable doubt that may have existed before no longer exists in terms of whether or not he committed certain crimes. He did. He's admitted as much now publicly.
Most of the apologists at this point in time are people who believe that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with torturing animals. There is a difference here.
In reference to these apologists, I think it's fair to say that they are a little crazy.
People like Vick who torture animals and apparently get pleasure out of torturing animals are basically a few steps away from being sociopaths. A lot of sociopaths actually got their start this way (Jeffrey Dahmer one infamous example). Vick definitely needs some professional help.
It's absolutely essential here though to draw a bright bold line between defending Vick's right to a fair hearing, and defending Vick's "right" to torture animals for his own sadistic pleasure.
The first case--the presumption of innocence--is not just a feature of our judicial system -- it is a feature of REASON. e.g. A person does not form a judgment until each side is afforded the opportunity to air out its case in a neutral forum.
TV and the radio are not neutral forums.
As far as celebrities are concerned, if the news is false, tough luck. From that public figures perspective it is not enough that their reputations are sullied on the basis of lies. Those lies must be communicated on the basis of actual malice (e.g. a willful misrepresentation). This is a high bar to meet in defamations suits. It's one of the reasons that entertainment outlets like the Fox News Channel are still in business. As long as they are defaming public figures they're treading in fairly safe waters.
In reference to the "Right to a Benefit of the Doubt" -- there is no "Right" per se. But a citizen who does not practice this attitude regularly is likely to be more prone to narrow minded prejudice. They are likely to have a mind that is close to evidence. As I understand it, having an open mind, means reserving judgment, and living with uncertainty. It means being able to live with doubt.
The Vick case in my view was a good opportunity to practice those skills. It's especially hard to look at the facts dispassionately when emotional issues are involved. Still we're better, more responsible citizens, when we can withhold judgment from people like Vick until after the facts have been vetted in the proper forum. We may still have our suppositions before-hand, but it's important to recognize them as just suppositions.
Earlier this week those suppositions became certainties. Much of the uncertainty is no longer present.
As if George Allen and Jim Gilmore weren't shame enough, now we got Micheal Vick. Who ironically did his business in the "real world of Virginia",Newport News I think,where George Allen spoke so fondly about about a year ago. No intended theme, just creepy coincidence.
Portis, Marbury, and the head of the Georgia NAACP are Black people who are trying to tell you folks that we are talking about dogs, not people.
Some of you love your pet animals so much that you can rationalize all kinds of intimate behaviors and interactions with them, which, if performed in other cultures in the world, would be obscene and unacceptable. Spend a little time examining these other cultures, and perhaps American pet owners can see their relationships with their animals in a different perspective.
Caleb Wheeldon, a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said he's hopeful Vick will get the maximum sentence allowed. "This isn't really about Michael Vick, this is about dog fighting in general," Wheeldon said. "It's barbaric, it's cruel and ultimately it's against the law."
Source: Washington Post
If there is anything good about the Michael Vick story, it is that there is an emerging increased awareness about animal cruelty and animal fighting. However...I think it is a sad commentary that we, as a culture, are using the Vick story to compare "What's worse?" "What's worse", we ask, "carelessly fathering illegitimate children, or dogfighting?". "Dogfighting or gambling?" "Dogfighting or rape?" "Dogfighting or racism?" "Dogfighting or hateful nationalism?" "Dogfighting or (fill in the blank)....?" The comparisons to dogfighting have been endless.
Dogfighting is one more piece of evidence our country is in need of a spiritual transformation (please note I said spiritual and not necessarily religious). Animals are sentient beings - they feel pain, and they suffer, just like we do. They are not more important, or less important than human beings, but like human beings, they are important, too.
Every major faith teaches its followers to be responsible stewards of animals and the Earth. Please help us get the word out that caring for animals, just like caring for people, is an important part of just being a decent person and citizen. If we make this a priority, there will be no more dogfighting horror stories, and no more pointless comparisons of evils. Let us all rise, together, to be better people than we are today, shall we?
Chaplain Nancy Cronk
Founder, www.AnimalChaplains.com