Fresh Loaf

ESPN’s Town Hall meeting on Michael Vick last Tuesday featured an audience that was so pro-Vick, it booed and hissed a representative of the Humane Society. It was riveting television, with panelists divided on how, and whether, race has played a role in Vick’s dogfighting conviction.

“I talked to Michael. I said, ‘Michael, I’m going on this show. What do you want the people to know?’ The first thing he said was, ‘T, if I’m guilty of anything, it’s being loyal to friends and family. I have never picked up a gun and killed anyone or anything in my life. I love animals.’”

— Terance Mathis, former Falcons wide receiver

“When you have an organization like PETA, and you’re like Michael Vick and so visible … you become the big face of what dogfighting is. From that standpoint, he gave them the ammo to load that gun.”

— Chuck Smith, former Falcons defensive end

“I guarantee you … if it was a white player, we would not be having the same discussion that we are now.”

— Selena Roberts of the New York Times

“There was the aftermath of that town-hall meeting, for instance, when a middle-aged man approached me with a pained look. He said he was upset that I kept ‘attacking’ Vick … [and that] ‘People just don’t want to give Michael Vick credit for doing so much for Atlanta.’ For instance? ‘He’s the reason we’ve been on “Monday Night Football,”” said the man, with others in the vicinity nodding after his every word. ‘We never would have been on Thanksgiving Day without Michael Vick. He’s just done so much, and y’all just won’t give the young man credit for that. Y’all just want to keep tearing him down, because he’s Michael Vick.’”

— AJC columnist Terence Moore on his experience as a panelist

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Tags: dogfighting, Fallout, michael-vick, race.