One man's reaction to Vick's apology
>> Monday
Based on initial reactions, it seems like I'm the only one who's calling "bullshit" on Vick's painfully scripted apology.
Watch and judge for yourself, but the fact that he keeps stumbling and correcting his speech screams of a coached apology. Of course, to expect anything else would be ignorant. But there are a lot of ignorant people out there who apparently think Vick was honestly "speaking from the heart" as he stated.
So of course his apology was thought out and scripted in detail. This is not my complaint. My complaint is that the initial media response has been that Vick "took responsibility for his actions." And on that, I'm calling bullshit.
Vick had an opportunity to buy my forgiveness when he directly addressed the kids that look up to him as a role model. Vick said, "What I did was...immature." Immature? Try WRONG; disgusting, inhumane and twisted, to be more specific. As someone who spends every weekend with the exact type of kids that look up to Vick, they needed to hear him say that what he did was wrong, not "immature," which means nothing. Vick later said that dog fighting is "terrible," (a statement that was obviously a "you have to say this" statement) but once again he missed his opportunity to really take responsibility for wrongdoing.
One phrase that was used repeatedly was "bad judgement," which was the closest Vick came to accepting responsibility. But using that phrase, instead of using the dangerous word "wrong," proved only that Vick was sorry he got caught. Nowhere in the speech did I see a man who was sorry, or even a man that believes what he did was wrong.
To top it off, he appealed to religion ("Through all of this I found Jesus and asked him to forgive me"). Yeah, Jesus forgives him! So why are they still trying to put him in jail? Excuse me while I puke. For me, that was the proverbial icing on the cake.
There is a lot more to this case, and this is certainly not a complete summary of my opinions. But as far as the apology goes, I'm just stunned that no one is pointing out all the things that were horribly wrong with it. So I figured, what the hell, I'll do it.
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3 comments:
I'm right with you Nate. At no time did I feel that Vick took responsibility for his actions. Token or not, he should at least attempt to reach out to anti animal cruelty to attempt to start to rectify the horrible things he perpetrated on dogs. Of course, ESPN bought it hook, line, and sinker, but sadly that is far from unexpected.
ESPN now has an "apology expert" on who is basically saying the same thing I said.
I just find it hilarious that there is such thing as an apology expert.
In a YCS first, I don't think I could have agreed with Nate more.
As often as ESPN misfires, one of the most telling analyses (sp?) I saw yesterday was someone (I forget who) saying, "We need to see another face, some sort of expression of personal shame or remorse, because every time you see Michael Vick on TV, all you see is total defiance. That sort of 'Yea, I'm here, but only because you got me.' attitude."
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