The San Francisco Chronicle published an article complaining that America seems to be more intersted in animal rights than the rights of African Americans, in light of the recent 23 month prison sentence for Michael Vick.

Here's an interesting quote from the article...

In American culture, ethnic groups external to African Americans appear to have become more upset over dog fighting than African Americans are. If we were to look at animal welfare rights versus the rights of African Americans, one might conclude the welfare of animals gets more attention in some circles than the welfare of black people in this country. There are more groups fighting for the rights of animals than for the rights of African Americans.

Here are my observations on this.

Animal rights is not a big issue in the United States; only a teeny-tiny percentage of Americans really give a damn. Across the country, people don't really care. Dog fighting rings get busted all the time, and they may only get a few sentences of mention buried in the back of the local fish wrap.

In this case, Michael Vick was a football star, and he was indeed one of the big stars of the NFL, not just a rank-and-file player. That's why his crimes were given so much attention. Had he been any other black guy, or guy in general, his dog fighting operation might not have even been mentioned.

You don't hear Barack Obama putting chicken rights on his POTUS platform, and you don't see Hillary shaking her fist over the problem of dog fighting in America. If animal rights were more important than human rights, it would stand to reason that Presidential hopefuls would crawl over each other to get PETA's endorsement. But they don't.

So the person writing the article in the San Francisco Chronicle seems to have the same "selective vision" as the animal rights activists have, choosing to view the world's problems through their own set of eyes, instead of looking at the big picture.

The media coverage on Michael Vick was never about the dogs. It was about a celebrity that got busted by the cops. It was about tabloid journalism.

Dog bloggers tried to capitalize and bring attention to the problem of dog fighting, but they accomplished no more than just preaching to the flock. This was a tabloid matter from the beginning, and our nation saw it as that.

Labels: Animal Rights, Michael Vick