Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

["Juliette Grimmett" <>]

Subject: ACTION: Tell the Tribune they did a great job

From
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/columnists/cs-070821morrissey,1,1399573.column?coll=chi_sports_util&ctrack=3&cset=true


The greater outrage
We are more aghast at Michael
Vick's crimes against animals than athletes' crimes against women. And
that is criminal.
Rick Morrissey | In the wake of the news
 Chicago Tribune Article August 22, 2007

 I like my dog, a basset hound, a lot. He's probably 10 pounds
overweight, sleeps most of the time, barks at the mail carrier, waters
fire hydrants and, given the chance, buries things for safekeeping. He's
a big lump of a cliché.

So when I read and heard about some of the dogfighting atrocities
Michael Vick is associated with, it turned my stomach.

But the convulsive reaction to the Vick case has made it obvious we've
lost our sense of proportion.
Dogs are defenseless, and we humans are quick to protect the
defenseless. It is one of our better qualities.

But a woman in the hands of a 230-pound elite athlete is more or less
defenseless, too, and I can't remember any case of domestic abuse,
sexual assault or murder involving an NFL player that sparked this kind
of public outrage.

The O.J. Simpson saga? Perhaps.

But what's interesting is the different public response to the two
crimes. At the time of the Simpson trial, most people were more
concerned with his innocence or guilt than they were with the butchered
bodies of the two people who were stabbed to death.

This case is different.

It's hard to get rid of the image of dogs being drowned or electrocuted
or beaten to death. Whether Vick was personally involved in those
activities or not doesn't really matter. He is going to plead guilty to
charges involving a dogfighting operation apparently run out of one of
his properties. Whether his hands were actually around a dog's neck is
beside the point. His fingerprints are all over this case.

But if an NFL player beats the hell out of his wife or girlfriend these
days, it's greeted with a practiced shrug. It happens so often, we're
almost numb to it.

Media coverage has played a huge role in the Vick case. Take one of the
NFL's most prominent players and show visceral file footage of pit bulls
chewing each other to pieces. What do you have? Something that stabs
people right in their hearts.

The networks didn't run file tape of a gun being fired into a woman
after Carolina wide receiver Rae Carruth conspired to murder his
pregnant girlfriend. Nonetheless, a jury found him guilty in 2001, and
he's serving a 19- to 23-year prison term. If there was public
indignation to rival the Vick dog charges, I missed it.

In February, Tennessee cornerback Pacman Jones was involved in an
incident at a Las Vegas strip club that led to the shooting of three
people, including a guard who is now paralyzed from the waist down. Do
our feelings of outrage and sympathy extend to the people who absorbed
those bullets? I don't think so. Certainly not the way they do to the
slain dogs. We're too busy being aghast at Jones' behavior and, more
broadly, at the behavior of the legion of unruly NFL players.

As sure as a football field is 100 yards long, Jones will play again.
The league has suspended him for a year because of the Vegas incident
and a string of additional problems with the law. Yet we hear rumblings
that Vick's career might be over. His crime is so heinous, we're told,
that he might have forfeited his right to play in the NFL again.

In the mid-1990s, Nebraska star Lawrence Phillips pleaded no contest to
trespassing and assault after allegedly beating his girlfriend, who said
he dragged her by her hair down three flights of stairs. It was the
beginning of a long stretch of criminal trouble involving Phillips. This
did not stop the Rams from making him a first-round draft pick, nor did
it stop the Dolphins and the 49ers from giving him chance after chance
to carry the football again.

Abuse your dog, and people howl. Smack around your girlfriend or face
charges of sexually assaulting a woman and people shake their heads and
roll their eyes. And they'll eventually cheer you again. If you don't
believe that, pay attention the next time Kobe Bryant rolls through
town.

The public reaction to Bryant's troubles-he reached a settlement with a
woman he was charged with sexually assaulting-wasn't nearly as loud and
angry as the reaction to Vick.

This case has legs, four of them, and we're finding out it makes a huge
difference in the court of public opinion.

No doubt Vick needs to spend some time behind bars, and no doubt he
shouldn't play football for a while. He's the face of what's wrong with
the NFL. What he did was vile.

Let's be clear: It's not that the response to Vick's alleged crimes is
overboard; it's that the response to athletes' crimes against women is
underwhelming. We might want to ask ourselves why that is.

A little perspective, please-especially the next time a player attacks
a woman. Another incident should be happening any day now.


 




"It's so liberating and important for men to understand that they can
actually be friendly to women instead of playing some gender-specific
role, and that women are in most ways the same as they are. I think that
lots of women already know that, but not so many guys do."  -my dad
8/3/07
 
Juliette Grimmett, MPH
Rape Prevention Education Coordinator
NC State University
Women's Center
3120 Talley Student Center
Campus BOX 7306
Raleigh, NC 27695-7306
Office: (919) 513-3232
24 Hour Sexual Violence Hotline: (919)618-RAPE (7273)
Fax: (919) 515-1066
email: 

website: http://www.ncsu.edu/womens_center