As I write this, one of the biggest stories in America is the Michael Vick dogfighting scandal, where a very prominent NFL player has been revealed to, at least in some way, be connected to a brutal dogfighting operation, which involves such unsavory things as electrocution and torture of losing dogs.

Naturally, everyone is in a huge uproar about this. It strikes me that society's stance on animal rights is very hypocritical; people are outraged by the practice of fighting dogs for sport, and yet certainly the average mainstream American has a healthy dose of meat in their diet. Raising dogs for entertainment (admittedly painful entertainment) is deemed shockingly barbaric, and yet raising tens of millions of cows a year for the explicit purpose of killing them is perfectly acceptable, even normal.

Of course, I could continue by detailing the horrible conditions that destined-for-slaughter cows and especially chickens are raised in, but (a) I'll leave that to consumer watchdogs, and (b) that's not really the axe I'm grinding here. I'm not a vegetarian; I don't feel especially bad for the cows and chickens, and I don't feel especially bad for the slaughtered dogs either.

It seems to me that the crucial distinction that results in people's outrage is that the for-slaughter animals are used for some purpose; it's not just mindless killing. But ultimately, we could easily survive without killing nearly so many animals; in that sense, cows just provide us with an upgrade on quality of life, just like Vick's dogs provide him and his confederates with an (entertainment) upgrade. In both cases, the animals lead wretched lives which almost always result in a violent ending; in both cases, we are playing God with their lives.

Obviously, another contributing factor to the intuitive societal reaction is the fact that people keep dogs as pets. If Vick had been involved with a wolf-fighting, or even cock-fighting operation, there would certainly not have been nearly enough outrage. I have many things to say about this, but I'll hold it to a short one and a long one: the short one is that the dogs Vick raised are bred to fight, not bred to be pets; they are to pet dogs as tigers are to cats. It's not like he was kidnapping people's pets and fighting them against each other.

The long version involves something that's always baffled me: the fact that it is completely, utterly standard to neuter one's pets, combined with the fact that many people think of the pet as a member of the family and shed a lot of tears when they die.

I understand the point of castration: (especialy male) animals lead a longer, happier, and healthier life without having so many hormones course through their body. However, this argument applies to humans too: I'm sure that I personally would be happier and healthier, and live longer, if I didn't have the hormones that I do, hormones that result in a lot of stress. But nobody in American society gets castrated; even if someone chose to do it to themselves, it would be considered horrifying, and if someone did it to their children they would be strung up for all to see in the public court.

And yet we do this to pets, claiming to be acting in their best interest. But the same forces apply to humans, and almost nobody chooses to get castrated for their best interest; this seems to quell the argument that pets don't have enough perspective or enough means to make this rational choice for themselves. Does the process make a pet more docile? Yes, and that's really what this is about: people want pets to be just-so, not troublemakers, things they can control, things for their personal happiness. And so we routinely mutilate these supposed members of our family, for our general well-being. But when a famous, black, football player mutilates dogs for entertainment, it's considered an abomination.

That adjective, of course, is charged -- Michael Vick is black, and from the South. This is a mitigating circumstance everyone seems afraid to mention: in black/Southern/rural America, dogfighting is hardly uncommon. This is the culture Vick grew up in; it's certainly a culture we seek to outlaw, and we find distasteful (and my dispassionate tone aside, I am certainly no member or fan of such a group.) But it's Vick's culture, and his actions are not nearly as out of line there -- I wouldn't be surprised if Vick were unaware of the heavy penalties and scorn that go along with it in mainstream white American culture, and I would bet that he was certainly enraged at what he sees as a huge overreaction. I would certainly be if I were him -- I have the good fortune to have grown up with the dominant ideals of our country around me, and so I know what is and what is not acceptable. Vick doesn't, and I'm not trying to totally exonerate him by any means, but there are huge mitigating factors here.

Finally, as a closing thought, I would be remiss if I didn't point out the obvious irony that we are castigating a football player for fighting dogs for sport, while football is basically itself the business of fighting humans for sport: the tremendous brutality results in a ridiculously short lifespan for former NFL players (about 56 on average.)