Buehrle vs. Vick

[Steve9347]

So who should comment on items like this or wars, poverty, politics, good restaurants, etc?

Not Mark f***ing Buehlre while he's a paid member of the Chicago White Sox.

 

I'm not being drawn into an endless debate with you Tex, so, as I said with Mark, keep on doing what you are doing, too.

[Milkman delivers]

It's swell and dandy that Vick did his time, but I agree whole-heartedly with Buehrle. I root for Vick to suffer a serious, unspeakable injury. I applaud Buehrle for not only saying it, but for toning it down the way he did. I'm not ashamed to say that I would smile if I woke up to the news that Vick died. I'm not going to go out and do something to him, but if it happened, I'd even have a little celebration.

 

I agree with you mostly, in terms of the overall idea.

 

Animals are actually quite a bit more intelligent than human beings give them credit for, and are far more capable of defending themselves (or evading danger) than many human beings are, if you think about it. Many people will stand there and take a beating because they are afraid to fight back, or will refuse to arm themselves because they convince themselves that some of the ridiculousness they hear is true, like violence is wrong/bad/uncalled for in "civilized" society, etc. Most animals OTOH can at least play dead to try to confuse prey, or will arm themselves with some kind of unique poison, escape capability, claws/teeth/whipping or breakable tail, etc. The difference - and where dogs come in - is that dogs are animals bred to serve human beings and provide unconditional love generations removed from the wild and existing in breeds that didn't even exist naturally, not wild animals conditioned by the harshness of nature. Dogs trust their abusers and follow the orders of their abusers because their abusers feed them and at least appear to keep them safe.

 

What Vick did, to me, is sick, plain and simple. He took a trusting, intelligent lifeform bred to serve man and he used his higher intellect to deceive the animal into maiming itself for its master, the only benefits being gambling monies, and then when the animal was useless he destroyed it in a fashion that (at least I would hope) makes people want to puke.

 

Most people are going to be naturally anthropocentric in the way they think, and that's what law is based on. The law says what Vick did was wrong, but really not all that wrong, basically akin to selling some coke, vandalising a neighbor's property, stealing some money, etc. According to law, what Vick did is perfectly acceptable in other areas of the world, and at least not all that atrocious here. But you're not supposed to adjust your own concept of what is right based upon what the justice system says. Law isn't the issue here, morality is, which is actually a separate thing, and it boggles my mind when people constantly try to override the moral understanding of others with some remark about Vick "doing his time," or "atoning," or whatever. All that s*** relates to law, not individual morality - even an apology means absolutely nothing in this world. So as a purely moral issue, no, in my eyes Vick doesn't at all deserve to be let off the hook, no matter what the legal system says. The moral punishment for his crimes, which cannot be enforced by any legal system, is that Vick must go through the rest of his life being hated like cancer by a wide swath of humanity for being the scum he is. MB was nice about what he said. Perfectly nice. And he is in no way wrong for saying it.

 

All of this, especially the last paragraph, was f***ing awesome. Thank you for putting it so well.

[RockRaines]

This is a political debate.

 

 

Mark is an awesome pitcher though.

[Soxbadger]

Okay I was trying to not respond until this was moved to the filibuster, but that does not seem to be happening any time soon.

 

Taking a life is taking a life. I agree with that. Once the body is lifeless, it's only matter.

 

Before farmers could use fertilizers mass produced from fossil fuel energies they kept pigeons and fed their crops animal parts. In wiser parts of the world people are starting to get back to that. But plants eat animals, animals eat plants, and people eat both. Then when people die the plants are supposed to be able to eat them, too, except our own fear of death is so hilariously ridiculous that we pack our dead in boxes or incinerate the bodies, and rob the soil of the blood and bodily fluids that are supposed to enrich it. There is nothing wrong with this cycle except our influencing on it, because our influence on it displays our fear and our greed, and that's what destroys s*** and makes people have to kill hundreds of deer in order to save a forest. But there's nothing wrong at all with nature. Nature was doing just fine on her own until we had to f*** it all up.

 

The murder is murder line is just way off though and I'm not sure I should even try to respond to it because I can't think of what I could say that would make you think differently. But if you can't see the difference between torturing and then inhumanely murdering a pet, a non-livestock animal, and then disposing of the body in some dump of rotting garbage, and say, taking the life of an animal quickly, painlessly, after a long life that as free as possible at this moment in time, and then using the body to feed your own body, and to extend your own life - then I just don't know what to say.

 

Look, you talk about "personally preferring" things - that's not how it works. You either live off death or you die yourself. There's no room to "prefer" anything. In the wild - if you were an ape or something - I'm sure you wouldn't prefer death, but something would be after you, and there's a decent chance it would catch you and eat you. The deer, likewise, would probably prefer to run away, but it would also certainly prefer the opportunity to graze over its natural foodstuffs rather than be forced to be more of a scavenger, and I'm sure it would prefer being able to openly graze without crossing roads, or having to starve, or watch developers come in and build empty shells no one wants to live in, etc.

 

There is an enormous difference between partaking in the cycle of life nature has created, and careless destruction borne of despicable cruelty and wastefulness. Huge difference. And there are no hypocrites either. There are no hypocrites in nature. Human beings weren't hypocrites either until we lost all touch with where we came from and began associating nature with dogparks and s***.

 

The first paragraph is mostly irrelevant, I dont care how great animals are at defending themselves in the wild against other animals, they were never built to defend themselves against 20th century technology. If you want to prove that you can kill an animal with your bare hands, knife or non-compound bow I can see that it is a challenge, But if you are going out there with a high powered rifle or a compound bow, its the proverbial fish in a barrel.

 

Moving on to the dog breeding comment, then I assume you are against eating pigs, cows, etc as they were all domesticated thousands of years ago. So using your logic it should not be okay to put pigs or cows in pens to be killed, because they naturally trust their human oppressor. Here is a link that shows all of the animals that have been domesticated like dogs http://archaeology.about.com/od/dterms/a/domestication.htm, you will notice that cow and chicken are domesticated animals, yet are given no special treatment.

 

What Vick did, to me, is sick, plain and simple. He took a trusting, intelligent lifeform bred to serve man and he used his higher intellect to deceive the animal into maiming itself for its master, the only benefits being gambling monies, and then when the animal was useless he destroyed it in a fashion that (at least I would hope) makes people want to puke.

 

And what humans do every day is wrong then. They take trusting, intelligent lifeform that was bred to serve man and used his higher intelligence to deceive the animal into stuffing itself until it became fat and then killed it for profit.

 

Is dog fighting arguably less humane? Of course it is, but now we are just talking about degrees.

 

As for the entire last paragraph, each person is entitled to their own opinion. I dont care about morality in terms of arguing the law, because morals are dependent on what side of the fence you sit. Many people from india would think that its far more wrong to kill a cow than a dog, people in the US think its worse to kill a dog than a cow. I am not going to be so bold as to say that my moral compass is better than theirs. I instead will admit to the hypocritical nature of humans, and try not to think to hard about the issue because I know that I am as hypocritical as anyone when it comes to this.

 

But that is the exact reason why I dont go around making a big deal about it. Because I know that its a weak argument. I may love dogs and cats, but until Im willing to treat all animals (and even if you want to change that to all intelligent animals) the same way, Im a hypocrite.

 

Furthermore the entire US law is hypocritical. Im sure that you are aware but under the law, dogs are property. If you kill my dog, your only civil liability to me is the value of the dog. There is no special exception for a dog being mans best friend or like a human, they are property. Yet the difference in how a dog as property is treated and a cow as property is treated, are completely divergent. No one disputes that I can kill my cow for food, its just whether I did it humanely. Im sure that many people would be up in arms if I had a dog farm where I killed dogs for food, regardless of how humanely.

 

This is where the law clearly goes from being objective to subjective, and why I dont really care to argue about the legality of what Vick did. I dont like what he did, I dont agree with the practices, but Im not 100% sure that there is a good reason why we have created rules that govern how people can treat property, except for the fact that we are trying to pretend we are "humane." Because at the end of the day, how we treat most animals is anything but humane.

 

Hunting, whether something you can stomach when considering the methods undertaken by human predators or not, is part of the natural order of things. Predators target prey for sustenance, and if that is the reason for Mark's hunting, than I find that difficult to be critical of. Hunting for pure sport, whether it is explained away in some attempt to justify it by achieving some ecological or modern logistical objective, is another debate altogether.

 

And if hunters were only hunting for food and not for sport, I would agree with this standpoint. The problem is that I do not believe Mark is hunting to feed his family because he cant afford to buy food. He is hunting because he enjoys hunting.

 

http://mlb.fanhouse.com/2007/09/24/mark-bu...ear-with-a-bow/

 

Here is a story about Mark bear hunting. Im sure that he hunted that Bear because the bear had a considerable amount of flesh to feed his starving family.

 

So we can assume that Mark only hunts for food, or we can actually look at the facts and realize that Mark hunts for fun. While I personally feel what Vick did is worse than what Mark does, I actually think that Vick has stopped doing it. Conversely, Mark will continue to hunt and kill animals for the rest of his life.

 

I get that we are White Sox fans so we are going to defend Mark, but he really is being a hypocrite here.

[BigSqwert]

Spot on Soxbadger.

 

And this argument is the perfect example of speciesism.

Edited February 10, 2011 by BigSqwert

[Soxbadger]

I didnt want to get into speciesism because that would undoubtedly bring us to goodwin's law. I thought I did a good job of implying the issue when I said:

 

I can candy coat anything in the world, but the arguments of "culling populations", "eradicating the weak", have been used before.

 

Nonetheless my point has consistently been that Mark should have just stayed out of it. I guess Kenny Hates Prospects is arguing that Mark should have gotten involved. Im not sure what was to be gained by his statement, and so far I have yet to see any argument about the benefits of Mark opening his mouth and getting involved in something that he has no direct relation with.

[Donny Lucy's Avocado Farm]

Animals are (for the most part) defenseless, humans are not.

 

This whole subject and thread is hilarious to me, for one simple reason. Mark Buehrle is an "outdoorsman" in that he hunts. He dresses up in camo and sits in a tree with a rifle waiting for deer to shoot. He kills defenseless animals for sport. How this is any different than Michael Vick killing a dog is beyond me.

 

Buehrle should STFU and stick to what he's good at, throwing baseballs.

[SkokieSox]

Brilliant observation. Given that hunters only hunt because they're angry at the animals they're shooting at, I am also confused by this hypocritical stance of his.

 

Are you being serious? Lol

[RockRaines]

I'd like to hunt a human.

[BigSqwert]

I'd like to hunt a human.

[Soxbadger]

The most dangerous game!

[SkokieSox]

I guess that's where my mindset is different than yours. I see absolutely no necessity to kill the animal in the first place. The entire premise is unnecessary and irresponsible in my eyes.

 

You are welcome to your opinion, and this may not change it by any means, but it is important to at the very least recognize the value hunting has. Although the act may seem cruel, if it is not done, especially in certain areas, deer and elk alike will starve to death. Just like with humans, resources become scarce... In over populated areas, they become very disruptive. Not only with eating farm crops but creating danger on road ways. You can argue they were in these areas first, but be that as it may, the result is not convenient to society when their numbers become out of whack. Again, you may not care for the act, but in many cases it is necessary. I, for one, have never been hunting, I love animals. But if they are utilized, and not wasted simply for sport, I am in favor of it.

[Milkman delivers]

I'd like to hunt a human.

 

The most dangerous of all prey.

[hogan873]

You are welcome to your opinion, and this may not change it by any means, but it is important to at the very least recognize the value hunting has. Although the act may seem cruel, if it is not done, especially in certain areas, deer and elk alike will starve to death. Just like with humans, resources become scarce... In over populated areas, they become very disruptive. Not only with eating farm crops but creating danger on road ways. You can argue they were in these areas first, but be that as it may, the result is not convenient to society when their numbers become out of whack. Again, you may not care for the act, but in many cases it is necessary. I, for one, have never been hunting, I love animals. But if they are utilized, and not wasted simply for sport, I am in favor of it.

This is my stance on the issue, although I have hunted in the past. This is not an argument that gets anywhere usually, however. I grew up in western Pennsylvania where deer populations (especially does) are very high. If the deer were not hunted, many would either starve to death or get hit by cars. And when they starve to death or get hit by cars, the meat often goes to waste. Like I said, though, many animal rights activists don't want to hear this.

[Harry Chappas]

When did dog fighting and hunting get confused here.

 

The problem is not that Mike Vick killed dogs, welfare agencies do this everyday. It was the malicious manner in which he breed the dogs to kill for sport, oh and for money.

 

Buehrle hunts. Last I saw this was legal in this country so he is fine doing it.

 

The man is entitled to his opinion and he gave it.

[whitesoxfan101]

When did dog fighting and hunting get confused here.

 

The problem is not that Mike Vick killed dogs, welfare agencies do this everyday. It was the malicious manner in which he breed the dogs to kill for sport, oh and for money.

 

Buehrle hunts. Last I saw this was legal in this country so he is fine doing it.

 

The man is entitled to his opinion and he gave it.

 

I don't think anybody is questioning hunting being legal or dog fighting being illegal. But the fact is, Michael Vick and Mark Buehrle both have killed animals for sport so Buehrle doesn't have much ground to stand on here. Just because we as humans like dogs more than deers and have them as pets doesn't change that. Love the guy, but he shouldn't have said this.

Edited February 10, 2011 by whitesoxfan101

[ChiSox_Sonix]

And now it's a link on the front page of espn with the title ChiSox' Buehrle hoped for Vick injury

Edited February 10, 2011 by ChiSox_Sonix

[BigSqwert]

And now it's a link on the front page of espn with the title ChiSox' Buehrle hoped for Vick injury

Tons of comments on that article and the Yahoo Sports one. Makes this thread look tame in comparison.

[ScottyDo]

Not surprising. ESPN's party line is that Vick is a great person now cuz he does what his publicist says. Same policy they have for Ray Lewis. "He's redeemed! Don't ask questions!"

[ChiliIrishHammock24]

Jaime Buerhle speaks......on facebook....

 

"When asked to do an interview on our passion for helping homeless and abused animals I was excited to do so. When the question of our thoughts on Michael Vick was asked we answered. While Mark and I am are both VERY aware it is not right to have a small hope deep down in your gut that someone gets hurt, I can't explain how much it angers me to the core everytime I read story after story and the Lost dogs book how much these poor animals were tortured and killed. While so many great people in the world stepped up to pick up the pieces and try to rebuild these innocent animals lives, I also read article after article and listen to interview after interview how Vick is sorry he got caught but never expresses any remorse for the poor dogs. When face to face with a reporter that adopted one of his victims, he looked at the dogs pictures and simply walked away. Right or wrong this is not ok with me. While I love my husband so much for standing by me and helping me on all my animal loving ventures, the last thing I wanted was for the all the negativity to deflate this article and bring his career and character in to it. I think anyone that truly knows mark and I knows we are genuine people that have a big heart and know right from wrong."

[RockRaines]

It actually looks like alot of the comments on ESPN are in support of Buehrle.

 

And Jamie's comments are pretty spot on for their POV. Mark is by all account an ideal role model as an athlete.

Edited February 10, 2011 by RockRaines

[BigSqwert]

Not surprising. ESPN's party line is that Vick is a great person now cuz he does what his publicist says. Same policy they have for Ray Lewis. "He's redeemed! Don't ask questions!"

 

He's no longer fighting dogs. And isn't he doing a lot of animal related charity work now? When can he be forgiven?

[RockRaines]

He's no longer fighting dogs. And isn't he doing a lot of animal related charity work now? When can he be forgiven?

Is he being forced to do that charity work or is he doing it out of remorse? And he wasnt just fighting dogs, he was torturing them to the point of hooking dogs up to car batteries to watch them die.

Edited February 10, 2011 by RockRaines

[Texsox]

I appreciate the argument that as a paid member of the White Sox he should be expected to voluntarily not speak out on any controversial issues. His behavior does reflect on some level on the team. It is easy to see that when a person takes a controversial stance like saying there are nothing but gays in New York or blacks do not have the capabilities to be managers.

 

I also believe it is a shame when we expect people to not speak out against something because of potential reprecussions. I'm not certain who should speak out against dog fighting and the people that do it? Dogs maybe? Who is qualified? I believe in the US Constitution and every person's right to free speak. The fact that when some people speak more people listen shouldn't be a reason for them to be quiet. Their rights are the same as our rights.

[BigSqwert]

Is he being forced to do that charity work or is he doing it out of remorse?

 

You and I will likely never know the answer to that question. All we do know is that he has been rehabilitated after serving his sentence.