True or false? "The kind of crime embodied by dogfighting is so morally repellent that it demands an extravagant response"

The damaged dogs rescued from Michael Vick's dog-fighting operation were sent to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Angel Canyon, Utah, for rehabilitation.

by Ken

There are writers with whose work you develop an ongoing relationship. It took me awhile to bond with The New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell, whom we last talked about when he was pondering the question "Is free the future?" (with a follow-up here). At this point, though, his byline on the contents page is likely to make me pretty much drop everything and read. He has a piece in the new (October 19) issue, called "Offensive Play," and while the subject didn't seem to promise the kind of startling new (to me, anyway) insight into human behavior I've come to expect from him, I nevertheless dropped everything and read.

Gladwell begins with a look at the present-day condition of retired NFL onetime all-pro offensive tackle Kyle Turley, and proceeds to a consideration of the long-term damage increasingly understood to occur in the brains of football players and boxers, athletes exposed to tens of thousands of head blows. What the researchers are finding -- insofar as they've been able to examine brain tissue post mortem -- is that the brain tissue is almost always scarred in a way that's characteristic of not first- but second-stage Alzheimer's. He conducts his usual interviews around the question of whether this can be reduced by rule changes or is inherent in the game, and what can be done about it, 'cause for sure nobody is going to entertain the idea of abolishing football.

But what's really interesting to me is Gladwell's insistence on the moral dimension of the problem, to which end he draws a running parallel with the "sport" of dog-fighting, with particular reference to the spectacular downfall of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick after his dog-fighting operation was uncovered, leading to his suspension from the NFL and his subsequent prosecution, conviction, and incarceration. The blurb under the title of the piece reads: "How different are dogfighting and football?"

Gladwell quotes at some length a gruesome description of an actual dog fight, which ends -- or rather climaxes after the fight has ended with the losing dog, named Black, having its back legs broken, with blood gushing from her throat -- thusly: "A shot rings out barely heard over the noise in the barn. Black's body is wrapped up and carried by her owner to his vehicle." Gladwell continues:

It's the shot ringing out that seals the case against dogfighting. L.G. [Black's owner] willingly submitted his dog to a contest that culminated in her suffering and destruction. And why? For the entertainment of an audience and the chance of a payday. In the nineteenth century, dogfighting was widely accepted by the American public. But we no longer find that kind of transaction morally acceptable in a sport. "I was not aware of dogfighting and the terrible things that happen around dogfighting," [NFL Commissioner Roger] Goodell said, explaining why he responded so sternly in the Vick case.

Later Gladwell visits the special animal care facility, Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Angel Canyon, Utah, where the dogs owned by Michael Vick were sent after his arrest. He describes the extraordinary care these animals, horribly damaged mentally as well as physically, have received, in many cases achieving surprising degrees of rehabilitation. All the while he makes clear that the poor creatures are still unable to live normally. He writes:

What happens at Best Friends represents, by any measure, an extravagant gesture. These are dogs that will never live a normal life. But the kind of crime embodied by dogfighting is so morally repellent that it demands an extravagant response.

I've paused here for emphasis only. That last sentence is the one in the piece which continues to engage me, and we'll come back to it. In the piece, however, what follows continues without interruption, not even a paragraph break, from the above:

In a fighting dog, the quality that is prized above all others is the willingness to persevere, even in the face of injury and pain. A dog that will not do that is labelled a "cur," and abandoned. A dog that keeps charging at its opponent is said to possess 'gameness,' and game dogs are revered.

In one way or another, plenty of organizations select for gameness. The Marine Corps does so, and so does medicine, when it puts young doctors through the exhausting rigors of residency. But those who select for gameness have a responsibility not to abuse that trust: if you have men in your charge who would jump off a cliff for you, you cannot march them to the edge of the cliff -- and dogfighting fails this test.

Now Gladwell's inquiry into the parallel cases of football and dogfighting is absorbing in its own right, but what has fascinated me, again, is that excellent sentence, "The kind of crime embodied by dogfighting is so morally repellent that it demands an extravagant response." I think what fascinates me about it is that, while this moral repulsion would undoubtedly be widely acknowledged, even in the 21st century I don't think it's as universally felt as Gladwell seems to assume, as witness the mere survival of the "sport," despite ever-heavier official disapproval and illegalization.

Damned if I didn't find myself thinking of the contrasting models that George Lakoff has described for the political Right vs. Left: the "strict father" model on the one hand vs. the "nurturant parent" family on the other. Now I don't say that all right-wing adherents are dog-fight fans, or that no lefties get a kick out of this spectacle. But it does seem to me that in the "strict father" model, which sees this as (and there's no reason why you should forgive the expression) a dog-eat-dog world, there really isn't anything particularly repellent about dog-fighting.

It occurs to me that in many of our most violent points of political contention, left vs. right, at work quietly in the background is a basic difference in notions of moral acceptability which is well illustrated here.

The difference is not, I should add, that the owners of the dogs don't love them. Gladwell makes a persuasive if stomach-turning case that they surely do, and are deeply hurt when they cart off the carcass of this animal that showed the depths of its love by allowing itself to be ripped apart. Again, though, I may be overly influenced by my ongoing reading of Max Blumenthal's Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party,whose virtual catalog of sociopathologies common to the authoritarian mentality leaves a reader punchy and quite prepared to believe that this could pass for love among the human specimens under scrutiny here. (One frighteningly common thread is how many of these men survived big-time childhod mental and especially physical abuse, and went on to lead movements built on abuse. "Strict father," indeed!)

In case you were wondering, Gladwell isn't especially optimistic about the application of morality to football, where the owners don't pretend to think of the players as more than parts of their money-making machine. "What football must confront, in the end," he writes, "is not just the problem of injuries or scientific findings. It is the fact that there is something profoundly awry in the relationship between the players and the game."

But even if it turns out, as increasingly seems the case, that no changes in the rules could seriously reduce the risk of permanent brain injury to players, he recognizes that nothing can or will be done, because there is no chance of banning football. "We are in love with football players," he writes, "with their courage and grit, and nothing else -- neither considerations of science nor those of morality -- can compete with the destructive power of that love."


VISIT THE BEST FRIENDS WEBSITE

There is (as yet) no sanctuary for battered football players, but if you can visit the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary website without tearing up, well, I have to wonder. (Are you by chance a rabid right-winger?) The good news is that many of the animals are rehabilitated to the point of adoptability, and the sanctuary actively tries to place them -- and visitors are welcome.

Search for an adoptable pet from Best Friends

Best Friends has about 2,000 animals looking for their forever homes. You’ll find many of them on these pages, and we’re adding more every day!

Best Friends began as a special haven for dogs and cats who were deemed "unadoptable."

But these animals are anything but! Some of them have special needs, like medical conditions, shyness or old age. Others overcame their special needs long ago, and are as healthy and happy a pet as you'll find anywhere.

All of them are looking for homes to call their own, and every one of them deserves a chance. Please take your time browsing. On these pages, you’ll find dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, horses, pigs and more, all of them anxious to meet you.

If you don’t find your new pet today, please bookmark this page and check back regularly. There are always new animals arriving at the sanctuary.

The pussycat pictured above is Ferrari, a four-year-old female who was rescued from a broken-down shelter, "and something about all the neglect she suffered there makes her wary." However, "Ferrari wants to be a lap cat; she really does. When you come meet her, she'll be the first walk right up to you. She's delighted that you came! She loves it when you pet her, too. But then, she suddenly gets scared." She's "naturally affectionate," her profile says. "She just needs time to overcome."

Of course, your local shelter has a lot of abandoned animals who could use a good home, and would repay a little love with a whole lot of it. With animals, that nurturing stuff works both ways. (Some people think it works with people too, but that's a tougher case to prove.)

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