Bad Choices

New York Daily News:

Whoopi Goldberg plays down dogfighting on 'View' debut

Picking up where Rosie O'Donnell left off, Whoopi Goldberg debuted on "The View" yesterday with a spirited defense of NFL quarterback Michael Vick's role in a dogfighting ring.

Goldberg said dogfighting "isn't that unusual" in the Deep South "where he comes from. ... It's like cockfighting in Puerto Rico. There are certain things that are indicative to certain parts of the country."

Co-host Joy Behar looked horrified.

"How about dog torture and dog murdering?" Behar asked.

"Unfortunately, it's part of the thing," Goldberg said.

"Part of the fun, right?" Behar shot back.

"I don't think they see it that way. I just thought it was interesting, because it seemed like a light went off in his head when he realized this was something that the entire country didn't appreciate," Goldberg replied.

Vick pleaded guilty to federal dogfighting charges last week, including an admission that he took part in hanging or drowning up to eight dogs. The Atlanta Falcons quarterback has been suspended and faces jail time.

After the show, Goldberg told reporters she wanted to bring a different perspective concerning the troubled footballer.

"Just so he's not this monster," Goldberg said. "He's a wonderful guy who was involved in something terrible. I'm not excusing it, I'm just saying, listen, I believe his apology ... and maybe this will be a huge wakeup call to a lot of people doing this."

PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said she was "gobsmacked" to hear Goldberg's comments.

"I think a lot of people who live and work in the South - as PETA does - will not appreciate the view that cruelty to dogs is an accepted Southern pastime," she said. "Those who fight dogs do so in New York, Chicago and even the Republic of Ireland, and what unites them is lawlessness and callousness, not whether they eat grits or Belgian waffles for breakfast."

This is a study of two people who decided to sell-out.

I don’t give a damn about Michael Vick. He’s a lazy cheater who welched on a promise that he sold us, because he’ll never be as good as he could have been.

Whoopi Goldberg, however, can’t piss me off, no matter how hard I try. Believe me, sometimes she makes it easy. (Theodore Rex? The Color Putrid? “Hollywood Squares”? Guh.) It’s still a tragedy. But in spite of her appalling choices, in rare and unguarded moments you’re stunned to realize what an intelligent, strong-willed, and perceptive woman she is. That’s the persona we remember from that brilliant performance on Broadway years ago. She was an unique Afrocentric flavor added to Hollywood's bland mashed potatoes. It’s too bad we never see that in the lousy TV shows and movies she’s in now. Instead, we see a token; a cartoon; a dreadlocked muppet who will say and do anything for a paycheck. Whoopi’s vulgar, uninformed alibi for Vick’s ghastly behavior was just more of the same.

Michael Vick wasn’t a helpless African-American athlete exploited by his employer. Vick wasn’t Paul Robeson. Vick wasn’t Jackie Robinson. Vick wasn’t Muhammad Ali. Vick was a cash cow so important to the Atlanta Falcons franchise that when he was injured, his white millionaire boss pushed him around in a wheelchair. It didn’t always used to be that way. Because of the hard choices they made, Robeson was eventually exiled from the United States, Robinson was subjected to vicious racial abuse, and Ali was stripped of his championship title and banned from boxing.

Now it’s different. “Today you have athletes who are told not to be political,” said Charles Farrell, president of Sports Perspectives International, a nonprofit research and advocacy group. “I think one of the things we lose sight of is that sports is a $200 billion industry. And when you consider endorsements, there's a real incentive to keep your mouth shut, play your game and keep making money.” Vick couldn’t wait to sell out. And, as usual, Vick was another African-American sports icon who only discovered his ethnicity after he got in trouble. Maybe it would have been different if Vick killed the dogs that were let loose on civil rights marchers.

Whoopi got rich and kept some of her dignity. Vick's going to lose a lot of money and never had any dignity to begin with. Both of them lost something precious.