A few continue to do it. For example, in today's Washington Post, some of Vick's friends deflect some of the blame: "The most prominent theory [as to how Vick got in trouble], espoused by Boddie and Reeves, blames much of Vick's troubles on his continued association with childhood friends who have questionable pasts. Those same friends were the ones who agreed to testify against Vick in exchange for more lenient sentences for their roles in the crimes." Meanwhile, Gregg Easterbrook writing on ESPN a couple of days was even worse, arguing that all this happened because Vick was pampered from the age of 16, that no one ever "said no", to him; and of course (you knew it would happen) Easterbrook flashes the race card, writing that the reaction against Vick comes from "racial animus": "But suppose everything about the Michael Vick controversy was exactly the same except Vick was a white quarterback from an upper-middle-class family in Winnetka, Ill., Newport Beach, Calif., or Coral Gables, Fla. Can you say with a straight face that the public reaction and government action would the same?"
Yes, Mr. Eastbrook, I do. It would be. And all those who want to make any kind of excuses for Michael Vick need to remember: the evidence apparently strongly shows that Vick paid for the house himself, and knew what it would be used for; that he was intimately involved in the training, the fighting, and the gambling over these dogs; and he was intimately involved in killing them. And he lied about it for months. He got himself into this, period.
