Yahoo: Race "Impossible To Ignore" In Vick Dog-Torture Case
RETRACTION

Note: I misread this guy's column as suggesting that hater-interlopers had joined the PETA rally, shouting hate at Vick.

I was wrong, and I apologize. Re-reading, I see now that I merely imagined the article they way I figured it would unfold. In fact, this writer does say that those shouting for Vick's head were animal rights protestors. (Why he doesn't ID them as PETA, you'll have to ask him-- the damn emblem is on every single placard.)

Part of this post stands: He's an idiot for reading race into this. PETA doesn't care about race; they only care about species. If they're overwehlmingly white, well, that's because only pampered upper-middle-class hausfraus with nothing better to do with their time join this jackass organization.

However, I was quite wrong to say the writer had implied it was outside interlopers causing the problem. He didn't say that. He said all of the people shouting "Burn in hell" were white, but not that they weren't part of the animal-rights rally.

Whether it was only the white protesters shouting "Burn in hell," rather than the few nonwhites there, I can't tell from a photo. So I have no basis upon which to challenge that.

I apologize to him and to you for the error.

Post left intact below.

...

Really? Impossible? I wasn't having too difficult a time about it, douchenozzle.

The crowded, chaotic sidewalk on Main Street, across from the federal courthouse, was an unlikely location for a lesson on the virtues of the fifth amendment.

But standing behind a throng that wanted a pound of Michael Vick's flesh – people that had just screamed for the Atlanta Falcons quarterback to "burn in hell" and held signs advocating his murder, torture and neutering – was Thomas Smith in work boots and a white t-shirt.

High above his head he held a simple sign with just a single word: "Constitution."

"These folks have convicted a man who hasn't even had a chance to defend himself," said Smith. "They just forget everything about America."

But here was America in full force, full vision, mixing it up while Vick pled not guilty to federal charges pertaining to an alleged dog-fighting ring on property he owned in rural Surry County. And front and center, impossible to ignore, was race.

Like Smith, almost all of the people supporting Vick or holding signs pleading for "due process" and "innocence until proven guilty" were African American.

On the other side was an emotional, angry, passionate anti-Vick group that was overwhelmingly white.

Certainly not every animal rights supporter was screaming for Vick to die. Many were just there to support the cause of caring for animals, ending the barbaric practice of dog fighting and using the massive media presence to benefit good.

But a significant number were focused on Vick.

Um, who the fuck should they have been focused on? Harvey Keitel? For what? Showing his ass too frequently in movies?

It's interesting how racial animus is suggested as a reason for whites hatin' on Vick -- whereas it's just apparently accepted for blacks to rally to support a thug out of a misplaced sense of racial solidarity and racist animus against the White Devil's Justice.

Vick is presumed innocent... in a court of law. Outside that court, people are allowed to draw conclusions, which of course everyone does. Certainly Vick's supporters aren't merely abstractly urging for the legal presumption of innocence; they're saying he's innocent. Full stop.

How is this different from Duke? Well, for one thing, the media sudddenly seems to find fault with pot-bangers demanding a conviction. In the Duke case they were rather fond of such concerned citizens.

In another way, it's not different, of course. People really shouldn't be staging pro-conviction rallies, and sure, those screaming for Vick's head ought not to do so. But liberal-loved PETA's calling for his head, too, of course, so the liberal cocksucker writing this has to differentiate their good liberal "concern" for animal rights from nasty conservative playah-hatin'.

So: Who were the trouble-makers here? This jerkoff claims, by implication, it was White Haters who had infiltrated the nice PETA protest in order to scream kill the nigger.

Is that true?

Well, hey, as it turns out, I happen to have some evidence about that. Yesterday official Ace of Spades HQ Baghdad Diarist Dri happened to be at the courthouse where Vick appeared, and he snapped pictures of the crowd.

As far as I can tell, they all seem to be part of the PETA protest, with narry a Klansman infiltrator in site.

Does Yahoo want me to post more pictures? I've got them. And as far as I can tell just about every protester has an animal-rights placard.

So maybe Yahoo should tell the truth: Those calling for Vick to burn in hell were not Angry White Racist Haters who had opportunistically hijacked a nice pleasant PETA rally to shout mean things about a black defendant.

They were PETA types, too.

If you're going to find fault, lay it were truly is. Don't just flat-out make shit up to absolve your liberal buddies while impugning imaginary conservative malefactors.

Note that every poster has the PETA emblem at bottom. Is this "America" -- America the hateful, America the racist -- showing up "in full-force"?

Or is this a small group of zealots with the juvenile, stunted-development lack of capacity to differentiate between animals and human beings?

And what do I spy in the middle of that picture...? Are those two near the middle... brown people? Looks to me like a Hispanic woman and a man guilty of premeditated duskiness in the first degree.

Note To Howie Kurtz: If you feel like swiping this photo, well, I wouldn't fuck with Dri. He's not as pleasant and easygoing as I am.

RETRACTION&bodytext=Note: I misread this guy's column as suggesting that hater-interlopers had joined the PETA rally, shouting hate at Vick. I was wrong, and I apologize. Re-reading, I see now that I merely imagined the article they way I figured it...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 03:28 PM

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