>>>>>http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/08/20/vick/index.html
>>>>
>>>>"Ooops...wait...that WAS me! Silly me! I forgot I did all that."
>>>>
>>>>And his lawyers are trying to get prison time down to less than a year.
>>>>
>>>>I don't think there's a measurement device big enough to hit the level of my disgust on all of this.
>>>
>>>While I agree that what he did was reprehensible, I'm fascinated by the level of disgust. Heard someone on TV (CNN? ESPN? ???) point out that people seem to hate Vick more for hurting dogs that they do other athletes who've hurt their wives.
>>>
>>>Tamar
>>
>>I suspect it comes from the fact that the dogs aren't thinking creatures and don't have the choice of calling the cops or a lawyer or leaving to go somewhere else. I know that many women feel they also don't have those choices, but in fact, they do.
>>
>>Wife beating is a despicable behaviour too, but there is still the sense that the dogs didn't choose the life they have, while humans did. Maybe it was a rotten choice and now they feel stuck but there was that initial choice that dogs simply don't have.
>
>>
>>It's similar to the fact, at least I think it's a fact, that the whipping of a slave who has no recourse to justice is seen as a more horrendous crime than the whipping of a free person who does have some sort of recourse.
>
>... or our values are all screwed up.

I'm not sure that's it though. I think human beings will always see more horror in the abuse of the helpless, and I am not the one who wants to dispute the values shown by that.