Editor:

It’s difficult to argue with someone who hasn’t actually said anything of substance, but I find myself in that position with Andy Thompson’s absurd column of Aug. 31 (“There are far more brutal crimes than dogfighting”) about Michael Vick and his troubles with the law.

Thompson claims that Vick is guilty and that justice has been served and that the “buzz” over Vick’s actions is somehow disproportionate to the crime.

This is, of course, completely meaningless since practically everything a celebrity does is blown up far beyond its significance.

But Thompson obviously has another motive in mind, as he spares no expense in winking and nudging us down a path towards minimizing Vick’s guilt with increasingly ridiculous comparisons to other cruel acts, such as the genocide in Darfur, chaos in Iraq, and even the glorification of violence in our own culture — none of which have any relevance at all to the fact that Vick bred, tortured and murdered animals in cold blood for the sake of gambling.

The fact that American culture glorifies violence in no way abjures Vick of responsibility for what he has done, end of story. But the essay could have ended there and remained murky and confusing instead of absurd.

What follows, the comparisons of Bad Newz Kennels to the Darfurian genocide, is a solid two paragraphs of hero-worship and lots of superlatives about masterpieces of motion and a whole bunch of other nonsense with even less relevance to what Vick did (if that was even possible), which clearly reveals Thompson’s personal bias and makes his intentions with the article clear, despite his best efforts to hide them.

Thompson is paid the big bucks to express an opinion and take a stand, not shroud his own prejudices in favor of the athlete behind a smokescreen of weasel words and irrelevant cultural musings.

Kyle StegerwaldSophomore, Computer Science & History