Michael Vick's Contrition Is Not Convincing

By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street Blog

Michael Vick hasn't convinced me yet.

In a televised interview Sunday night Michael Vick talked the talk, but it remains to be seen whether he's going to walk the walk. He said he felt "pure disgust" over his horribly sadistic treatment of pit bulls, including gleefully electrocuting and savaging dogs in unforgivable ways:

"The first day I walked into prison and they slammed that door, I knew the magnitude of the decisions that I made and the poor judgment and what I, you know, allowed to happen to the animals," Vick said. "And, you know, there's no way of explaining the hurt and the guilt that I felt. That was the reason I cried so many nights. [It] put it all into perspective."

The above quote sounds like he's been "gotten to" by Public Relations Central and he's reciting the lines his PR people forced him to memorize. But then he mentioned that he's found God to help him rehabilitate himself: What a cliché! Every evil-doer finds God as a pre-canned pretense to claiming they've gone "good" all of a sudden.

The following quote sounds more believable, but it's not what he should be saying:

Vick said he cried in prison about "what I did, being away from my family, letting so many people down, letting myself down, not being out on the football field, being in a prison bed, in a prison bunk, writing letters home. That wasn't my life. That wasn't the way that things were supposed to be. And all because of the so-called culture that I thought was right, and I thought it was cool and I thought it was fun and exciting. It all led to me laying in a prison bunk by myself, with nobody to talk to but myself."

It wasn't the way it was supposed to be? This sounds like a man who needs a lot more time in prison and in psychotherapy before we are to believe he truly has changed.

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