http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/editorial/story.html?id=e0db52e0-d24a-4f62-a058-974b00d82e13

History shows Vick not alone in perversity

Dan Gardner
Ottawa Citizen

Friday, September 07, 2007

A caller on talk radio was certain that Michael Vick -- the NFL star who admitted to involvement in a dog-fighting ring -- should go to jail for a very long time. What Vick did is horrible, he said. And how awful is it that we even have to say that? "It's a real sign of the times," he sighed.

That theme could be heard beneath much of the talk about Michael Vick and his cruelties. And understandably so. This is a multimillionaire who could have almost anything he wanted. And what he wanted was to be amused by dogs fighting to the death.

It's unspeakably perverse. And as many reports showed over the last several weeks, Vick is far from the only one who enjoys this twisted hobby. Surely that caller was right to say this is a sign of the times.

And indeed he was. It is a sign of the times. Only that sign doesn't say what people think it does. In fact, what it says is cause for celebration.

Some time ago, please remember, there was another famous multimillionaire who enjoyed watching animals tear into each other. But unlike Michael Vick, she was never charged or condemned for her strange pleasures.

England's Queen Elizabeth I was a devotee of bear-baiting. In a pit surrounded by cheering spectators, a bear was chained to a stake. Trained hunting dogs circled, snarled and lunged. If the dogs were too slow, the bear would sink its fangs into their necks or rake them with its claws. When the dogs died or tired, they were replaced by fresh attackers and the bear would slowly be worn down and, finally, torn apart.

"It was a sport very pleasant to see," wrote an Elizabethan chronicler, "to see the bear, with his pink eyes, tearing after his enemies approach; the nimbleness and wait of the dog to take his advantage and the force and experience of the bear again to avoid his assaults: if he were bitten in one place how he would pinch in another to get free; that if he were taken once, then by what shift with biting, with clawing, with roaring, with tossing and tumbling he would work and wind himself from them; and when he was loose to shake his ears twice or thrice with the blood and the slaver hanging about his physiognomy."

Elizabeth was such a fan she overruled Parliament when it attempted to ban baiting on Sundays.

This royal patronage must have endeared the queen to a good many of her subjects. Bear-baiting was mass entertainment, the NASCAR of the 16th century. To maintain variety and interest, there was also bull-baiting and badger-baiting.

With badgers, the procedure was a little different. First, the animal was put in a box designed to resemble its den. A terrier was sent down a little tunnel into the box. After a short, vicious fight, the dog's owner pulled it out by its tail. If the dog was tough, it would emerge with the badger locked in its powerful jaws. If the dog was not tough, there was always another dog.

Roosters were also a wonderful source of merriment. In cockfighting, the birds shredded each other with beaks and blades tied to their feet. And for those who desired audience participation, there was "cock throwing" -- in which contestants attempted to maim or kill a tethered rooster by throwing sticks weighted with lead. Less skill was required of participants in "cock thrashing" -- which involved a blindfold, a stick and a piñata that was not made of papier mâché. Children absolutely adored these games.

At this point, the reader may be tempted to think this is all very interesting, in a grotesque way, but it hasn't the slightest relevance to today. So Michael Vick's treatment of animals was normal in one society hundreds of years ago. So what?

The "so what" is that it wasn't one society hundreds of years ago. It was most societies at most times.

Few things are as common in history as humans amusing themselves by inflicting vicious abuse on animals. The Elizabethans weren't particularly cruel, or even particularly creative in devising new cruelties.

"In 16th-century Paris," writes Harvard professor Steven Pinker, "a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire."

Although pious individuals occasionally protested from time to time, the first real movement against organized cruelty didn't begin until the early 19th century. In 1822, legislation forbidding cruelty to cattle was passed in the United Kingdom. It was the first of its kind, anywhere. In 1824, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded. In 1835, bear-baiting and other traditional crowd-pleasers were banned and, in a rebuke to her royal predecessors, Princess (later Queen) Victoria became a patron of the RSPCA.

Still, popular attitudes changed slowly. In New York City of the late 19th century, "traditional blood sports like cockfighting and bear-baiting remained (a) popular pastime," wrote historians Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace. "One impresario threw up a 2,000-seat amphitheatre for such spectacles."

Even today, there are many places in the world where people would be amazed at the reaction of North Americans to Vick's crime. Lots of people would even be amazed that what Vick did was a crime.

So the wretched story of Michael Vick really does tell us a great deal about the state of society today.

But what it tells us is not that we are sliding into a cesspool. It tells us that we are, finally, climbing out.

Dan Gardner is an Ottawa Citizen columnist. E-mail:

dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com
© The Windsor Star 2007