Tucker Carlson is backing away from his comments last week suggesting Eagles quarterback Michael Vick, who did time for dog fighting, should be executed:
“This is what happens when you get too emotional and I did,” Carlson said. “Look, the bottom line is I'm a dog lover. You know, I've had dogs my whole life. We have three now, I love them. I know a lot about what Michael Vick did – what he admitted doing and I'm not going to get into it on the show because it is too upsetting. Anybody who takes some time to look into how he mistreated these dogs and personally tortured them to death, gets upset and I, you know I overspoke. I'm uncomfortable with the death penalty under any circumstances. Of course I don't think he should be executed. I do think what he did was appalling. “
Carlson explained that he believes in redemption, but said discretion should exercised before declaring Vick is “rehabilitated.”
This whole incident was sparked by my least favorite genre of "news" story, which is "President Barack Obama says something about controversial black celebrity." The president had apparently congratulated the Eagle's coach on giving Vick a second chance, saying that "a level playing field rarely exists for prisoners who have completed their sentences." That's an utterly banal statement.
Several people have pointed out that Vick's multimillion-dollar throwing arm means that "rehabilitation" comes through the market, not through remorse. But this misses the point. In a country with 2 million people in prison, and one in 31 in some phase of the criminal-justice system, failing to reintegrate the formerly incarcerated carries a collective financial and social cost for all of us -- particularly the neighborhoods these people return to and the families of which they are a part. We want redemption to come through the market. Continuing to punish Vick -- or even someone without such expensive skills -- because they did something horrible for which they've already served their time is a kind of economic masochism. I don't think society should care whether the formerly incarcerated become "good people" following release. I think it should care that they become the kind of person who can keep a regular job and stay out of prison.
That's in part why Carlson's comments rubbed me and I think a lot of other people the wrong way. Part of how we've managed to become a society that imprisons fully 1 percent of its population is that we've learned to ignore the humanity of the incarcerated. So Vick's criminal treatment of dogs becomes the kind of outrage that spurs someone like Carlson to rashly call for his execution, while treating actual human beings like dogs remains relatively uncontroversial.
