Sports
Hey Vick! Keep your stash at home!
Jan 18, 2007
Advice to
Michael Vick: Don’t take your stash to the
airport! Even back in the very naïve, very
hijack-friendly seventies, every stoner in the land
knew that you never took your stash to the airport,
and never EVER in
your carry-on bags!
With the NFL playoffs raging along, it takes a pretty out-there NFL story that has nothing to do with the playoffs to appear in the news, so yet another drug bust of an NFL player would normally rank pretty low, unless the bust came while the player was driving to a playoff game. But when Michael Vick was arrested at Miami International Airport on January 17, 2007, after police discovered a secret compartment in a 20-ounce water bottle that contained a “small amount of dark particulate and a pungent aroma closely associated with marijuana,” according to the police report, the news smashed through the playoff-only news ban and ducked and weaved its way into the mainstream media in prime time.
Reasons for this are multiple, and all have to do with several unanswered questions: First, why is Vick, who two years ago signed a $137 million deal with the Atlanta Falcons, flying on AirTran? I’ve never seen Bill Gates on Jet Blue and don’t expect to, because Gates has enough money to fly in a private plane, or if he really wants to slum it on a regular airline, at least he flies first class. So Vick, who does not have the reputation of being financially parsimonious, suddenly ran out of cash? Not likely. Second, what in the world is he doing messing around with whatever amount of pot can be stashed in the water bottle’s false bottom? The man can afford bales of the stuff, delivered right to his doorstep. Did he expect to light up in the airplane john? Did someone forget to tell him that all flights are non-smoking, and even if they weren’t, with all the air being recycled on the plane, it would take about three seconds after he lit up before every man, woman and child on the plane would be smelling the damning “pungent aroma”? Third, didn’t he learn anything from the pot-bellied drug addict Rush Limbaugh who couldn’t even smuggle contraband Viagra onto a plane without getting busted?
To sum up the common thread as reported by the mainstream media: Hey Mike, what were you thinking? The answer is not that he wasn’t thinking at all, but that he was thinking he could get away with it the way all celebrities get away with all that they get away with: Rules don’t apply. Dave Barry once noted that dogs are not as stupid as we think; they know the rules, they just think there are exceptions to them. For example, a dog may know that he’s not supposed to dig through the trash, but obviously that rule must not count when there are delicious chicken bones to be found in there. Celebrities are very dog-like in this thought process. Absolutely everyone, including those currently hiding in caves, knows that you can’t bring bottles of liquids through airport security, ever since the arrest of 21 suspects last August charged with a plot to blow up several planes by sneaking explosives onboard using compartments hidden in the bottom of the bottles! While you’re at it, Mike, why not just stash a few box knives in your back pocket, and take a few flying lessons where you tell the trainers you only want to know how to take off but not to land?
But logic doesn’t apply to sports celebrities. Sports celebrities are an especially entitled group among the mega-entitled cohort of all celebrities. Most movie stars, for example, were not famous prior to their teen years, so there were at least a few years post-puberty where they did not have the world at their feet. But in sports, especially football, the star players have been having the world served up to them daily since junior high school. They learn, from age 11 or 12, that if they excel in their sport, no coach, teacher, parent, police officer, judge, college professor, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy can tell them what to do or when to do it.
Michael Vick is not his younger brother Marcus Vick nor his keeper, but it might be that the younger brother’s hoodlum outrageousness on the field and off it may have been a result of the fact that seeing his older brother’s success and knowing that the world expected similar success of him may have put the world at his feet as young as age seven or eight. With the plasticity of the young mind, entitlement, narcissism and a disgust for everything and everyone in the world may have been hard-wired into the younger Vick’s DNA.
A careful reading of the initial police report of Michael Vick’s arrest shows many potential “outs” for Vick. The loss of chain of custody, for example, is mother’s milk to criminal defense lawyers. It is not likely that Vick will suffer much from this event. If it ever goes to trial, he is unlikely to be convicted. If he is convicted, he is unlikely to spend any time in jail, pay any fine that will be larger than pocket change to him, or receive more than a cursory scolding from the NFL. It will not affect his career, his endorsements, his living-large lifestyle in any way, because our society worships sports celebrities with more fervor than any religion, and no amount of "Ron Mexico" herpes lawsuits or rude gestures (check out wikipedia if you don't remember those Vick fiascoes) can alter that worship.
So while the rest of us toe the line, day in and day out, fight traffic to work, do our jobs, fight traffic home, and never even dream of crossing the line lest we end up in a damp, dark cell in Guantanamo Bay with a daily ration of bread, water and beatings, the Michael Vicks' of the world will continue to amuse us with their alarmingly flagrant stupidity. And the worst part of it is, the guy has no downfield arm whatsoever.
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With the NFL playoffs raging along, it takes a pretty out-there NFL story that has nothing to do with the playoffs to appear in the news, so yet another drug bust of an NFL player would normally rank pretty low, unless the bust came while the player was driving to a playoff game. But when Michael Vick was arrested at Miami International Airport on January 17, 2007, after police discovered a secret compartment in a 20-ounce water bottle that contained a “small amount of dark particulate and a pungent aroma closely associated with marijuana,” according to the police report, the news smashed through the playoff-only news ban and ducked and weaved its way into the mainstream media in prime time.
Reasons for this are multiple, and all have to do with several unanswered questions: First, why is Vick, who two years ago signed a $137 million deal with the Atlanta Falcons, flying on AirTran? I’ve never seen Bill Gates on Jet Blue and don’t expect to, because Gates has enough money to fly in a private plane, or if he really wants to slum it on a regular airline, at least he flies first class. So Vick, who does not have the reputation of being financially parsimonious, suddenly ran out of cash? Not likely. Second, what in the world is he doing messing around with whatever amount of pot can be stashed in the water bottle’s false bottom? The man can afford bales of the stuff, delivered right to his doorstep. Did he expect to light up in the airplane john? Did someone forget to tell him that all flights are non-smoking, and even if they weren’t, with all the air being recycled on the plane, it would take about three seconds after he lit up before every man, woman and child on the plane would be smelling the damning “pungent aroma”? Third, didn’t he learn anything from the pot-bellied drug addict Rush Limbaugh who couldn’t even smuggle contraband Viagra onto a plane without getting busted?
To sum up the common thread as reported by the mainstream media: Hey Mike, what were you thinking? The answer is not that he wasn’t thinking at all, but that he was thinking he could get away with it the way all celebrities get away with all that they get away with: Rules don’t apply. Dave Barry once noted that dogs are not as stupid as we think; they know the rules, they just think there are exceptions to them. For example, a dog may know that he’s not supposed to dig through the trash, but obviously that rule must not count when there are delicious chicken bones to be found in there. Celebrities are very dog-like in this thought process. Absolutely everyone, including those currently hiding in caves, knows that you can’t bring bottles of liquids through airport security, ever since the arrest of 21 suspects last August charged with a plot to blow up several planes by sneaking explosives onboard using compartments hidden in the bottom of the bottles! While you’re at it, Mike, why not just stash a few box knives in your back pocket, and take a few flying lessons where you tell the trainers you only want to know how to take off but not to land?
But logic doesn’t apply to sports celebrities. Sports celebrities are an especially entitled group among the mega-entitled cohort of all celebrities. Most movie stars, for example, were not famous prior to their teen years, so there were at least a few years post-puberty where they did not have the world at their feet. But in sports, especially football, the star players have been having the world served up to them daily since junior high school. They learn, from age 11 or 12, that if they excel in their sport, no coach, teacher, parent, police officer, judge, college professor, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy can tell them what to do or when to do it.
Michael Vick is not his younger brother Marcus Vick nor his keeper, but it might be that the younger brother’s hoodlum outrageousness on the field and off it may have been a result of the fact that seeing his older brother’s success and knowing that the world expected similar success of him may have put the world at his feet as young as age seven or eight. With the plasticity of the young mind, entitlement, narcissism and a disgust for everything and everyone in the world may have been hard-wired into the younger Vick’s DNA.
A careful reading of the initial police report of Michael Vick’s arrest shows many potential “outs” for Vick. The loss of chain of custody, for example, is mother’s milk to criminal defense lawyers. It is not likely that Vick will suffer much from this event. If it ever goes to trial, he is unlikely to be convicted. If he is convicted, he is unlikely to spend any time in jail, pay any fine that will be larger than pocket change to him, or receive more than a cursory scolding from the NFL. It will not affect his career, his endorsements, his living-large lifestyle in any way, because our society worships sports celebrities with more fervor than any religion, and no amount of "Ron Mexico" herpes lawsuits or rude gestures (check out wikipedia if you don't remember those Vick fiascoes) can alter that worship.
So while the rest of us toe the line, day in and day out, fight traffic to work, do our jobs, fight traffic home, and never even dream of crossing the line lest we end up in a damp, dark cell in Guantanamo Bay with a daily ration of bread, water and beatings, the Michael Vicks' of the world will continue to amuse us with their alarmingly flagrant stupidity. And the worst part of it is, the guy has no downfield arm whatsoever.
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