Michael Vick's “Genuine Remorse” and Problems of Public Forgiveness

Abstract

In April of 2009, near the end of National Football League (NFL) quarterback Michael Vick's prison term for dog fighting, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell proposed Vick might resume his career if he could demonstrate “genuine remorse” for his actions. At the same time, Vick was mapping out a plan, with the help of public relations professionals, for how he would perform in interviews and public appearances. The result was an orchestrated campaign whereby Vick was both imposed upon by and performed through a surveillance-based program of social testing designed to prove that he was forgivable on the grounds of genuine remorse. I maintain that the Vick case represents the power of popular institutions like sports leagues to shape and test conditional standards for forgiving through frameworks of surveillance, therapy, and confession that affirm racialized ideals about social order and authentic interior reform. Through an analysis of the NFL's monitoring and surveillance program, as well as a series of highly publicized interviews, I demonstrate the importance of distancing forgiveness from politics, and examine potential alternatives to conditional forgiveness from within rhetorical studies.

Keywords:

• Forgiveness
• Surveillance
• Race
• Therapy
• NFL

The author would like to thank the Editor, the anonymous reviewers, and Ashli Stokes, Margaret Quinlan, Min Jiang, Thomas Oates, Michael Butterworth, and Andrew Billings for their insightful comments during the preparation of this essay.

The author would like to thank the Editor, the anonymous reviewers, and Ashli Stokes, Margaret Quinlan, Min Jiang, Thomas Oates, Michael Butterworth, and Andrew Billings for their insightful comments during the preparation of this essay.

Notes

[1] US Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General, Bad Newz Kennels, Smithfield, Virginia—Animal Fighting, by Brian L. Haaser, HY-3330-0018 (Beltsville, MD, 2008), 2; Selena Roberts, “Unleashing the Dogs that Abhor,” New York Times, June 6, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/sports/football/06roberts.html.

[2] Bad Newz Kennels, 4–9.

[3] Judy Battista, “Vick Finishes His Sentence; Future is Cloudy,” The New York Times, July 20, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/sports/football/21vick.html.

[4] “Goodell: Vick Must Change to Return,” Associated Press, April 22, 2009, http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4087592.

[5] Will Leitch, “The Impossible, Inevitable Redemption of Michael Vick,” GQ, September, 2011, http://www.gq.com/sports/profiles/201109/michael-vick-gq-september-2011-interview.

[6] Nick Couldry, “Playing for Celebrity: Big Brother as Ritual Event,” Television & New Media 3, no. 3 (2002): 285.

[7] For more on popular associations between crime and African American, male athletes see: Daniel A. Grano, “Risky Dispositions: Thick Moral Description and Character-Talk in Sports Culture,” Southern Communication Journal 75, no. 3 (2010): 255–76; Dana E. Mastro, Erin Blecha, and Anita Atwell Seate, “Characterizations of Criminal Athletes: A Systematic Examination of Sports News Depictions of Race and Crime,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 55, no. 4 (2011): 526–42; Suzanne Marie Enck-Wanzer, “All's Fair in Love and Sport: Black Masculinity and Domestic Violence in the News,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 6, no. 1 (2009): 1–18; Thomas P. Oates, “The Erotic Gaze in the NFL Draft,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 4, no. 1 (2007): 74–90; John Hoberman, Darwin's Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997); and John M. Hoberman, Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport (New York: Free Press, 1992).

[8] I favor reconciliation over apologia approaches as apologia studies tend to translate forgiveness to the instrumental concerns of self-defense and image restoration. Apologia scholars have certainly made significant contributions to thinking about forgiveness in communication studies and thoughtful essays have been written about the cultural importance of apology in sport and celebrity crises. But a focus on image restoration, mortification, or purgation is actually consistent with the problems of forgiveness I take up in this essay. For more on distinctions between reconciliation and apologia, see John B. Hatch, “Beyond Apologia: Racial Reconciliation and Apologies for Slavery,” Western Journal of Communication 70, no. 3 (2006): 186–211. For apologia research that particularly parallels the themes of my essay, see: Emil B. Towner, “A <Patriotic> Apologia: The Transcendence of the Dixie Chicks,” Rhetoric Review 29, no. 3 (2010): 293–309; William L. Benoit, “Hugh Grant's Image Restoration Discourse: An Actor Apologizes,” Communication Quarterly 45, no. 3 (1997): 251–67; Jeffrey Nelson, “The Defense of Billie Jean King,” The Western Journal of Speech Communication 48, no. 1 (1984): 92–102; and Noreen Wales Kruse, “Apologia in Team Sport,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 67, no. 3 (1981): 270–83.

[9] John B. Hatch, “Reconciliation: Building a Bridge from Complicity to Coherence in the Rhetoric of Race Relations,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 6, no. 4 (2003): 750.

[10] Sut Jhally, “Cultural Studies and the Sports/Media Complex” in Media, Sports, and Society, ed. Lawrence A. Wenner (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1989), 70–93. Also see David Rowe, Sport, Culture and the Media: The Unruly Trinity (2nd ed.) (Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press, 2004), xx.

[11] Joseph A. Maguire, “The Global Media Sports Complex: Key Issues and Concerns,” Sport in Society 14, no. 17/18 (2011): 966.

[12] Hatch, “Reconciliation: Building a Bridge,” 750.

[13] Dana L. Cloud, Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics: Rhetoric of Therapy (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), xviii–xix. Also see See Mari Boor Tonn, “Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8, no. 3 (2005): 405–30.

[14] Hatch, “Reconciliation: Building a Bridge,” 751–2.

[15] Kirt H. Wilson, “Is There Interest in Reconciliation?” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 7, no. 3 (2004): 370.

[16] Mark Lawrence McPhail, “A Question of Character: Re(-)signing the Racial Contract,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 7, no. 3 (2004): 391.

[17] Jason Edward Black, “Extending the Rights of Personhood, Voice, and Life to Sensate Others: A Homology of Right to Life and Animal Rights Rhetoric,” Communication Quarterly 51, no. 3 (2003): 316. The expansion of human/nonhuman rights that Black analyzes can also be attributed to visually oriented attributions of “voice” in animal rights campaigns, where experiences of pain, fear and suffering related through animals’ faces and bodies blur distinctions between human/nonhuman identity and well-being. See Wendy Atkins-Sayre, “Articulating Identity: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Animal/Human Divide,” Western Journal of Communication 74, no. 3 (2010): 309–28; and Kathryn M. Olson and G. Thomas Goodnight, “Entanglements of Consumption, Cruelty, Privacy, and Fashion: The Social Controversy Over Fur,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 80, no. 3 (1994): 249–76.

[18] For a philosophical, political, and ethical exploration of dog-human relationships see Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003).

[19] As of 2012, there was one dog for every four Americans. See Theresa Bradley and Ritchie King, “The Dog Economy is Global—But What is the World's True Canine Capital?” The Atlantic, November 13, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/the-dog-economy-is-global-but-what-is-the-worlds-true-canine-capital/265155/.

[20] Claudia Kawczynska and Cameron Woo, “Introduction,” in Claudia Kawczynska and Cameron Woo (eds.), Dog is My Co-Pilot: Great Writers on the World's Oldest Friendship (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), ix–x.

[21] See Atkins-Sayre, “Articulating Identity,” 316–8; and Black, “Extending the Rights,” 323.

[22] Francis Battista, “Michael Vick: Apology Accepted, But …,” Best Friends Animal Society, August 28, 2009, http://bestfriends.org/News-And-Features/News/Michael-Vick-Apology-accepted,-but-%E2%80%A6/. Debates over forgiving Vick often entailed finding ways to speak on behalf of the dogs, victims who for obvious reasons did not have access to the symbolic communities—news media, the NFL, HSUS—where Vick's case for forgiveness was being negotiated. Rhetoricians are starting to rethink the priority of human speech through recognition of animal rhetorics (as Debra Hawhee summarizes, a shift “from ‘wordy’ language to language rendered with calls, tones, facial expressions, and bodies”). See Debra Hawhee, “Toward a Bestial Rhetoric,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 44, no. 1 (2011): 82. Also see Diane Davis, “Creaturely Rhetorics,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 44, no. 1 (2011): 88–94; and George A. Kennedy, “A Hoot in the Dark: The Evolution of General Rhetoric,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 25, no. 1 (1992): 1–21. While some coverage maintained that surviving dogs deserved to be “heard” in Vick's case for forgiveness, ultimate authority over forgiving him was presumed to rest with league officials, team owners, coaches, journalists, and fans, who had control over his future in the NFL.

[23] The ASPCA and PETA, for example, refused Vick's PR representatives on similar grounds. See Ed Sayres, “The Road Ahead for Michael Vick,” The Huffington Post, August 20, 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-sayres/the-road-ahead-for-michae_b_264071.html; and “PETA Denies That It Plans to Do Ads with Michael Vick,” USA Today, May 1, 2009, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/2009-05-01-peta-denies-vick-ads_N.htm.

[24] Bill Plaschke, “Don't Be Fooled by the ‘New’ Michael Vick,” Los Angeles Times, August 18, 2011, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/sports_blog/2011/08/michael-vick-nfl-eagles.html.

[25] Abby D. Phillip, “Rescued Michael Vick Dogs Reunited 5 Years Later,” ABC News, November 9, 2012, http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/11/five-years-rescued-vick-dogs-reunite/; William Brangham, “The Dogs Are (Still) Alright,” PBS.org, July 1, 2011, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/video/video-the-dogs-are-alright-the-vick-dogs-make-a-comeback/6676/; Jim Gorant, The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption (New York: Gotham Books, 2010).

[26] Christie Keith, “Michael Vick's Unpaid Dues: Why Dog Advocates Aren't Moving On,” SF Gate, November 3, 2009, http://www.sfgate.com/pets/yourwholepet/article/Michael-Vick-s-unpaid-dues-Why-dog-advocates-2455696.php. Also see, for example, Bill Plaschke, “Dog Owner Can't Forgive Michael Vick,” Los Angeles Times, November 16, 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/16/sports/la-sp-plaschke-20101117.

[27] As Hatch notes, public forgiveness often features a problematic of presumption to speak for potential forgivers, as “[c]ollective forgiveness can only be spoken by representatives, and the groups they represent seldom, if ever, respond monolithically to public repentance.” Hatch, Race and Reconciliation, 195.

[28] Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes (New York: Routledge, 2001), 42.

[29] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 31–3, 39, 44–5; Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 458, 488. I want to note the relatively limited scope of forgiveness within the larger projects of both thinkers. Derrida's essay “On Forgiveness” (published in On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness) is a response to a specific set of questions posed in the journal Le Monde des debats. See Simon Critchley and Richard Kearney, “Preface,” in Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, vii. And Ricouer's chapter “Difficult Forgiveness” is the Epilogue to his much larger work Memory, History, Forgetting. See Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 457–506. Ricoeur emphasized this in an interview, stating that the epilogue is not part of the main book and “was asked of me as a matter of intellectual honesty.” See Paul Ricoeur, “Memory, History, Forgiveness: A Dialogue Between Paul Ricoeur and Sorin Antohi,” Janus Head 8, no. 1 (2005): 8–9. At several points in “Difficult Forgiveness” Ricoeur points to agreements with Derrida and their combined perspectives influence my own thinking on the problems taken up in this essay.

[30] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 31–2. Erik Doxtader warns that forgiveness might also undermine the purposes of reconciliation. He writes: “When reconciliation is defined through ideas like forgiveness and apology, reconciliation is usually endowed with a unifying telos.” The result may be that “forgiveness” works to bring closure to important controversies, “making a devastating demand on those who have little left to give.” See Erik Doxtader, The Potential of Reconciliation's Beginning: A Reply,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 7, no. 3 (2004): 383–4.

[31] Ricoeur, Memory, 488.

[32] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 39.

[33] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 59.

[34] Thomas Boswell, “A Real Tiger Was Somewhere within His Remarks,” The Washington Post, February 20, 2010, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2010-02-20/opinions/36921848_1_woods-apology-tiger. Also see, for example: Ruth Marcus, “In Rehab Nation, Sin Becomes Addiction,” The Washington Post, June 14, 2011, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-06-14/opinions/35235476_1_addiction-weiner-celebrity-rehab; and Mireya Navarro, “My Big Bad Mouth,” The New York Times, February 8, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/08/fashion/08rehab.html.

[35] Leitch, “The Impossible, Inevitable Redemption.”

[36] Sally Jenkins, “Michael Vick: A Work in Progress Worth Rooting For,” The Washington Post, November 13, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111204137.html.

[37] Buzz Bissinger, “Time to Forgive Michael Vick,” The Daily Beast, December 23, 2010, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/12/23/michael-vick-why-its-time-to-forgive-him.html.

[38] Gregg Doyel, “Opinion: Can't Hate Contrite Vick,” CBS News, August 17, 2009, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-5247189.html.

[39] Mark Andrejevic and Dean Colby, “Racism and Reality TV: The Case of MTV's Road Rules,” in How Real is Reality TV?: Essays on Representation and Truth, ed. David S. Escoffery (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006), 195–6.

[40] Andrejevic and Colby, “Racism,” 205.

[41] Andrejevic and Colby, “Racism,” 205.

[42] Andrejevic and Colby, “Racism,” 195–6.

[43] John Durham Peters, “Witnessing,” Media, Culture & Society, 23, no. 6 (2001): 709.

[44] Peters, “Witnessing,” 709, 717.

[45] Jarrett Bell, “Vick Back, Strings Attached; Conditions Include Guidance by Dungy,” USA Today, July 28, 2009, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/printedition/sports/20090728/vick28_st.art.htm.

[46] “Excerpts from NFL Letter to Michael Vick on Reinstatement,” Associated Press, July 27, 2009, http://hamptonroads.com/2009/07/excerpts-nfl-letter-michael-vick-reinstatement.

[47] “Excerpts.”

[48] Rachel E. Dubrofsky, “Surveillance on Reality Television and Facebook: From Authenticity to Flowing Data,” Communication Theory 21, no. 2 (2011): 117.

[49] Andrew Tolson, “‘Being Yourself’: The Pursuit of Authentic Celebrity,” Discourse Studies 3, no. 4 (2001): 443–57; Mark Andrejevic, Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 125; Couldry, “Playing for Celebrity,” 287.

[50] Dyer, Stardom, 142–3.

[51] “Excerpts.”

[52] Tracee Hamilton, “Getting Behind Michael Vick,” The Washington Post, October 2, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/01/AR2010100107505.html.

[53] Laurie Ouelette and James Hay, Better Living Through Reality TV: Television and Post-Welfare Citizenship (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 65–6.

[54] Howard Bryant, “Goodell Ruling Fails Vick, Players,” ESPN.com, July 28, 2009, http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=bryant_howard&id=4359839.

[55] Mark Andrejevic, “The Discipline of Watching: Detection, Risk, and Lateral Surveillance,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 23, no. 5 (2006): 397.

[56] Don Van Natta Jr., “His Game, His Rules,” ESPN the Magazine, March 5, 2013, http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/page/RogerGoodell/game-rules.

[57] Bryant, “Goodell Ruling.”

[58] Mike Florio, “Vick's Message to Rookies on Goodell: ‘He Don't Play,’” ProFootballTalk, June 25, 2012, http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/06/25/vicks-message-to-rookies-on-goodell-he-dont-play/.

[59] Grano, “Risky Dispositions.” Also see Jeff Benedict and Don Yaeger, Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL (New York: Warner Books, 1998).

[60] Ouellette and Hay, Better Living.

[61] “Excerpts.”

[62] Bryan Curtis, “The NFL's Spiritual Guru,” The Daily Beast, February 3, 2010, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/02/03/gods-coach.html.

[63] Bob Kravitz, “Dungy's Concerns Deserve to be Heard,” The Indianapolis Star, November 20, 2004.

[64] Tony Dungy, “Diversity Everywhere but the Sidelines,” The New York Times, February 20, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/opinion/20dungy.html; Skip Wood, “Dungy: Hiring Diversity Key in All Parts of Organization,” USA Today, February 21, 2003.

[65] “Dungy's Gay-Marriage Comments Draw Support, Criticism,” ESPN.com, March 22, 2007, http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=nfl&id=2808705; Cyd Zeigler, Jr., “Dungy Does Not Deserve a Pass for His Anti-Gay Actions,” Outsports.com, January 14, 2009, http://www.outsports.com/2009/1/14/3862958/dungy-does-not-deserve-a-pass-for-his-anti-gay-actions.

[66] Tony Dungy, “Guidance with a Fatherly Touch,” Sports Illustrated, May 25, 2009, http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1155622/index.htm.

[67] Howard Bryant, “Higher Calling,” ESPN Outside the Lines, December 28, 2011, http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=100128/TonyDungy.

[68] Patrik Jonsson, “A Lot at Stake for NFL and Eagles in Michael Vick's Comeback,” The Christian Science Monitor, August 15, 2009, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2009/0815/p25s04-ussc.html.

[69] Sean Hannity, “Interview with Tony and Lauren Dungy,” Fox News Network, January 21, 2011.

[70] Les Carpenter and Mark Maske, “How Vick Got a Second Chance in NFL,” The Washington Post, August 15, 2009, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-08-15/sports/36892725_1_michael-vick-tony-dungy-head-coach.

[71] Dungy, “Guidance”; Tony Dungy, “The Other Side of Michael Vick,” Dungy's Diary (blog), July 28, 2009, http://www.allprodad.com/dungy/the-other-side-of-michael-vick/; “Dungy on Vic: ‘I would take a chance on him,’” NPR, August 12, 2009, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111782935.

[72] Carpenter and Maske, “Second Chance”; Sam Farmer, “Tony Dungy's Work with Michael Vick is Laudable,” Los Angeles Times, August 16, 2009, http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/16/sports/sp-nfl-farmer16; Bryant, “Higher Calling.”

[73] Carpenter and Maske, “Second Chance.”

[74] Bob Brookover, “‘Lot of Soul-Searching,’” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 15, 2009, http://articles.philly.com/2009-08-15/news/24986200_1_lot-of-wrong-answers-novacare-complex-michael-vick.

[75] Bob Brookover, “How Vick Became an Eagle,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 16, 2009, http://articles.philly.com/2009-08-16/sports/24998135_1_michael-vick-coach-andy-reid-joe-banner.

[76] Brookover, “How Vick Became an Eagle”; Bob Brookover, “Michael Vick Joins Eagles,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 14, 2009, http://articles.philly.com/2009-08-14/news/24986140_1_michael-vick-virginia-tech-star-eagles-source.

[77] William C. Rhoden, “Award Shines a Light on Vick, and Others,” The New York Times, December 26, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/sports/football/27rhoden.html.

[78] Jill Rosen, “Animal Advocates Gather to Protest Vick's Ed Block Courage Award,” The Baltimore Sun, March 9, 2010, http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-03-09/sports/bal-vick-courage-award-0309_1_foundation-spokesman-paul-mittermeier-ed-block-courage-award-animal-advocates.

[79] “Vick Award Has Kennel Club Barking at Birds,” Philly.com, January 25, 2010, http://articles.philly.com/2010-01-25/sports/25210463_1_michael-vick-ed-block-courage-award-sportsmanship-and-courage.

[80] Perry Bacon, Jr., “Obama Weighs in on Michael Vick, and Other Cultural Issues,” The Washington Post, December 28, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/27/AR2010122704579.html.

[81] Gary Mihoces, “Many Fingers in Vick's Pie,” USA Today, September 2, 2011.

[82] “Vick, Eagles Agree to 2-Year Deal,” ESPN.com, August 14, 2009, http://www.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4397938.

[83] Mihoces, “Many Fingers.” I write “up to” because, while the contract was widely reported to be worth $100 million, it was structured so that Vick would likely be paid less than its full worth. See Mike Florio, “Vick's Real Deal? Five Years, $80 Million, $35.5 Million Guaranteed,” ProFootballTalk, August 30, 2011, http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/08/30/vicks-real-deal-five-years-80-million/.

[84] Jeff McLane, “Just Do It: Nike Brings Eagles’ Vick Back into Fold,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 2, 2011, http://articles.philly.com/2011-07-02/sports/29730743_1_eagles-vick-unequal-technologies-michael-vick; Jason Cole, “Vick Quickly Reemerging as Pitchman,” Yahoo Sports, July 20, 2011, http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=jc-cole_vick_reemerging_as_pitchman_072011.

[85] Mike Florio, “Vick Signs a New Deal with Nike,” ProFootballTalk, July 1, 2011, http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/07/01/vick-signs-a-deal-with-nike/; Zachary D. Rymer, “Michael Vick: Quarterback's Return to Nike Shows How Much He Has Been Forgiven,” Bleacher Report, July 1, 2011, http://bleacherreport.com/articles/755325-michael-vick-quarterbacks-return-to-nike-shows-how-much-he-has-been-forgiven; Kelsey Williams, “Nike to Michael Vick: Come Back, All is Forgiven,” SFGate, July 1, 2011, http://blog.sfgate.com/hottopics/2011/07/01/nike-to-michael-vick-come-back-all-is-forgiven/.

[86] John Branch, “As Vick Soars, Stigma of Conviction Fades,” The New York Times, November 18, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/sports/football/19vick.html. Also see Michael Hiestand, “Winning, Analysts Cast a New Light on Vick,” USA Today, November 23, 2010, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/hiestand-tv/2010-11-21-vick-analysts_N.htm; and Mike Lopresti, “Michael Vick Comeback Almost Too Fast to Fathom,” USA Today, November 18, 2010, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/lopresti/2010-11-17-lopresti-vick_N.htm?csp=34sports.

[87] Daniel A. Grano, “Ritual Disorder and the Contractual Morality of Sport: A Case Study in Race, Class, and Agreement,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 10, no. 3 (2007): 458–9.

[88] Grano, “Risky Dispositions”; Oates, “The Erotic Gaze.”

[89] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York, NY: Vintage, 1990), 61–2.

[90] Peters, “Witnessing,” 717.

[91] Erik Doxtader, “A Question of Confession's Discovery,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 41, no. 3 (2011): 270.

[92] See Jane Taylor, “‘Why Do You Tear Me From Myself?’: Torture, Truth, and the Arts of the Counter-Reformation,” in The Rhetoric of Sincerity, eds. Ernst van Alphen, Mieke Bal, and Carel Smith (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 19–43.

[93] Andrejevic and Colby, “Racism and Reality TV,” 205.

[94] Michael Vick, interview by James Brown, 60 Minutes, CBS, August 16, 2009, http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/michael-vick/.

[95] Michael Vick, interview by Jim Mora, Sunday Sitdown: Michael Vick Part 2, NFL.com, October 2, 2010, http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-network-gameday/09000d5d81b01474/Sunday-SitdownMichael-Vick-Part-2%20-%20part%20II.

[96] Michael Vick, interview by Pam Oliver, Vick Looks to Make Amends, msn.foxsports.com, October 3, 2010, http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/Michael-Vick-high-school-Philadelphia-Eagles-093010.

[97] Vick, 60 Minutes.

[98] See Andrejevic's explanation of “savvy skepticism” in “The Discipline of Watching,” 392–404.

[99] See, for example, Sally Jenkins, “The Gall of It All,” Washington Post, August 22, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/21/AR2007082102093.html; Earl Ofari Hutchinson, “Ghetto Dog Fighting—The Latest Urban Legend,” Huffington Post, September 5, 2007, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/ghetto-dog-fightingthe-la_b_63143.html; Dan Wakefield, “Bloodsport and Stereotypes,” Boston.com, September 8, 2007, http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/09/08/bloodsport_and_stereotypes/.

[100] Dubrofsky and Hardy, “Performing Race,” 379.

[101] Dubrofsky and Hardy, “Performing Race,” 382.

[102] Vick, 60 Minutes.

[103] “Vick Speaks at Church in D.C.,” Washington Post, September 30, 2009, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-09-30/sports/36838550_1_michael-vick-eagles-police-officers; Hank Gola, “Off the field, Philadelphia Eagles Quarterback Michael Vick Talks the Walk,” Daily News (New York), October 32, 2009, http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/field-philadelphia-eagles-quarterback-michael-vick-talks-walk-article-1.382634.

[104] William C. Rhoden, “Humane Society Sees Vick as an Ally, Not a Pariah,” The New York Times, May 21, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/sports/football/22rhoden.html.

[105] Michael Smith, “Group Head Says He Visited with Vick,” May 20, 2009, ESPN.com, http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4180150.

[106] Dungy, “Guidance.”

[107] Dorothy E. Roberts, “The Social and Moral Cost of Mass Incarceration in African American Communities,” Stanford Law Review 56 (2004): 1282–300.

[108] Becky Pettit and Bruce Western, “Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in US Incarceration,” American Sociological Review 69, no. 2 (2004): 155.

[109] Kiran Nagulpalli, “Strictly for the Dogs: A Fourteenth Amendment Analysis of the Race Based Formation and Enforcement of Animal Welfare Laws,” Rutgers Race & the Law Review 11 (2009): 240.

[110] See, for example, Betsy Z. Russell, “Idaho Senate Oks Dogfighting Bill,” The Spokesman-Review, February 2, 2008, http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2008/feb/02/idaho-senate-oks-dogfighting-bill/; “Dogfighting Now a Felony in All 50 States!,” PETA, March 7, 2008, http://www.peta.org/blog/dogfighting-now-felony-50-states/.

[111] Nagulpalli, “Strictly for the Dogs,” 238–9.

[112] Rhonda Evans, DeAnn K. Gauthier, Craig J. Forsyth, “Dog Fighting: Symbolic Expression and Validation of Masculinity,” Sex Roles 39, no. 11/12 (1998): 827.

[113] Rhonda D. Evans and Craig J. Forsythe, “The Social Milieu of Dogmen and Dogfights,” Deviant Behavior: An Interdisciplinary Journal 19, no. 1 (1998): 54. On this page Evans and Forsythe note that even as African American male participation in dog fighting was on the rise, they made up “only a small percentage of the participants within the sport.”

[114] Phyllis G. Coleman, “Note to Athletes, NFL and NBA: Dog Fighting is a Crime, Not a Sport,” Journal of Animal Law and Ethics 3 (2009): 93–6.

[115] Nagulpalli, “Strictly,” 246.

[116] Vick, Sunday Sitdown Part 2.

[117] Peter King, “Back to Prison with Michael Vick,” Sports Illustrated, March 28, 2011, http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1183564/index.htm.

[118] Michael Vick, Brett Honeycutt, and Stephen Copeland, Finally Free: An Autobiography (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing, 2012), 139.

[119] Toure,’ “What if Michael Vick Were White?” ESPN the Magazine, August 25, 2011, http://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/6894586/imagining-michael-vick-white-quarterback-nfl-espn-magazine.

[120] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 42–4.

[121] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 42–5.

[122] Ricoeur, Memory, 488.

[123] Ricoeur, Memory, 482–3.

[124] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 45.

[125] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 59–60.

[126] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 59, 31–2 (emphasis in original).

[127] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 45.

[128] See Cloud, Control, 165.

[129] Ricouer, Memory, 482–3; Hatch, Race and Reconciliation, 169.

[130] Doxtader, “The Potential,” 383–4.

[131] Ricoeur, Memory, 483.

[132] John Durham, Peters, Speaking Into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), 34.

[133] See, for example, Hatch, Race and Reconciliation, 169; and Ricouer, Memory, 481–6.

[134] Peters, Speaking, 56. Also see Ricoeur, Memory, 481–3.

[135] Peters, Speaking, 58.

[136] Hatch, Race and Reconciliation, 169–75.