Why it is difficult to forget

Battlin' Bob sent me this article by Bill Plaschke in the Los Angeles Times and after reading it-I have my doubts that I can truly ever think of Michael Vick as just another quarterback-no matter how well he plays or how many public service announcements that the lefty passer makes.

I never had an issue with Michael Vick before the dogfighting problems came to pass.
I really enjoyed watching him play at Virginia Tech and the Falcons and despite not being a terrific thrower, he was exciting and fun to watch.
Vick didn't seem to have a bad attitude either for the most part, so it was easy to pull for him.
I had him on my fantasy team for years and was a "keeper" of mine for the longest time.

So I didn't come into this with an already established dislike of Michael Vick the player/person, I just followed the brutality of his deeds as they came out and Vick has served his time for his crime.
I have no problem at all with Vick playing in the NFL, if they didn't allow him to play, he would have a huge court case to play with -the NFL, after all, is the league that allows Ray Lewis to pursue a career in their game.

At the same time-consider Plaschke's words "Essentially, an ex-convict is dominating America's most popular sport while victims of his previous crime continue to live with the brutality of that crime, and has that ever happened before?".
I cannot imagine the thinking of anyone that allows dogs to fight to the death and cause such damage to dogs physically and mentally and anyone that knows me knows that I am not exactly a Mr.Softee on things.

Read this article and tell me where you stand.
The article gives more detail on the suffering of a Vick dog than I will detail, but I would implore you to give it a glance, it should make you at least ponder a bit.
No matter how many touchdowns Michael Vick throws, how many playoff games his teams win and no matter how many mea culpa that he speaks-In some quarters, he will never escape the horrific
activities that he was involved in with canines.

I know we should forgive and forget, but some things just cannot be gotten past, and uncalled for cruelty in the name of someone's sick version of sport/competition is just too difficult to forget.
Forgetting may be the humane thing to do, but Michael Vick's treatment of his dogs (Mel is the black dog in the rear of the picture) was the furthest thing from humane.
I suppose I just cannot get that far down the road.....

Photo Credit-Richard Hunter