The Big Picture: Maddening

[DirkRhyolite]

New Madden installments are more than just roster updates. They usually tweak the gameplay in several ways as well, in order to make the game suckier and to remove any of the good aspects left over from previous installments.

As far as Vick goes, his actions were not as bad as Roethlisberger's crime of sexual assault or Brady's crime of horrible hair. KFC and McDonalds, circuses and bullfighters, dog racers and horse racers all torture and kill thousands of animals every year for profit. Vick is small time.

And how is being a quarterback worse than being a physicist or a soldier? Physicists created the atom bomb, killed 150,000 people in a day. Soldiers torture and kill people for a living. And you're saying a guy who throws a ball around is automatically less worthy of respect?

 

[iron skirt]

i hate people who mistreat animals! "hate is a strong word!"... yeah but in this case it might not be strong enough. i sincearely thinck death is not a punishment enough for such monsters! treating animals licke that just because they're animals is not much diferent then what the nazis did... before i am atacked for this statemant: animals can't defend themselvs!

 

[Nimcha]

Hmmm, it always surprises me how people care so much about random animals. I wonder where that comes from...

 

[bdcjacko]

He got his second chance - he's still playing professional football and getting paid obscene amounts of money for it. He's been given the opportunity to make a living off his athletic prowess. Anything other than that? He was a millionaire who got his jollies torturing and killing innocent animals. He can die in a damn fire.

I don't know if he should die in a damn fire, but I understand your outrage. I think it is pretty sick that people still think he is a "cool guy" and want him to be the public face of anything.

Also, now all I can think of is Micheal Vick would probably play Lego Star Wars 3 in front of dogs just to make them cry.

 

[Wolcik]

"not saying those guys shouldn't be denied a madden cover either."

Gah. Too many double negatives.

Glad you pointed that out - Bob pointed out the story and you pointed out lingustic delicious that I would have missed XD

 

[emeraldrafael]

I wonder what his opinions on murderers are.

Also, this is probably the most blantent attempt at trolling I think Bob has tried.

But meh. I think VIck has done his time. People need to keep personal and sports life separate. Pretty much every Oakland Raiders and I would say half the Baltimore Ravens are criminals and shouldnt be allowed to be anywhere near a football, but they still play. And I'm sure if Tom brady had done something like this, it would get whitewashed while he continued goi- wait... no, I dont need to revisit that argument. Not the time or place.

Point being, he served his time. Yes, he did something deplorable, and yes, animal lovers or people who view this as bad (which it is, though I think there's a level) would say he should have been punished much harder. Appearantly this was on the same level as what OJ did from the amount of vile he's getting. Let him be on the cover of something that no one really cares about unless you're American (and lets face it, you could throw OJ strangling a dog while Vick rains money down and Favre standing naked in the background sexting pics of the whole thing and it would still sell (though it would be much more shamed faced in stores and probably more over online). Just move on, cause the more attention you give it, the bigger this gets, and the more it will sell, thus the more incentive for people to buy it.

Yes, I get this is Bob's opinion page, but Bob is often the one who says that protesting or making public opinions are not the way to go about things.

... Besides, you could argue that Vick is long overdo for a cover, with his works in the Falcons.

EDIT:

... and Ted Kennedy are both responsible for vehicular deaths but no one talks about that. ...

You know the rule, you cant talk shit on the Kennedys. Otherwise they use their connections and bury you. They're the American Camelot.

 

[WaderiAAA]

I don't care about "football" (in quotation mark because it is already used by a different sport and a sport in which you rarely kick the ball doesn't deserve the term), so I hadn't heard about this, but for the sake of the argument:

I'm not sure if you can really blame EA for it. If they were to seclude him from the vote before it started, they might seem hypocritical for not leaving out others - it would be hard to draw the line between who was and wasn't elegible and it would probably be too much work to take out everyone with a record so I can understand that they won't go there. If they take him out now, when he is winning, then it will be stupid because why did they let him be in the vote if they didn't want him to win.

The thing is that the people have spoken (or is about to anyway), and they don't really seem to care about the animal cruelty thing.

That is the problem about public voting - people suck.

 

[Alleged_Alec]

New Madden installments are more than just roster updates. They usually tweak the gameplay in several ways as well, in order to make the game suckier and to remove any of the good aspects left over from previous installments.

As far as Vick goes, his actions were not as bad as Roethlisberger's crime of sexual assault or Brady's crime of horrible hair. KFC and McDonalds, circuses and bullfighters, dog racers and horse racers all torture and kill thousands of animals every year for profit. Vick is small time.

And how is being a quarterback worse than being a physicist or a soldier? Physicists created the atom bomb, killed 150,000 people in a day. Soldiers torture and kill people for a living. And you're saying a guy who throws a ball around is automatically less worthy of respect?

As a baseline? Yes. Soldiers are there to protect society from invaders, physicists and scientists in general constantly create new products to better our lives. . Are there exceptions? Yeah, sure, but most of them are good guys.
I still have to see an athlete whose athletic performances were so tremendously good that it cured six kinds of cancer, and gave everyone present a popsicle.

 

[Tempest13]

I have to agree on the basis that glorification of sports stars has lead to public leniency of their actions. Which is probably the one thing I hate more than anything else in the world. I just wanna say this, I hope you people that let X football/basketball/etc player off the hook for murder/assault/rape/etc have a good season, cuz that's pretty much why you let a criminal off easy for their actions.

 

[Jim Grim]

What's the connection between his appearing on the cover of a game and the crimes he's committed? Would you feel like you were condoning his actions if you bought it? Why? Does he recieve money for the use of his image? If that's the case, and it's the reason you disagree with this, then perhaps he shouldn't be allowed to keep his job as a professional footballer anyway. Other than that I don't see any connection between him appearing on the cover of a box and him torturing small animals.

 

[SatansBestBuddy]

You know, I disagree with you, Bob, I don't actually think the majority of people are voting for him so he'd be on the cover because he's a good athlete.

I think people are voting for him so either EA will refuse to put him on the cover, causing a shitstorm of controversy, or EA will put him on the cover, causing a different shitstorm of controversy.

Either way, people will get weeks worth of tabloid level news from every outlet from Fox to Kotaku.

In short, the internet if full of terrible people who are bored and want to take part in some mayhem anonymously, and what better way than an internet poll deciding which real life NFL star could be on the cover of a multi-million selling sports game?

 

[Steve the Pocket]

factory farming is morally on the same plane as dogfighting. if you eat meat, you eat it because you like the taste. any nutrients can be had from other sources for less cost.

Are you seriously saying that killing an animal to eat it is the same as torturing it for amusement? Don't you care about animals?

He did specify factory farms. From what I've heard, killing the animal is the least cruel thing they do to it. But that's just what I've heard.

 

[Altaria87]

Sorry Bob, but I don't agree with a lot of this, there are much worse crimes this man could have done; murder, rape, child abuse etc than simply making dogs fight each other. Sure, it's cruel alright and I wouldn't do it personally, but just as bad things go on in nature every day. Also I didn't like in your video how you dismissed a lot of the oppositions potential arguments without even explaining why you did so. I happen to believe that morals don't apply in the same way to animals as they do to humans, I don't see an issue here.

Perhaps it's time to forgive and forget, he's done his time and if he says he's sorry, then I'll accept that. Anyway, just being on the front of what quite frankly is an unimportant video game cover for just one year is hardly worth being worked up about.

I agree with this. So much.
If you REALLY think that dog abuse is one of the worst crimes a human can commit, you have seriously lost a lot of respect form this rando guy on the Internet. Dogs are NOT paragons of innocence, I have lived my entire lfie with a crushing fear of dogs due to being attacked by one as a child. Dogs have KILLED PEOPLE. And I really hate it when people say it is somehow unforgivable to say 'it's just a dog'.
Yes, dog abuse isn't somehting I would condone - I disagree with dogfighting simply because it increases the amount of truly dangerous dogs in society. But it is Nowhere. Friggin'. Near the worst thing a human can do.

 

[SapphireD910]

I am really in agreement with Bob on this one. I'm someone who still eats meat, but I believe animals are not so far from ourselves to go out of our way to hurt them. I mean we domesticate them just to unleash these horrors on them?

I have had such a horrible time with this Vick thing. I didn't know about the game cover, but I did see that he was getting a TV show on some network and that infuriated me. How can people forget or ignore things so easily? I know a lot of people that say "I can like the work/art/etc without liking the man". Except that by liking someone's music, films, or that they play a great game, you're just supporting them, putting money in their pocket, and not letting them see at all that besides legal consequences, their nasty choices also have social backlash. Few of my friends understood my displeasure whenever I heard about this guy because they either were unfamiliar (the only media they pay attention to is what they download or buy) or they just don't feel that much for animals (apathy is such a nasty thing).

So thank you Bob, for pointing out something I thought most people ignored and moved on with. I'm a firm believer in forgive, but don't forget. How can the person ever learn, ever keep from repeating mistakes, if in a short time it's like the incident never happened. There's no motivation to reform if all it takes is bringing up faith and a few months to toss every offense out the window in the public eye. Then on top of that, you get all this exposure and these deals, when most have forgotten why you're in the news in the first place.

 

[Owlslayer]

I haven't played any Madden games, and haven't heard of the guy either, sto thanks for explaining what he did.

What can i say that all the other posters haven't? Not much, really...
Yes, they guy is a total bastard for doing what he did. He should not be on the cover. I mean, he really shouldn't, as in, why are people voting for someone like that? Haven't they heard what he did? Or have they all forgotten it? Or just plain don't care? I have no idea...

Also, i really liked how passionate Bob was, this was a great change to the normality of his videos. Passion is a good thing.

 

[righthanded]

Eh, weak episode

factory farming is morally on the same plane as dogfighting. if you eat meat, you eat it because you like the taste. any nutrients can be had from other sources for less cost.

Are you seriously saying that killing an animal to eat it is the same as torturing it for amusement? Don't you care about animals?

if you don't enjoy eating animals, there are alternatives, and they're more cost effective too.
greed drives profits from death in any case. I don't know why there's the need to draw a distinction.