[via BRENDAN CALLING]
PHILADELPHIA – The publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer is defending his decision to make former football player Michael Vick a regular columnist who will write about breeding and raising dogs.
Vick was the “the key figure” of an extensive unlawful interstate dogfighting ring operating over a period of five years that critics call cruelty to animals. One critic of the Inquirer’s Vick columns says it’s like having O.J. Simpson write about the criminal justice system.
Inquirer Publisher Brian Tierney says that’s a silly comparison. He says Simpson has been found liable
for wrongful death of a human being and Vick had been through no such legal process.
As Tierney put it: “Speech that is most important to defend is the speech that you hate; it’s easy to defend the speech that you like.”
Editorial page editor Harold jackson was quick to respond in a column:
Paris. Yes, the one in France.
That’s the farthest point from which The Inquirer received e-mails protesting our contract with Michael Vick to write a monthly column, which mostly centers on topics related to the care and raising of dogs, especially pit bulls.
PREVIOUSLY: YOO HOOEY: Inky’s Harold Jackson And Daily News’ Will Bunch Trade Blows Over ‘Torture Guy’ Editorialist
PREVIOUSLY: Why Is THIS Man Bloviating About Supreme Court Replacements In The Inquirer?
UPDATE: Suspended NFL star Michael Vick left a Kansas prison before dawn Wednesday to begin home confinement in Virginia, one of his attorneys said, the latest step on a journey that Vick hopes will lead to his reinstatement. Vick, who turns 29 in June, slipped past waiting cameras and reporters undetected to leave a federal penitentiary in Leavenworth after serving 19 months for financing a dogfighting ring. He was headed to Virginia by car to begin two months of home confinement at his five-bedroom house in Hampton before a scheduled released from federal custody on July 20. MORE