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I loved this article. What I saw as important is the importance of apologizing to children. When a parent apologizes for screwing up to a child it is liberating for the kid. It means to the child that what the child thinks of you is important to you. Your opinion counts. It is totally empowering. It clears the air and puts you both on the same page again. And it teaches the child how to apologize... and what it means to say you are sorry, and it won't happen again.
<span style="font-size: 14pt">Michael Vick: The right apology could help young fans</span>
<span style="font-family: 'Fixedsys'">Wednesday July 22, 2009, 10:39 AM</span>
On Monday, Vick served the last moment of his 20-month confinement for organizing an extensive interstate dogfighting ring. At the time, I wished his sentence had been converted into dog years, which would have put his release date around 2021.
Though free to resume his life, Vick's full fate is still uncertain. I don't really care if the NFL rescinds Vick's suspension, or even if any teams take him. The most important part of Michael Vick's fate is his moral legacy, especially as perceived by a generation of children and teenagers for whom sports or at least sports fandom is part of their DNA.
Unlike President Bush, who leaves his shaky legacy in the hands of future historians, Michael's Vick's moral legacy actually lies in his own big, football-friendly palms. His reputation may be in tatters, but with his own words -- the right words, at the right time, in the right place -- he can not only save his legacy, but much more.
What's at stake is actually bigger than Vick himself. Though he's been involved with kids' charities in the past, he can now have a much stronger impact on the attitudes of all youth, particularly those who, for whatever reason, might be as wrongly-bent as he was.
I'm thinking in particular of 17-year-old Cheyenne Cherry, the hardened Bronx teen who helped burn a former friend's kitten alive last May, and was sentenced to a year in prison for what she calls "just a joke."
We've seen a number of public figures do the apology thing before cameras recently, but while the American public has patience for adulterous politicians and celeb-on-celeb violence, we clearly have no appetite for attacks on defenseless children or animals. Vick is in a special category of scoundrel, so he needs to get off this script.
Michael Vick will be allowed to do his first post-prison interviews next week. At that time, he needs to speak from the heart, not from a teleprompter. He needs to give a press conference, not a public service announcement. He needs to pledge a new Michael Vick in the presence of his three children, not just the company of his agents and lawyers.
Young people need to hear Vick say that inhumane treatment of animals anywhere, for any reason, is wrong. They need to look into Vick's eyes and see genuine remorse for evil. What Michael Vick did is NOT a mistake; it's an abhorrence.
The message needs to be so genuine, so unambiguous, that media-jaded children across America will stop seeing Vick as the archetypal fallen-from-grace athlete, and instead know him as a human being who needed and was able to morally reform himself from the inside out.
Until he moves us, Michael Vick may walk among us, may surround himself with apologists and yea-sayers, may even make great rushing and passing plays for us, but he'll be in a perennial third-and-long situation when it comes to redeeming his humanity.
Even as a free man, Vick should still be judged by how he responds to his depravity. So should we all.
Joel Schwartzberg is an award-winning essayist and author of "The 40-Year-Old Version: Humoirs of a Divorced Dad". You can learn more about protecting animals from cruelty from both the ASPCA and The Humane Society.
<span style="font-size: 14pt">Michael Vick: The right apology could help young fans</span>
<span style="font-family: 'Fixedsys'">Wednesday July 22, 2009, 10:39 AM</span>
On Monday, Vick served the last moment of his 20-month confinement for organizing an extensive interstate dogfighting ring. At the time, I wished his sentence had been converted into dog years, which would have put his release date around 2021.
Though free to resume his life, Vick's full fate is still uncertain. I don't really care if the NFL rescinds Vick's suspension, or even if any teams take him. The most important part of Michael Vick's fate is his moral legacy, especially as perceived by a generation of children and teenagers for whom sports or at least sports fandom is part of their DNA.
Unlike President Bush, who leaves his shaky legacy in the hands of future historians, Michael's Vick's moral legacy actually lies in his own big, football-friendly palms. His reputation may be in tatters, but with his own words -- the right words, at the right time, in the right place -- he can not only save his legacy, but much more.
What's at stake is actually bigger than Vick himself. Though he's been involved with kids' charities in the past, he can now have a much stronger impact on the attitudes of all youth, particularly those who, for whatever reason, might be as wrongly-bent as he was.
I'm thinking in particular of 17-year-old Cheyenne Cherry, the hardened Bronx teen who helped burn a former friend's kitten alive last May, and was sentenced to a year in prison for what she calls "just a joke."
We've seen a number of public figures do the apology thing before cameras recently, but while the American public has patience for adulterous politicians and celeb-on-celeb violence, we clearly have no appetite for attacks on defenseless children or animals. Vick is in a special category of scoundrel, so he needs to get off this script.
Michael Vick will be allowed to do his first post-prison interviews next week. At that time, he needs to speak from the heart, not from a teleprompter. He needs to give a press conference, not a public service announcement. He needs to pledge a new Michael Vick in the presence of his three children, not just the company of his agents and lawyers.
Young people need to hear Vick say that inhumane treatment of animals anywhere, for any reason, is wrong. They need to look into Vick's eyes and see genuine remorse for evil. What Michael Vick did is NOT a mistake; it's an abhorrence.
The message needs to be so genuine, so unambiguous, that media-jaded children across America will stop seeing Vick as the archetypal fallen-from-grace athlete, and instead know him as a human being who needed and was able to morally reform himself from the inside out.
Until he moves us, Michael Vick may walk among us, may surround himself with apologists and yea-sayers, may even make great rushing and passing plays for us, but he'll be in a perennial third-and-long situation when it comes to redeeming his humanity.
Even as a free man, Vick should still be judged by how he responds to his depravity. So should we all.
Joel Schwartzberg is an award-winning essayist and author of "The 40-Year-Old Version: Humoirs of a Divorced Dad". You can learn more about protecting animals from cruelty from both the ASPCA and The Humane Society.