A few hours ago (Sunday evening 2-28) I watched last weeks episode of the Michael Vick Project.  It was sick, and I’m not saying that in a dog lover kind of way, not saying it in what the detractors of this site would claim is a dogs over humans kind of way, not saying it just because I’ve been writing on this site since Michael Vick first started denying that he fought dogs or led a band of merry animal killers.

It was sick because Michael Vick is working to restore himself from his ‘Fall from Grace’ by literally revisiting the scene of the crime and putting hands on the weapons he used to commit the crime.  Oh and he is one of the producers of the TV vehicle broadcast by BET, so he is not only profiting from this sick venture directly, but also indirectly through his sports career. 

This show fully embodied why Michael Vick should not be on a reality TV show, and why he should not have a spotlight in the NFL.

Yes he should have a second chance in life and in a career, but not a second chance thrown back into his old life and career, where he damaged not only his own grace, but the real lives of too many real people, oh and he killed dogs too, tortured them, fought them and worse.

Watching this show, you will be struck by many terrible images, each getting worse and worse as the show proceeds.  It starts off in a benign fashion with Michael starting to speak to another group of kids at an extremely troubled high school Germantown High School at the request of the local chapter of the NAACP.  Now, many people have been quick to criticize the Humane Society for using a criminal to be their poster child for stopping the crime, but the NAACP is no better, as they push Michael Vick in front of kids as a role model who made a mistake and learned his lesson 2 months after getting out of prison.

I personally don’t believe in contrition, I don’t think Michael Vick should grovel and beg or anything like that, but I also don’t think that 2 months after he got out of prison he was suddenly qualified to go speak to kids.  For one thing, his public speaking skills are terrible, and I don’t mean bad, or unprofessional, or stiff, etc, they are just plain terrible.  He does ‘sound’ like he is being sincere and that might possibly get through to kids, but in today’s world, kids are completely immersed in an environment where only the best communicators on the planet can actually reach them and then its usually only through music or maybe tv.  To drop a chump straight out of prison in front of them and then listen to him give a speech that belongs in a sixth grade class stumbling through a poorly rehearsed book report like style is not only painful, but definitely not setting a good example.  Much worse, its probably not getting through at all.

Michael Vick, if you want to help kids avoid your mistakes, go take some serious public speaking classes and then practice your public speaking on a less susceptible audience where the stakes aren’t so high.  Don’t rebuild your career on the grace of kids as you step on their heads to get back on top in the NFL.

BUT THAT’S ONLY THE START OF THIS ATTROCITY OF A SHOW

Soon Michael Vick takes us on an SUV ride with his personal assistant (who apparently knew better and tried to get Vick to stop dog fighting, but really, who listens to their secretary?  I’m sure those kids at Germantown High School don’t listen to their secretaries either).  Now, the camera set up in the SUV is just awkward, and I only mention it because in this third show, all production quality is out the window and it only makes the true content that much harder to watch.

Vick is sitting in the back behind his secretary who is driving, with the invisible camera man in the front passenger seat, which all just adds to the presentation of Michael Vick above it all, rich and being chaufered around the Virginia country side on a jaunt to view his old dog killing grounds for the sake of the BET viewing audience.

They arrive at his old house, which no one will buy.  Its been remodeled a bit and you get a sense that Vick doesn’t recognize much of the house at all any more, from its former bachelor pad days.  It was apparently a boys party paradise, gee, I wonder why no family wants to buy it.

Vick eventually walks out back to the Bad Newz Kennels, the real kennels and the upstairs dog fighting ring in the upper floor of a shed/barn where the rug still smells of dog blood according to Vick.  (Tip for home investors looking to flip a Michael Vick property, MAKE SURE YOU REMOVE THE BLOODY CARPET YOU MORONS!)

As Michael Vick ‘remembers’ all of the crimes he used to commit here, you do feel that he is sincere in thinking that he made a mistake, he wishes many times on tape that he had given the injured dogs to some caring family that would adopt them and care for them, instead of beating them to death, electrocuting them, drowning and hanging them etc.

Maybe it was cut out of the show, but he doesn’t really say he wishes he had never fought dogs, something he had done since he was apparently about 7 years old, took a break when he was 12, and then came back to it when he had some money and was drafted after stopping by a barber shop in his old neighborhood to talk to a guy that had a lot of pit bulls, but he didn’t know the guy fought them.

Frankly that part sounded like a lot of bull shit.  I think he knew what he was doing when he went back to fight dogs again, and that is just another example of why I think he could fall off the wagon again, in the show he said, “we fought dogs like people sold drugs”.  And like like drugs, I think he has an addiction for fighting dogs, if not an addiction for blood.

AND THEN IT GOT EVEN UGLIER

So Vick leaves the fighting barn loft area, gingerly stepping down the steps, walks outside and notices a 2 x 6 leaning against a building.  Look there’s the beam we used to hang the dogs, he says.

Then Michael Vick walks over, grabs this wooden beam and holds it up against the two trees where it used to be nailed and describes how they used to hang dogs  there (to kill them).  You can almost visualize him not only hanging but beating and zapping them as if the poor dogs were a small heavy bag.

He walks by cages in and outside of buildings and I’m not saying dogs are like people, but I’ll be damned if the whole thing didn’t look like someone taking a tour of Auschwitz.  Michael Vick’s crimes are a small thing compared to the atrocities committed in concentration camps under the orders of Hitler, or any of the t0o many death camps that have crept into too many societies, militaries, and governments around the world since.  Some of those sick twisted psychos in Hitler’s day and since got their start somewhere and it might have been very similar to Michael Vick’s days working in the minor leagues of dog fighting before getting called up to even more evil someday, hopefully not.

But there was a reason why they did not have Hitler go tour through the concentration camps and talk about the crimes he ordered.  There was a reason why Hitler didn’t walk on the mass graves of his victims and describe what he felt when he had them killed.  Even if Hitler had been alive, and even if he had expressed remorse, a right thinking person would not put him on TV in a show that he produced and have him talk about his crimes so that he could regain ‘grace’ because THAT IS JUST SICK.

Even if a murderer is sorry for what they did, and they want to express that to the victims family, you don’t take them to the scene of the crime, put the murder weapon in their hand, and have them talk through what they did on their own TV show.  BEYOND SICK.

BET is soooo wrong in giving Vick this platform that it is absolutely ridiculous.  The NAACP made a mistake in having Vick speak to those kids in a troubled school, and the Humane Society made a smaller mistake in using Vick as a spokesperson against dog fighting, but BET and their remaining sponsors, which seems to consist largely of Warner Brothers movies, Dell.com, Lysol (which supposedly kills H1N1, can you say false advertising?) and Woolite, which wasn’t used to clean the dog fight blood out of Vick’s carpets have made the biggest mistake of all.  Hell, even the NFL hasn’t screwed the pooch as bad, they gave Michael Vick a boat load of money again and his old job back (no harm no foul, sorry bout your luck Vick, welcome back and sure you can keep your number, please accept a few million as a token of our stupidity).

This show is just sick, the sponsors are crazy, BET is crazy and all of them together are making this world a very nasty and ugly place.  Maybe if their business model fails, they can do some odd jobs for Michael Vick when he launches his next dog fighting ring on BET DEAD DOG SMACK DOWN.

Michael Vick or anyone at BET that still has some heart or soul left, pull the plug on this show.  I don’t know what is worse, the torture of watching it or the terrible crime that is being committed encouraging kids to follow in Michael Vick’s footsteps, footsteps that just went back to the dog fighting ring on BET, broadcast around the world.

No related posts.

This week the major corporate advertisers were just not present and a second or third string round up of advertisers were cycled by BET in between the shows breaks.  Most of the advertising was for BET shows or for Public announcement spots.  Three upcoming major motion picture releases were the largest ads present, followed by an advertisement by Dell.com.  You can see the full list below, which is likely representative of a rapidly dwindling amount of ad revenue for this show.  I have not heard what the viewership numbers might be this second episode, but the network can’t be making much if anything off this show in its second week.

One comment by Michael Vick stuck out in this episode

Michael Vick blamed his bankruptcy on a financial advisor who ‘did not do the right thing.’  

I have to admit that made me laugh in disgust a bit, as one more example of Michael Vick not really taking responsibility for his own actions.

There were extremely few references to dog fighting in this episode.  They did show what I believe is the first speech Michael Vick gave to a junior high in Philadelphia, where he walked on stage crossing the stage in front of a DJ to an audience of cheering kids.  Not exactly the type of introduction you would expect for an ex felon who killed dogs with his bare hands and was coming to talk to kids at risk of following in his foot steps. (actually the last thing I would hope for for any kids)  Michael Vick is comfortable on camera in the one on one asides, but he has a long long way to go before he will become an effective public speaker, he got by on his celebrity and fame and the message if he had one never really made it out anywhere.

Advertisements on Vick Project week of 2-16-2010

• Movie – Shutter Island with Leonardo Decaprio
• BET TV Shows
• Rap-it-up – Public spot, multiple spots
• Dear World – Public Spot Girls Inc. Spot
• Dell.com
• Movie – Green Zone with Matt Damon
• Centric Network
• Heart Disease awareness for African American women public spot ahealthybet.com
• TaxAct.com  (not sure this might have been a local Cable Spot insertion over top of the BET broadcast)
• Movie – Brooklyn’s Finest Richard Geer, Ethan Hawk and Wesley Snipes
• Lysol
• GoodHairDVD.com Chris Rock DVD
• RuPaul Drag Race on Logo Channel

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We had just updated the Sponsors to Protest Page here on the site, when we received this email with a much more comprehensive list of sponsors that are paying to advertise on the Michael Vick Project television show on BET.

We thought we’d HELP those sponsors get the idea of what their sponsorship brings to the world inserted between 10 hours of a choreographed make over of Michael Vick on TV.  Obviously if getting their ads in front of an extra 2.8 million people is so vital to them, we would like to offer some ad suggestions to help them get some more value for their ad dollar as they help finance Michael Vick’s PR Campaign…

Update 2-19-10 – The Footlocker ad has been removed from this article after we received word from one of our readers with a note from Footlocker stating:

"Generally, BET sells blocks of advertising time rather than media buys based on individual programs.  This means that Foot Locker does not choose the program that is showing when our commercial airs.  Please know that we would not intentionally advertise on programs that may be considered inappropriate or offensive to our consumers."

If their ads return to the Michael Vick Project we will be happy to return the ad for them.  In general, we would like advertisers to be aware of BET’s unsavory business practice of filling advertisers spots without telling them where their ads or ad dollars are going.  This does not mean that advertisers get a free pass.  Just like Michael Vick was responsible for spending his money from sponsors on killing dogs and running illegal dog fighting rings, advertisers are responsible to insure that their brand and spots and ad money are not used to promote shows that would harm that brand or society.  If they place a blind order of advertising and do not put controls on that order then any violent felon might be promoted onto a soap box and benefit financially for their crimes as would seem to be the case for Michael Vick on the Michael Vick Project.

Update – Several readers have indicated that Applebees has notified them via email that Applebees did not specifically seek to advertise on the Michael Vick Project on BET.  We have not been able to independently confirm that ourselves with Applebees, we have not found any press releases from Applebees on Michael Vick or the Michael Vick Project nor any other messages from Applebees.  We have not been able to confirm BET’s advertising practices, but in some of these cases it would appear that BET sort of dumped advertisers spots between breaks in the show when the advertisers did not specifically ‘prohibit their ads from running and funding the Michael Vick Project’.  This would not appear to be a good business practice by BET, but at the same time, advertisers must watch how their funds are spent and where the money goes.  As we learn more on this and other Michael Vick Project advertisers we will continue to keep you posted.

Update 2/19/10 – Some of our readers have been told by Sprint that they have pulled their advertising for the Michael Vick Project.  Again this would seem to be a situation where BET placed Sprint ads in spots on the Michael Vick Project without Sprint knowing that the ads would be there, and Sprint failed to follow up and see where their ads were placed and if the placement was appropriate.  We don’t have official confirmation from Sprint on this yet via a Press Release or other public statement but will keep our eye open.  If you see such a public statement please leave us a comment with details and a location.

Dave and Busters Ad Removed 2/16

Here’s a copy of the email.

Dear Friends,
Please e-mail the sponsors of the Michael Vick Reality Show and express your
opposition to their financial support of the program. As a result of their
advertising, Vick is profiting from a lucrative reality television contract.

This show is beyond the pale of depravity and must be canceled. Please also
stop buying these companies’ products immediately and tell your friends and
family to do the same. Of all the shows on television, these corporations
made a decision to support Michael Vick.

KFC
http://www.kfc.com/contact/

Buick
http://www.buick.com/pages/mds/helpcenter/contactUs.do

Bally Fitness
http://www.ballyfitness.com

PLEASE DO NOT SEE THE FOLLOWING MOVIES WHO ADVERTISED DURING THE SHOW:

• From Paris with Love
• Shudder Island
• The Crazies

Hershey’s
https://www.hersheys.com/contactus/contact-us-date.asp

Footlocker
http://www.footlocker.com/customerservice

Chevy
http://www.chevrolet.com/pages/mds/helpcenter/contactUs.do

CHEVY HAS EXPRESSED THEIR FULL SUPPORT FOR MICHAEL VICK’S SHOW. PLEASE
CONTINUE TO E-MAIL THEM UNTIL THEY GET THE MESSAGE.

Applebee’s
http://www.applebees.com/GuestContact.aspx

Sprint
http://www.sprint.com/index.html

SPRINT HAS EXPRESSED THEIR FULL SUPPORT FOR MICHAEL VICK’S SHOW. PLEASE
CONTINUE TO E-MAIL THEM UNTIL THEY GET THE MESSAGE.
Broadview Security (formerly Brinks Security)
http://www.broadviewsecurity-business.com/contactform.htm

Dave and Buster’s
http://www.daveandbusters.com

Dave & Buster’s World Headquarters
2481 Manana Drive
Dallas, TX 75220
214-357-9588

Please also contact BET and tell them what you think of the show:
https://bet.wufoo.com/forms/contact-us-betcom-management/

Sponsors that STOPPED Advertising on the Michael Vick Project television show due to caring people like yourself

2/15/10 Update: Dave and Busters announced on Twitter that they run general advertising on BET and had tightened their advertising guidelines to exclude the Michael Vick Project.  We have been unable to find any official Press Release and are relying on their twitter update on this issue.

2/4/10 Update: Nivea ended their commercial sponsorship of the show after
being inundated with customer e-mails complaining about their support of the
program.

2/5/10 Update: Pizza Hut issued a press release informing the public that
they asked BET to end their commercial support of the show.

2/5/10 Update: Denny’s Restaurant contacted BET and ended their support
after receiving e-mails from concerned customers expressing their opposition
to the show.

2/6/10 Update: L’Oreal issued a press release that they have terminated
their support of the Michael Vick "Reality" Show and apologized for
offending L’Oreal customers.

2/8/10 Update: Nationwide Insurance issued a press release announcing that
they asked BET to pull their ads from the Michael Vick Reality Show and that
they do not support the program and do not wish to have any association with
it.

(I will DVR the next episode and FF to the commercials to confirm these
advertisers’ commitments and identify any new advertisers who may have
filled their shoes.)

If Vick hadn’t killed dogs, he would never have this show. He’s making money
off his killing spree. He recently said the reason for the show is to clear
his family name. He also said that he will not speak about dog fighting
anymore after the show. When Vick said he was going to dedicate his life to
speaking out against dog fighting, apparently he meant he would do it twice
per month for a year until people forgot about it and it was safe for him to
be rich and famous again and profit from his crimes. He did a masterful job
of using the HSUS to help him re-enter society. He was never sincere. He
still thinks he’s a victim as evidenced by his arrogant and callous remarks
after being nominated for the Ed Block Courage Award:

"I’ve overcome a lot, more than probably one single individual can handle or
bear," Vick said. "You ask certain people to walk through my shoes, they
probably couldn’t do. Probably 95 percent of the people in this world
because nobody had to endure what I’ve been through, situations I’ve been
put in…"

Some people argue "everyone deserves a second chance…it’s time to move on"
and "everyone makes mistakes". Vick did not make a mistake; it was a
conscious and calculated decision that he knew was wrong. He is diabolical,
transparent, and evil. There is no cure for evil. He doesn’t deserve a
second chance for his heinous and unspeakable crimes against animals. Those
of us who speak for animals will not "move on" as Vick is emblematic of a
larger problem in a society that shows disregard for the welfare of animals
and believes lenient sentences and fines equate to justice. They do not.
If people want to idolize this sadistic killer, cheer for him from the
stands and wear his jersey, they can do it. We draw the line with a reality
show that allows him to profit from his felonies. Let us send a clear
message — if you brutalize helpless animals, you will not be accepted back
into society and return to fame and wealth without opposition. Our silence
allows the opposite message to be sent. Complacency breeds acceptance.
Acceptance leads to continued violence against animals. We do not have to
accept things as they are and we will not.

Please help us send a message to the shameless sponsors of this show that we
will boycott their products until they end their support of the program.

Thank you.

On behalf of the dogs Michael Vick fought, kicked, shot, hung, electrocuted,
drowned, and tortured.

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That’s not entertainment, I don’t care who you are. 

That’s pretty much the universal gut reaction to the announcement that reality TV has managed to find a way to get even worse.  This time it is jumping the shark by picking up a tv show apparently produced by Michael Vick’s own production company (How can a bankrupt person start a television production company?)

The show, tentatively if not creatively titled The Michael Vick Project, will follow the dogfighting ringmaster as he joins up with the Philadelphia Eagles, rebuilds relationships with his fiancée and kids and attempts to make amends—presumably of both the court-ordered and PR-advised variety—for his 2007 arrest.

"I just want people to really get to know me as an individual," he told the paper. "What I want to do is change the perception of me. I am a human being. I’ve made some mistakes in the past, and I wish it had never happened. But it’s not about how you fall, but about how you pick yourself up." E-Online

It would seem that Michael Vick’s assertion that ‘it’s not about how you fall, but about how you pick yourself up.’ is more wishful PR spin thinking as it definitely does matter how you fall and who you harm as you fall.

I guess that’s just one of the many reasons why Michael Vick never seems to get it.  Regardless, even if you are a Michael Vick supporter, you probably groaned when you heard about this show.  Visions of Whitney and Bobby, Ron James and Flavor Flav, Little People in a Big World and soap box dating game production wanna be reality match ups fizzling in the back of your brain.

If there was ever a time to save money to get out of the recession, dropping your cable package for the winter might be your best bet.

Regardless for those of you looking for yet another company to boycott, just add BET to your list.

Related posts:

1. Dog’s Reality Show Could be Biggest Obstacle for Vick’s Return to the NFL   National Geographic is going to feature 4 of Vick’s...
2. If Michael Vick is Redeemed, Show Me His Puppy! Yep, that’s right if Michael Vick has redeemed himself, where...
3. Michael Vick Wants to Play for the Panthers in NC – Where his Dog Fighting Partner was Murdered – and the Home of SACKVICK.NET There was a time when I used to day dream...

This is the original sponsorship list from 2007 for Michael Vick

After his guilty plea, complete and detailed write up of his sick crimes, all sponsorships ended.  (very brave of these sponsors to pull the plug at that point)  ;(

For a list of Michael Vick’s New Sponsors

* A Strike through indicates that sponsor ship and money has been removed by corporate sponsor.

Nike – Finally canned contract on 8-24-07 after Vick entered plea deal

Reebok

NFL – No word on Vick endorsements and merchandise sales

The Falcons – No word on Vick endorsements and merchandise sales

Air-Tran – Did not renew contract in June when it expired – Story describes why

Coca-Cola’s Powerade

Rawlings – Ended 8-1-07

Kraft’s Nabisco cookies

Sprint

Motorola – Motorola did not respond to request for updates on their status with Michael Vick.

Home Depot

Wendy’s

Sources for List:

1. ListAfterList.com – Companies who Sponsor(ed) Michael Vick
2. If you know of additional Vick sponsors still supporting Michael Vick, please leave a comment or email us so that we can keep track

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