Yesterday, in the Wednesday Bullets, I wrote:

Stephon Marbury as shown on Channel 9 in Albany, and transcribed by Newsday's Alan Hahn: "We don't say anything about people shooting deers and shooting other animals. You know what I mean? From what I hear, dog-fighting is a sport. It's just behind closed doors and I think it's tough that we build Michael Vick up and then we break him down. I think he's one of the superb athletes and he's a good human being. I think he fell into a bad situation." Stephon Marbury's credibility is low at the moment, and dog fighting is not great any way you slice it, but he's darn right there's some hypocrisy. More on that.

The comments included this, from Juniper:

Henry, there is a HUGE difference between dog-fighting and hunting. The difference lies in the intention to cause suffering. People who watch dog-fighting want the action to last, presumably. They don't want a quick snap-of-the-neck-and-it's-over fight. This necessitates extended suffering for the dog. Good hunters, on the other hand, want the animal to fall at the first shot for many reasons, one of which is to prevent suffering to the animal, but there are many others (ease in locating and recovering the carcass, adrenalin in the bloodstream of the animal tastes the meat, etc.). I don't know about US legislation but where I live there are strict rules about how the animal is to be brought down and people can be criminally charged for not following those rules.

TrueHoop reader Daniel was one of many who emailed something along these lines:

Dog fighting is atrocious. Regardless of where Mike Vick grew up, it is still atrocious. People that engage in that activity, be they rich, poor, black or white, don't deserve to be considered decent human beings. ... Dog fighting is barbarism and cruelty in just about its purest form. There should be outrage. To toss out a glib "hypocrisy" line serves to soften the reality of the situation in terms of Vick, does it not?

Clearly, I was wrong to be flip on such a complex issue. (I was really driven by the reality that this is not much of NBA story. It's a human story. Or a football story. I was trying to be quick when I probably should have been silent.)

It's a more serious issue, and deserves a little more thought.

My thought is this: Dog fighting is terrible. In my book, it's just way too cruel to be in the realm of fun, if you're a normal, healthy, well-balanced adult. I would never go watch with you, so please don't invite me. I'm glad it's illegal, I'm sorry it exists. And I'm glad Michael Vick is facing time.

But give me a break America, the media, and everyone else. IF ONLY we were in a position to universally condemn cruelty!

If you watch TV or consume almost any media at all, just about everybody is presenting this massive wall of unanimity. THIS IS THE WORST THING EVER!

Yes, it's bad. Yes, it's ugly. But all that unanimity -- which so far has been pierced only by nuts like Stephon Marbury -- comes straight from the fact that dog fighting is just not something that people who are on TV and in the media do. (Maybe it's a race thing, as has been discussed, but I suspect it's more complicated than that.) It's not what we do. We have not been there. We know not its charms, if any. And there are cute little furry things involved.

It's so simple for us to condemn it. On this issue, we in the media see only one side. But, somehow we in the media (right or wrong -- too complicated to get at right now) see several sides of some really shocking issues. There was some lady on CNBC the other day saying, essentially, that lead paint in toys is a sign that the Chinese are doing us a favor by making toys cheap. You would have no trouble finding pundits on both sides of issues like innocents killed in war; landmines; ultimate fighting and boxing; entertainment that glorifies killing, rape, maiming, strangling, gang warfare, psycho killings and worse; abortions of all kinds; genital mutilation of infant boys and girls; hunting of all kinds; and, while we're at it, nuclear bombs dropped on cities.

As a former street reporter I can also tell you that those traffic accidents you drive past all the time? You'd be shocked how often there's a dead or severely maimed body in there.

(Did I miss any hot button issues?)

My point is not that all of those things are worse than fighting dogs, or should even be banned. My point is that for various reasons, some good and some not so good, we live in and around lots of things that miserably fail the "does this turn your stomach?" test. My point is that dog fighting is one more bit of cruelty in a big messy soup of similar things, and where do we get off saying dog fighting is the only one of the bunch that must be immediately banished from the planet, while we drag our feet on, oh, say, the old nuclear weapons dropped on cities issue?

To me it's clear that a huge part of what we're talking about here is not an objective measure of what's cruel and what isn't. It's a measure of who is conditioned to what. I am conditioned to car accidents, and talk of bombs dropped from planes in far-off lands. I am conditioned to boxing on TV (even though people get killed or brain damaged sometimes), and I am conditioned to people shooting deer. People arguing all sides of those issues do not shock me.

I am not conditioned at all to dog fighting. (In fact I have a dog that is important to me, and as it happens to be aggressive towards lots of other dogs, preventing dog fights is part of my daily routine.) So it's easy for me to say that's the only one out of the bunch that's really pure evil.

But consider what I learned recently from a friend who is involved in duck hunting. One of the jobs you can get if you go duck hunting is to wring the ducks' necks. It goes like this: The duck is flying. The duck is shot. The duck falls from the sky, and slams into the ground. Then a dog picks up the maimed but often very alive duck, and either maims it a little more (if it's a bad dog) or brings it to his handler. Then the poor sucker who drew the short straw comes over and wrings that neck with gloved hands, finally killing the duck quite some time after the duck nightmare began.

This is sport. Something people do for fun on the weekends, instead of playing softball, going for a swim, or barbecuing. And many of them do not eat those ducks. Make sense?

And here's the craziest part of all. The worst accusations about these dog fighters are that they executed the dogs they did not want. The state thought that was atrocious, and seized the dogs ... which will now likely be killed by the state, in a procedure that is replicated millions of times in humane societies and veterinarians' offices the world over. I recognize the method of killing is different, but is that really the key? If these dog fighters used lethal injection, are we no longer outraged? (Does the moral high ground really rest on the difference between the experiences of lethal injection and drowning? Is one "more pleasant?")

Here's another thing that complicates this for me. I went to the Bronx Zoo with my family a while ago. The tigers are AMAZING. They are huge, powerful, and beautiful. On this day, at least, they walked right up to the glass. Having the nose of a massive Siberian tiger literally a few inches from my own was awe-inspiring, terrifying, and fantastic. Not something I'll forget.

But, of course, it's a zoo. Which, nice as they make them these days, is animal prison. The tigers pace in circles. They lie down. They repeat. If you think like a tiger who is used to ruling the animal kingdom, this is cruelty. There's no point in pretending these animals weren't born to, among other things, sprint and kill.

What could they do, I was wondering, to let those tigers live a little? To be themselves?

Later, at the gorilla enclosure, we noticed a wild rabbit that had strayed in. It was just eating some grass, hanging out. The gorillas seemed not to care at all.

Well, I thought, if you want to make that tiger's day ... stick that bunny in the tiger enclosure.

The tigers would love it! And, here's the thing: so would a lot of people. (If your thoughts are with the victor, fighting is not nearly as bad.) If they advertised that they were putting some live bunnies in the tiger cage at noon, noon would see the biggest crowd in zoo history. I would strongly encourage zoos not to sacrifice bunnies in this way, but I have to be honest, if I just happened to be passing by, I'd belly my way up to the front to get a good view. (A view of a scene, I might add, that is in practically every nature video ever made.)

So, take a picture in your mind of all of us idiots lined up to watch that tiger hunt. That's me, the bald guy in the front row. Are we all demented? (You sure your dad wouldn't go?) Do we all need to be locked up? Are we all clearly barbarians?

It's a little complicated, right?

Somewhere between killing an ant with your finger, a bunny murder in a zoo, a nature video, Michael Vick and his buddies, and, you know, war and all those other things I listed, there must be some kind of hard lines that we must never cross. But, man oh man, is it tough to say precisely where they lie.

If you feel like you know exactly where those lines are, then great for you ... but please don't be shocked if it's not the same as everybody else.

How do we square that? How do we make sure that our open-mindedness is not just welcoming in the worst of all cultures?

I'm thinking that's what public discourse is for. People talking and people listening, and reasonable minds prevailing, preferably by social consensus, but perhaps by government decree. Listening with an open mind, thinking, learning ... they're all prerequisites of the process, and this is where the vitriol is not helpful.

When we run Stephon Marbury out of town on a rail for fuzzing up the issue a little, we make certain that anyone else who has non-mainstream views shuts up and keeps it their little secret. We make sure they keep their feelings on dog fighting down there in the part of their heart where no stranger is allowed to affect it.

Marbury is, as far as I know, not a dog fighter. He's a basketball player, and a dad and all that kind of stuff. He's sharing his view. It's different. So what? They're words. We're looking for common ground with dog fighters. We're looking to bring them into the fold as ex-dog fighters, right? That means talking to people with different views, building credibility with them, and admitting some faults of our own. A friend or family member who says "I love you man, but you are an a--hole for going to that dog fight" is probably the most effective weapon against dog fighting we could possibly have.

Is it reasonable to think that Stephon Marbury could evolve into a guy who says those kinds of things to people who fight dogs? I don't know ... maybe? Why close the door to it? Instead of vilifying him, let's respectfully disagree, and see if we can't make some real progress, instead of ripping him to shreds to score a cheap, short-term political victory.

UPDATE: Well, lookie here. Stephon Marbury, in effect, takes it all back.