Jay Leno and Chris Rock Think Dog Fighting Is Funny

by Stephanie Ernst · 2009-10-26 10:27:00 UTC
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There are actually two other pit bull-related posts coming up on this blog this week, but I feel like this needs to be acknowledged on its own.

Doris of About.com just wrote about Chris Rock losing his chance to play the late Richard Pryor (who was an animal advocate) in an upcoming movie -- and simultaneously losing Pryor's wife's respect -- because of flippant remarks he made on The Jay Leno Show late last month about Vick and the dogs he tortured and killed. I didn't know about the incident until Doris's post today, but BAD RAP covered it on October 3, just days after the show aired. And Jay Leno was just as flippant and dismissive of the animals' suffering. The men were discussing how outrageous it is that so many people think Roman Polanski deserves a free pass on rape (and absolutely ridiculous it is) when Leno brought up Vick, to imply that his crime was minor in comparison and resulted in too much punishment:

Jay Leno: It's amazing to me -- you mistreat a dog, and you lose your career, and you go to jail for two years.

Chris Rock: Yeah, look at Michael Vick! What the hell did Michael Vick do, man? A dog? A pit bull ain't even a real dog.

So Leno thinks that the torture, maiming, traumatizing, and killing -- in often the most horrendous of ways -- of hundreds of innocent beings is mere "mistreatment" and that Vick's so-called punishment was over-the-top. And Rock thinks that what Vick did really wasn't that bad because pit bulls apparently aren't worthy of compassion. I was indifferent to Chris Rock already. I disliked Jay Leno already. Now I have good reason to dislike them both.

Read more from Doris and from BAD RAP.

Photo of Little Red, used by Vick's group as a puppy machine and bait dog, courtesy Best Friends Animal Society.

Stephanie Ernst wrote the original Animal Rights blog at Change.org until December 2009. She can now be found at Animal Rights & AntiOppression.
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