The Will Leitch Experience

So I wrote a piece for GQ about Michael Vick, and it just went online. I find Vick an interesting person, but I find his constructed narrative even more fascinating: We need to establish a story arc so badly sometimes that we’ll cobble one together before anything has even happened. (Jokes that GQ will do a story about Vince Young this time next year contain a lot of truth.)

I found Vick measured, intelligent, charismatic and as honest as he could be under the circumstances. I did not expect him to shake my hand and suddenly just say, “you know, I’m gonna tell this dude I just met my innermost thoughts.” But he didn’t dodge any questions either, and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to take up so much of his time. It makes it easier to tell the whole story, or at least a large chunk of it.

Not that it matters: Vick is such a hot-button figure that for him to even say the word “dog” is going to freak people out. In a way, I get that: I find the crimes as repellant as everyone else does. But I do believe he’s done his time, and I also believe he shouldn’t have to walk around the earth the rest of his life, hanging his head, constantly apologizing, silent about the most traumatic four years of his young life. Frankly, posts like this one, by the otherwise reasonable Doug Farrar at Yahoo’s Shutdown Corner (and of course of Football Outsiders), absolutely baffle me. I think you really must want it out for Vick to read the quotes that Deadspin leaked and take that from them. I didn’t feel Vick was trying to “make himself out to be some sort of victim,” and I don’t understand how anyone could read the quotes that way. Unless you just hate the guy. Which, in its own way, is understandable, I suppose, and certainly not uncommon.

But then again, all everyone has seen are the quotes. In May, Jeffrey Toobin wrote a terrific piece for The New Yorker about Mets owner Fred Wilpon that made you think that painted Wilpon as affable, flawed and painfully human. But nobody read the whole story, they just read the quotes, and thus the only takeaway was “Fred Disses Mets.” I’m sure that’ll happen again with my story, but hopefully a few of you will take the time to read the whole thing. It’s not as long or as good as Toobin’s, but I think you’ll get a much better understanding of Vick, and how people react to him, than you do from a few blockquotes.

Plus, I worked really hard on it. So I hope you like it. Here it is.