Friend and Foe

In light of the interest in yesterday’s post dealing with Citizenship, Gadabout would like to take this opportunity to discuss two examples of Friend and Foe that have made headlines recently. Both headlines relate to two adult males. One 27 and the other is 39. The 39 year old is Jerry Yang, a psychologist, of Temecula, California. The 27 year old is Michael Vick, the starting quarterback for the Atlantic Falcons who hails from Virginia.

Until yesterday, Yang was an unknown, he was born in Laos and somehow along the way made it to California, became a psychologist, and took up an interest in playing poker a couple of years ago. Yesterday he won the coveted World Series of Poker tournament and took home a whopping $8.25 million prize (as reported by Ryan Nakashima, AP). That, my friends, is cool! This guy seems to be on a winning streak. What’s this unassuming 5 foot 3 inch Yang going to do with his winnings? Well, for a start he is planning on donating 10 percent to charity. Yep, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Feed the Children and the Ronald McDonald House will be receiving sizable contributions soon. Jerry Yang is a Friend.

Vick on the other hand, is buried in a tortuous and humiliating battle with the Feds over an alleged dog fighting scandal at his Surry County, VA., home (Virginian-Pilot, David Forster and Linda McNatt). This story has been gaining strength for the past month and it looks like the hammer is coming down on Atlanta’s superstar. Dog fighting is scary stuff, to me at least, and some of the details are horrific. I quote from the V-P article of 19 July: “Some of the animals in Vick’s outfit that lost fights or lacked promise were drowned, electrocuted, hanged or shot, the indictment said, and at least one dog was slammed to the ground.”

Now, I don’t know much about Jeff Yang and for all I know he could be an evil dude at heart, but on the surface he seems like a good citizen. Vick? I don’t know much about him either, except that he is has true talent on the playing field and that he enjoys killing dogs. The truth on the dog fighting and dog killing will play out over time, but it doesn’t look good. Vick appears to be a bad citizen.

As a kid, I used to manipulate my magnifying glass to burn ants. I thought that was cool, but I soon passed that stage of evil destruction once I started noticing girls and playing baseball. I’ve never won the lottery or a poker tournament either, but if I ever do most of it, if not all of it, is going to charity. Jerry Yang taught me that lesson. The only lesson Michael Vick taught me is that killing and abusing dogs is bad. I already knew that.