i love jokes and hate horse racing

its tuesday, and feels like monday because the week just started. so i thought id share an article i really enjoyed before spending the rest of the week tearing apart ones i hate.

The Debriefing: If Vick's a Jerk, So Are Preakness Organizers

by "mjh"

goddamn bloggers. always using bizarre indecipherable pseudonyms.

http://www.aolsportsblog.com/2007/05/23/the-debriefing-if-vicks-a-scumbag-so-are-preakness-organizers/

if were going to make 1,000 michael vick-related posts, this might as well be one of them. aol fanhouse, which i usually find to be extremely "blah" (as in, nothing i really like... nothing i really hate, either) has published a doozy of a piece comparing dogfighting to horse racing. now, before i post some sections of the article, ill put it all out there up front: i HATE horse racing. not dislike; i dislike the designated hitter rule. not "am bothered by"; i am bothered by the usc trojan football team. no... in the world of sports, there is nothing i HATE quite like horse racing.

how ridiculous is it? lets just start the complaining with the obvious fact that its a bunch of animals. if horse racing is really a "sport" lets get a panel of judges down to sea world, have them assign scores to the routines being done by dolphins and killer whales, and televise it. i know id watch that before i watched the kentucky derby. furthermore i cant stand the super-rich-or-super-drunk-white-people-only culture, the completely uninspiring storylines, or the fact that most people who call themselves horse racing "fans" really only care about 3 goddamn races. when that one horse war emblem just barely missed winning the triple crown 4 or 5 years ago, and they showed the millionaire owners and their families crying in the stands immediately after the race, i wanted to reach through the tv and slap the shit out of those people. are you kidding me? on top of all these other complaints, as this author points out, horse racing is also pretty cruel to the horses. im not sure if it should be equated to dogfighting. thats probably a stretch considering the whole point of dogfighting is for the animals to maul each other, while horse races in and of themselves are usually not violent. and its silly for him to put "the preakness" in the title of the article, rather than "nearly all major horse races." but still... fuck horse racing. without further ado, heres some of the better one liners and points this guy makes:

I'd also recommend taking one particularly charismatic pitbull, grooming it as a noble and magnificent champion (name it something like "Marmaro," maybe), and then have it brutally mauled to death during a nationally-televised pit fight. You'd be surprised at how much people love that stuff.

this as part of a sequence of fecicious suggestions to vick as to how he can pass off dog fighting as a legitimate kind of entertainment. "marmaro" is a sweet name for a barbaro parody of an animal.

later, to clarify his position, this is part of a list of things the guy says he would rather do than defend vick:

...buy WNBA season tickets...

buh-zing! coincidentally, ive heard the WNBA made fun of by being referenced as the HBA: horse basketball association.

I just want to know why horse racing is acceptable if dog fighting is evil. Do both take advantage of animals solely for the entertainment of humans? Yes. Are both responsible for the premature deaths of thousands of animals? Yes. Do both cause immeasurable suffering and injuries to the animals involved? Yes. Do human beings profit off of this pain and death? In both cases, yes. What other standards are there?

like i already said, this is definitely oversimplification and not a 100% fair comparison. but still, a valid point at its most basic level. and one that a lot of people fail to appreciate as they get swept up in "triple crown fever" this time of year. speaking of which- how mad must the owners of the belmont stakes be every time the horse that wins the kentucky derby fails to win the preakness? there goes millions in ad revenue, thanks to decreased ratings expectations. mwah mwah. i picture them as a bunch of guys dressed in seersucker suits, angrily punching through their top hats like villains in old silent movies used to do when their plans got foiled.

And when (a horse is) in a truck being shipped to the slaughterhouse, the horse isn't thinking, "Well, I've had a great run, but I feel like since I helped Elroy Ryerson hit that exacta and buy himself an extra bottle of Thunderbird, I can go out on top." He's thinking, "I DON'T WANT TO DIE, GET ME THE HELL OUT OF THIS TRUCK."

gambling just so that you can buy extra thunderbird... a terrifying scenario. maybe you should drop down to colt 45 or old english for a while, until things in your life turn around a little bit.

People see Seabiscuit and have this romanticized notion of how well horses are treated, but very few horses get the Seabiscuit suite. Not every race horse gets the immaculate stable, the company of numerous female horses, and a feast of oats and carrots everyday. Not every horse gets to develop a close, personal relationship with Tobey Maguire.

they damn well should. if he spent all his time befriending horses he wouldnt have any left over to star in crappy movies like a certain giant blockbuster that was recently released.

But most horses aren't in Barbaro's tax bracket. If a horse can't make money, or stops making money, he'll soon be holding together your child's next arts-and-crafts project. You know how much money would've been spent on Barbaro if he finished out of the money in the Kentucky Derby? About enough to buy a bullet and a ride in a dump truck.

couldnt have said it better myself. every kid age 14 or under that sent barbaro a get well card should have to watch a 3 hour tape that consists only of footage of injured race horses being euthanized. every person over the age of 14 who sent it a get well card should be spayed or neutered. if youre going to engage in that kind of activity, especially with all the other stuff going on in the world today, you should not be allowed to reproduce. the planet has enough out of touch and stupid people as it is.

look, its not that im a animal rights activist. i used to date one so believe me, i know how frightening and crazy they can be. you wont see me giving money to PETA (or even liking PETA) or refusing to eat anything but free-range-super-organic-cage-free meats. but the point remains- a large percentage of horse racing fans probably love animals and dont want them to be treated badly, and they have no idea just how shitty life really is for those things. also horse racing is fucking dumb.