Beggars with puppies, Michael Vick, and an American blind spot the size of the sun.

[WilliamPitt]

Whenever a homeless person asks me for spare change, I give what change I have if I have it. If I don't have money, I ask if they want a smoke, and give them one if they say yes. If I have neither money nor smokes, I apologize. I'm no hero for this, and the "You're helping them buy drugs-booze/You're helping to give them lung cancer" argument against this practice does have merit.

But I do it anyway, mostly just because, but also because my New England Puritan/Calvinist roots make me worry, just a tiny bit, that the next homeless guy I ignore despite having change to give is actually Jesus on the comeback, and he's testing me, and I'll fail that test to keep my .53 cents. Yeah, I know, but still.

When I worked downtown several geological ages ago, I would pass about two homeless spare-changers every block or so. 99% of the bustling sidewalk traffic would pass them by without a glance. But one day, something changed.

One of the homeless men, one morning, was sitting on the sidewalk with his change tin in his hand, and an adorable puppy next to him. The same sidewalk traffic that had ignored him the day before suddenly flooded him with their change. Not long after, the homeless man down the block showed up with a kitten, and the traffic stopped ignoring him. Soon enough, the newest hip accessory for the homeless beggar was a pet to sit with them.

I was thinking about this while reading about the abhorrent accusations leveled against Michael Vick regarding dog-fighting. It's abomiable if true, and that cannot be denied. The outrage over this story is enormous, and that is absolutely as it should be.

But.

I'm a huge football fan, and so every Sunday from August to February I'm watching games. I hear names like Ray Lewis and Pacman Jones mentioned every weekend, their skills are praised, their talents feted, their accomplishments trumpeted.

Ray Lewis was involved in the stabbing death of another man. Pacman Jones was involved in a shooting that left another man permanently paralyzed. When these two things happen, there was outrage for a little while...and then nothing.

We as Americans have one hell of a big blind spot, I think.

We get outraged over football players killing and maiming dogs, but can abide football players killing and maiming other human beings. We give change to the homeless guy with the puppy, because the poor little thing has to eat, but pass the petless homeless guy on the next block as if he didn't have a stomach.

People should be outraged when animals are tortured. And they are, for every good reason on Earth.

People should be outraged when human beings are killed. And they are, for a while at least, sometimes, maybe.

The beggar with the puppy eats well. The beggar without one goes hungry. I think, perhaps, the blind spot that allows this is one of the main reasons we are in Iraq. If every Iraqi civilian had a puppy or a kitten, the war would have been over almost before it began, and a hell of a lot less humans would be dead right now.

Food for thought.