Roland Martin, who more often than not provides vacuous perfidy on scattered topics at CNN.com, actually posed an incisive and daunting question in his commentary today entitled “Where is the outrage when humans are abused?” Reflecting on the media frenzy and sanctimonious responses by politicians on both sides of the aisle, Martin wonders why the deafening outcry over Michael Vick’s participation in dog fighting has drowned out the whispers over physical abuse of humans. Martin asks:
But why do we respond with speed to one case and not another? Is it celebrity? Or do we not have the same compassion for human beings as we do for dogs? Was the Vick case that more important?
While there is no question that Vick’s celebrity was a decisive factor in the media blitzkrieg, there does seem to be a disparity in the amount of attention paid to, and horror in reaction to, animal cruelty as opposed to reactions to human abuse, not least of all murder. If I may be so brash as to submit a provisional answer to Martin’s interrogatives: Our land does more or less have the same compassion for human beings as it does for dogs, for it seems to me that due to the stripping of awareness of the zygote/embryo/fetus’ status as human person from American law and social constructs the zygote/embryo/fetus has been reduced to, well, certainly nothing greater than an animal in societal mind of the herding American mass. And this seems to be just a hop-skip-jump from a darkening of the conscience of society in matters of human dignity and rights in general. Mine is no profound answer and is rather predictable coming from a committed Catholic. Nevertheless, it seems that the “abolition of man” of which C.S. Lewis spoke so eloquently extends not only to morality, but also, it appears, to biology and, if you will, zoology.
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