Vick Jersey Lands PETA Activist In Hospital

ATLANTA -- A long-respected animal-rights activist and former organizational director for the Southeastern division of PETA is in serious condition today after refusing to remove his replica Michael Vick jersey.

"I knew I'd have to confront the cognitive dissonance eventually," James Violette said from the hospital Thursday morning in a rare interview from what might or might not be his death bed. "I love animals. I've run through the streets of this city dressed up as the "Ronald McMurderer" clown. I have a dog, 18 cats and a bunny rabbit I rescued from a pre-schooler three weeks after Easter. I've refused to wear deodorant. I've paid my dues."

Violette paused to compose himself in front of a throng of television cameras, raised his battered head and shouted, "But, damnit ... What the hell are we going to do now?! Oh well, go Falcons, baby! Yeowwww!"

Violette was dining alone on tofu soup at a downtown Whole Foods cafe Wednesday afternoon when a horde of 32 volunteers from the local People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals affiliate came in for a late lunch, Atlanta Police spokeswoman Kay Ninne said.

The group had been spending the 100-degree afternoon outside the Georgia Dome protesting the Atlanta Falcons organization and its relation with Vick, the Falcons' embattled quarterback who on Monday will enter a guilty plea on federal dog-fighting charges that include accusations of executing poorly performing dogs through means of electrocution, hanging and drowning.

The protesters recognized Violette as a high-profile PETA activist and saw him wearing Vick's #7 jersey, Ninne said. There was a brief argument, and a store manager asked the protesters to leave, citing company policy for both safety and proper hygeine.

The protesters waited in the parking lot for Violette as he carried a grocery bag filled with organic, hormone-free cat food and a bottle of hand-squeezed lemonade, Ninne said.

The mob demanded Violette remove all his clothes, wrap the jersey through his legs to serve as "an apparatus resembling an adult diaper" and spend the entire day outside the gates of the Georgia Dome until he managed a successful bowel movement, Ninne said.

Violette made a brief plea with the mob but was pelted with dog chains and spiked collars protesters had been wearing to make a salient, visual impact on any impressionable passersby.

Once Violette was lying unconscious, the protesters smeared his face with pigeon feces and began shouting non sequitir propaganda about the evil, capitalistic American zeitgeist that contributes to the dependence of certain avian species on the human waste of natural resources, mainly consisting of half-eaten cheeseburgers left on park picnic tables.

No arrests were made once police arrived; the group had scattered and blended in with the sizeable homeless community nearby.

"I've been a Falcons fan my entire life, even though they've never done squat shit," said Violette, a 38-year-old high school guidance counselor. "I always figured a Falcon was an OK mascot. I don't keep birds or fish, because I don't believe in trapping a bird in her cage or using a fish bowl to sequester young Clownfish from their fathers like in that Disney movie a couple years back. So I figured it was OK to do the Dirty Bird. You know, that touchdown dance they did about ten years ago that year when the Broncos destroyed them in the Super Bowl."

Michael Vick was to be the savior of the franchise when Atlanta acquired the first pick in the 2001 draft from the San Diego Chargers, which allowed the Chargers to draft franchise stars LaDainian Tomlinson and Drew Brees.

Sales for Vick jerseys skyrocketed and remained steady even as Vick's performance as a quarterback came into question in the past few years.

He remained the face of the franchise and was the beneficiary of what marketing experts refer to as "residual indifference," a mass state of mind wherein a celebrity is vaulted to lofty heights simply because a fan base can't recognize anyone else around him.

"If you like football, and you live in Atlanta, and you want to look like a rapper, what other jersey are you going to buy?" said Mark Kohlitlikeitis, an assistant professor at Buleschit College in Persimmon, Idaho, and a world-renowned expert on the relation between sports, pop culture and marketing. "I'm sorry, but Warrick Dunn doesn't exactly scream out 'live and poppin'."

In 2002, Violette was volunteering at a local animal shelter when Vick passed by, pointed into a pen and said, "I'll take those." Vick walked past Violette and said "What's up, dawg?" before he left with two pit bulls.

"That was a classy move," Violette said. "He didn't have to talk to me. I've been a Michael Vick fan ever since. I don't know what we're going to do without him now that we traded Matt Schaub."

Violette bought his Vick jersey in 2003 after saving money during a hunger strike protesting the treatment of mosquitoes during mass insecticide sprayings as part of Fulton County's mosquito-control program.

In 2006, he paid $12,276 for a fingernail clipping from one of the two middle fingers Vick used to "flip the dirty bird" to an unruly home crowd upset over a fourth-straight loss and Vick's 37 percent completion percentage.

"I just always stuck with the guy, even when he flipped us all the bird," Violette said. "I thought, 'Hey, here's a guy expressing himself through the beautiful synergy of man and fellow avian Earth-dweller. Let the birds fly free, Michael!'"

The leather football was always a sticking point with Violette, but he said his love of earning bragging rights over the Carolina Panthers when the Falcons made the NFC Championship game two years ago helped him bury the nagging hypocrisy deep into his subconscious.

The news of Vick's indictment on dog-fighting charges took a while to reach Violette. He had spent the past few months on a PETA mission that required him to isolate himself from all visual media so that he could document incident-by-incident each time a cat took a tumble in "America's Funniest Home Videos" on WGN.

It was only during a commercial break that Violette flipped over to ESPN to learn of his idol's legal troubles.

"It's disappointing," Violette said, "but I'm sticking with him, man. It's hard to explain why, but when Michael Vick stares down one triple-teamed wide receiver and decides to tuck it and run, that shit is off the chain. Wait, that's dog-fighting slang, isn't it? Screw it. My head hurts."