MOLI VIEW™

Probably the only credible moment in the summer flick Rush Hour 3 comes when Chris Tucker riffs on the meaning of brotherhood to co-star Jackie Chan. As a metaphor, Tucker's character choses the chicken he had championed — with great passion — in a cockfight.

"He had great heart," the actor insists with over-the-top passion. Then he waits. "And he was delicious."

The line was played for laughs, but in the showing I saw, the joke got nothing. Not now, in this week that we wait for Atlanta Falcons' quarterback Michael Vick to plead guilty to federal dogfighting charges. No one's much in the mood to laugh at the twisted strain of blood lust that's no small part of the national identity.

It's complicated stuff. Less than a month ago I went fishing and found myself feeling guilty. And not just about the fish. Puncturing earthworms as I put them on my hook began, for the first time, to make me think: Maybe humans really have no business eating anything with a face.

But mostly the contradictions lie with those who pit canines against each other. My estranged father trained and fought dogs. (On his best days he sold his top students to cops, who wielded their canine weapons against the hardest criminals.) I was not into that at all.

Throughout my youth in Ohio, we had moments of tension about his dogs. When I was 18, one of his favorites died. My father became furious with me for not being as devastated as he was. The emotions kicked his ass. I truly don't believe he cried as much when my mother died. And it remains something of a mystery to me that he could place a creature he loved so much in cruel conditions. Maybe I just don't have the warrior mentality like that.

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