‘View’ of Whoopi makes little sense

As someone who once lived in the heart of Newport News, Va., and, in fact, in Michael Vick’s school district, I was amused to hear Whoopi Goldberg’s assessment that dogfighting is endemic to the Deep South and the sophisticates of our urban jungles do not understand.

Vick’s supporters sometimes appear to want it both ways.

One day he is from the mean streets of Newport News and the next day he is from the Deep South.

I happened to live on one of those mean streets of Newport News, and not once did I ever have to dodge bullets after parking the car in the driveway and making my way to the front door of my humble abode.

Not once did I ever have to shoo away the neighborhood prowler from the premises.

It is true that the owner of the neighborhood convenience store had the obligatory bars on the front windows, but I always suspected it was more out of being extra cautious than being a frequent victim of robbery.

And there was a nearby used-car dealership that never sold any cars, which seemed peculiar at the time. But who knows whether it was a front to launder money?

It’s also true that a neighborhood drunk once walked into my place unannounced. But that was as much on me as him.

One feature of my eternally modest dwellings is I leave the doors unlocked.

Anyway, the drunk was nice enough, if not incoherent, and I would have invited him to stay and have a cold one with me if I had been up to the challenge on that particular night.

But he went on his merry way — stumbled, actually — and that was the only highlight of my existence while living on the mean streets of Newport News.

Sorry. I must have missed the neighborhood memo on dogfighting, although lots of my neighbors owned dogs. Not that any of them looked all that ferocious unless you are put off by a dog that is wagging its tail in a furious fashion.

And I obviously missed the cultural-training sessions.

“He’s from the South, the Deep South,” Goldberg said of Vick. “That is part of his cultural upbringing.”

Our working-class, mixed-race neighborhood had patches of poverty, along with shipyard workers, service-industry folks and the one idiot who worked at the local newspaper. The streets might have appeared mean to outsiders, but none of us felt that way.

And I do not recall any neighbors having a Confederate flag hanging from their home, as Goldberg possibly suspects of those living in the Deep South.

Speaking of which, Goldberg undoubtedly would resist applying her brand of cultural relativism to someone who proudly waves the Confederate flag.

Alas, she is hardly the only one working with preconceived notions.

The national media just cannot resist the “mean streets” reference if an athlete comes from a threadbare existence. The athlete, whoever he might be, has seen friends shot, has seen friends sent off to prison, has seen far too much in a relatively short time on this planet.

This is standard boilerplate, some of which could be true, but is inevitably deployed to show what the athlete has overcome and why he sometimes has a habit of getting into trouble.

Goldberg tapped into similar material in her debut on “The View” this week.

Ah, yes. Newport News. A bastion of the once glorious Deep South. Home of the Confederacy. President Jefferson Davis.

Dogfighting is merely part of the culture there.

“It’s like cockfighting in Puerto Rico,” Goldberg said. “There are certain things that are indicative to certain parts of the country.”

At least she left moonshining out of her take on the Deep South.

And Goldberg resisted the urge to mention those Asian countries that dine on dog meat, although that would have been a reach on her part in defending Vick.

After all, we have not heard of an Asian connection in Vick’s dogfighting enterprise.