Watch this shit, please. Just watch it. Mama, I know you don’t like me cussin’ on here, but you’ll refer to it the same way I do, I’m sure.
Okay, can we talk about this?
Let me start by saying I’m generally torn on PETA. It’s hard for me to evaluate them because their cause just isn’t important to me. I think it’s foul that people do inhumane things to animals–what an oxymoronic phrase, btw–but it ain’t foul enough to make me take it to the streets. Perhaps that’s because I have too many good things to say about chicken, but I can’t see how people get this worked up over animals. I can’t even understand people’s affection toward house pets. My sister has a cat that tends to make it home for holidays or whenever she’s out gallavanting, and I don’t like that lil’ sucker, and he’s cute as all get out. I see people with their animals in sweaters and all that shit, and I wonder why those people don’t just give the money they put into that animal into me. Dogs don’t have mortgages, so give me the money to put on my crib before putting a flat screen in Fido’s doghouse.
Okay, that’s a little off the point, but the fact still remains that animal rights just aren’t pressing to me. One of the sad parts of the world is that humans have to eat other things in order to survive. In fact, all animals do. Even the domesticated ones. That’s horse in dog food.
(Random–did you know that Jack In The Box was–or maybe still is–owned by Ralston Purina? That prompted my brother once to utter the classic line, “What if Purina got their shipments messed up? Horse–the other red meat.”)
Anyhoo, that’s just what it is. Animals are going to die so people can live. I’m sure some vegan is pounding away at a comment in reply to this, but I’m not going through all that work to eat. Eating should be easy, and I’m too damn skinny already to be trying to live on sprouts and supplements. If I went veggie, I’d be dead by the end of the week.
That’s all unnecessary background information, though. Where PETA leave me torn is in their practices. I believe that anyone that feels strongly about a cause should pursue it fervently, but they should proceed with at least a modicum of sense. Just a lil’ bit, dig? PETA never does that, though. They hurl blood at people and make greater spectacles of themselves and their causes than could ever be desirable for a body hoping to institute change. They behave with desperation, as though their lives are on the line, and they lose because everyone knows their lives aren’t on the lines. The animals, maybe, but not them. As a result, they look like nutjobs, and it’s hard to elicit support as a nutjob except from other nutjobs, and people are scared of rooms full of nutjobs. Their techniques are also antiquated, and sixties nostalgia is just about gone with most folks. They need to make a determination of whether getting on TV is as important as getting something done.
With this campaign, PETA has made a few serious mistakes. First, they showed that they must not have any black people in their operation. Comparing a lynching to the slaughter of a chicken is pretty insulting. One major mistake far left-wing white groups tend to make is comparing the plight of the oppressed to something that’s not quite analogous. My ancestors are not on the same plane with animals. “Chicken George” was just a name, man.
And now, we’re left with the real philosophical question. Scientific racism put blacks and others on the same plane with animals. Black folks weren’t people. “Nigger” may as well have have been a class, order, or phylum. Humans were treated like animals, and that was unforgivable. Is it similarly unforgivable to treat animals like people? No matter what the means of normalizing the standard by which life should be evaluated, people and animals are being put side by side. In this case, it looks like only non-white people are being put on that plane. Is that cool?
I don’t think it is. Instead of rallying people toward their cause, they’ve managed to alienate even more people with this silliness. No matter hwo terrible I may be or how glorious animals may appear, they are not the same as me.
Don’t treat me like an animal, even if that’s not an insult within your value system.
21 thoughts on “PETA Gets it All Wrong”
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These assholes at PETA really need to have the holy hell beaten out of them. I have absolutely no respect for a bunch of spoiled, ignorant brats who have nothing better to do with their time and money then take some fringe cause and try to make it important.
These are the same people we all saw in college who pissed away piles of their money or their parents money because they felt oh-so-passionate about whatever cause someone told them they SHOULD care about.
Animals are not people, and chickens laying eggs are not slaves. They’re food. I say we find the people who developed and ok’d that slideshow, and beat them senseless just to drive that point home a little better. Maybe then they’ll understand the difference.
Ok, whoa….. back the truck up just one cotton-pickin’ minute. There are so many things one could say about that slideshow, but by the end of it I was seeing red. How do these people expect to get anyone with sense on their side with this crap? Being black myself and one SERIOUS meat-eatin’ mofo, they lost my vote if they ever even had it. You cannot personify the creatures that were put on this earth for us to use– to help us work, to help us survive. If God had not intended for us to eat animals He wouldn’t have made them out of meat. They just aren’t equal to us, especially not to the darker portion of the population. GOT to be the lighter portion behind this. None of us would dare make this comparison.
That literally might me the most ignorant, insulting shit I’ve ever seen in my life. How in the hell can PETA compare the (I hate to use this term) productive slaughter of nameless, thoughtless animals for food and clothing to the murder of human beings, like Emmit Till and James Byrd, who died for little more than the jollies of some truly sick people. That slide show is offensive to anyone with the ability to think, and makes me glad BK is making fries out of chickens now.
Your column on ESPN.com about NCAA Football 2006 was a joke. You claim to be bored and annoyed by “antiquated” music like Lagwagon and Mother Love Bone and believe that the EA Sports crew should “modernize” the game by including, basically, rap music. You sound like a bigoted racist with an utter contempt for anything white. The reason EA Sports didn’t include rap music on the game is because rap music is made by talentless bigots like yourself. Good day.
This reminds me of a great refrigerator magnet I used to have. It read, “you’re certainly entitled to your own little fucked up view of reality. The big thing about that music that’s not modern is that a substantial portion of the music was released eons ago. The one rap cut, “Me Myself and I,” is seventeen years old. “Train in Vain” came out before I was born.
Now, I’ve been accused in the recent past of not seeing sarcasm when it’s presented to me, but I’ma fly off the handle anyway, because, well, it’s fun.
L’Andrew, you’re just not that bright, and I’m saying that as nicely as I know how. You obviously put zero thought into that comment, and you clearly have no understanding of what you’re talking about.
But just the same, I’ll indulge you on your own level. If rap is so lame, why is it so prominent on Madden 06, made by the same company?
Better yet, please don’t respond. It might scare off people with something intelligent to say.
And Mother Love Bone was a precursor to Pearl Jam, meaning it’s at least 15 years old, and thus, antiquated.
Man I’m feeling you on that PETA ish. WTF?!
Comparing our plight as a people to some damn clucks and cows. Reefuggindiculous is what it is.
I agree, some real foul stuff is done on to animals but you can not compare that to the plight certain groups of people have endured. I get mad when gays compare their plight to the civil rights movement, that ish ain’t the same and neither is this PETA mess.
Thanks for putting this out here man. I had never saw that PETA ad before. Damn fools.
Ahhh, the gay/black comparison. Might talk about that next week.
L’Andrew Wood
Ain’t that the kid we all kicked the shit out of in elementary school?
The good folks at Red Stripe welcome our favorite reader back. Hooray Ben!
fuck kinda name is l’andrew?
l’oser.
Oh wow, I can actually post. Weird.
Anywho, this PETA has the making of the Pepsi/Def Jam shit. Yeah, we’re pissed and it’s wrong but what’s going to be done about it?
And NOOOOOOOOOO I am NOT comparing Ludacris being dumped by Pepsi to “if slavery was wrong, so is ranching” type shit.
These PETA mofos are suffering under the fallacy of equivocation. There is no comparison between the suffering of an Emmitt Till and a chicken.
We are put on this earth for a reason. Mr. Till never got the chance to fulfill his destiny, but the chicken served with honor, distinction, and hot sauce at my neighborhood Popeye’s.
If PETA is so opposed to the suffering of living things, then how do they justify the maltreatment of that head of lettuce in their salad or the soybean in their Tofu?
“…but the chicken served with honor, distinction and hot sauce…”
I nearly wet my shorts on that one.
I got hipped to this a few days ago by my lovely, Lady Love and when I first saw this the message was indeed strong and controversial. It got all of us talking in one way or the other. I think that the message being conveyed is not one where it is comparing the life of a Black man to the live of a chicken. I see it as seeing that they are trying to show how the atrocities are similar. Their organization is about the treatment of animals. If you look at the ad it seems as if they’re saying, “Humans treated humans like this and we treat animals the same.” Slavery doesn’t happen [overtly] anymore, there are no more lynchings in public squares where people gather to see an innocent life taken. PETA is only saying that if that can change can occur, why not stop the unethical treatment of animals. I really have no qualms with the ad AND I am not a part of PETA either, so my view is not for or against. I just think that that there is more to it than what is on the surface.
Logical flaw–you’re assuming they did this in an attempt to show an analytical connection between the two. That’s there, but the real point was to shock and awe whoever saw the ad. And that happened…but I don’t mean that in no nice way.
Maaaaaan, what a way to start the day. I was kinda going with the flow of the video until the screen of the lynching juxtaposed with the cow. The flesh on my right arm is usually a good judge of the inane, and it was flaming hot. That was just insulting. Those men weren’t hanging fromt that tree to sustain human life. Nobody needed them to die in order to feed themselves. And, if you believe that a human body can be sustained off veggies alone, I guess the same could be said about the cow, but I didn’t see an awestruck crowd at the slaughterhouse. Death for entertainment is NOT the same as death for life. Sorry, PETA, but I’m all over them ribs.
Oh. My. God.
No they didn’t. This made my stomach clench. Was everybody at the meeting hitting the hookah when they ok’d this mess?
There is NO possible way to compare the hanging of a side of beef with lynching another human being. Not in this life or the next.
They completely misuse Standing Bear’s quote about the Trail of Tears- the POINT is that the humans were being treated as animals, NOT that animals were being treated inhumanely.
This idiocy of comparing CHILD LABOR to chickens in cages and having the NERVE to show a black man burning and comparing it to a chicken on fire….break the F*** out.
And L’Andrew- seriously, your name is L’ANDREW. Shut up and sit down.
I’ll eat meat for as long as I can get away with it (nh), but a pretty good argument could be made for vegetarianism. You know how much grain it takes to produce a single steak?
I think the focus of all this conversation is that Blacks were used in comparison to animals. Of course, we don’t see ourselves as that and never have. But… the truth of the matter is that we were exploited at a time when the laws allowed it to happen. Those laws have since been abolished and ruled unethical. PETA is only asking for the same. I have heard no reports of the Jews enraged when PETA had ads concerning the Holocaust in comparison to animal treatment. If we’re only upset because we identify with the images used, with our only argument being — my ancestors life was nothing compared to that bird at KFC — then we’re not seeing it from both angles, just from our own P.O.V.
I again state, I am neither for or against it — but I think that we, as Black folks, honestly have more things to be enraged about than just an ad when there are more adverse things adding onto our continue plight as a people. Peace.
How can they compare this to human’s plight. They try so hard to find the most depressing music and pictures so that people’s emotions sway them over. But of course when your cause is that stupid I guess that’s what you have to do. If PETA had their way I guess animals would run wild through offices homes and roads and everyone would spend their days “enjoying nature” and “eating vegtables”. I agree with y’all bring on the BBQ.
Bo, this is a masterpiece.
It took this joint like 5 minutes to load, but I’m glad I waited for it. I can definitely believe no black people worked on this project and, if there were, I’m certain they are of the token persuasion (don’t act like ya’ll don’t know). I agree that the analogy between the treatment of minorities and animals is a poor attempt at ‘shock and awe’. I also believe whoever conjured this one up either drank a HUGE cup of courage/mug of might or had some REALLY heavy balls. There is a food chain and it doesn’t stop with humans; even fish eat other fish to survive – Ever heard of survival of the fittest?
Regarding the earlier PETA ads referencing the holocaust, Jewish groupos actually came down very hard on them for that: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/02/28/peta.holocaust/