I PETA the fool
"Look what happened to my fox! Someone cut off his little foot. Is it - Is it noticeable?"
I posted this over at the AV Club, but I thought it was worthwhile sticking here. Me ragging on people who think that PETA is the devil (the context being that PETA criticized Karl Rove for some joke he made about liking to kill little creatures during the White House journalist ball thing, and a bunch of posters got all worked up about how evil PETA is. What I forgot to point out is that they should be criticizing him for his rap, that was waaaaay waaaay crueler to animal and human alike):PETA was being dumb here, no doubt. Their intentions aren't bad, but to choose Rove's feeble attempt at humor as a time to take things literally is pretty retarded.
That being said I don't really understand why PETA gets so many people worked up. I'm not on board with their program - I don't think animals should be treated like humans, for example - but what do they do that is so bad? As far as causes go, it is about a million times more understandable than the NRA or such things (I can't wait 5 days for me gun!). While I don't have a problem with animals being given a lesser status, I also don't really have a problem with rich people getting red paint thrown on them for wearing fur. Even ethical implications aside, I think that might be a net positive kind of event. But everyone makes them out to be such a sinister organization, when at best they just seem occasionally wrong-headed and kind of self-defeating with their bad publicity.
4 comments:
Generally, I agree. I don't think PETA is particularly evil. But they do have an evil edge in that they historically haven't really distanced themselves or spoken out against groups with similar mission statements that use violent means like ELF, ALF, etc., most likely because a significant portion of their supporters support such groups to some extent. Granted, I think that even when those people mail razorlblades to professors (like my mom, even though she doesn't do animal research) and burn down research buildings, they've managed to avoid actually ever killing anyone. So there's that. But those people also mix too much hoax into their propaganda. And they have this annoying habit of picketing the houses of our friends and neighbors. So I still place them approximately on the level of rabidity of those people who picket gay people's and soldiers' funerals. Which is pretty low. My two cents. (o:
Brett - thanks for the info, I wasn't aware of PETA's ties to these organizations. I'm theoretically willing to accept destruction of property, depending on what and why, but potentially putting people in danger I am not. Even if it weren't for that, these groups are going to damage the movement (and clearly have). I'm sure there's some people in the organization who wouldn't support anything beyond the "let's get nude to critique wearing fur" kind of thing (although all products damage the environment, one way or another), but when the founder is funding those kinds of groups...yeah, that's pretty bad. Good to know.
yeah, I mean, I can sympathize with them to some extent--if I believed all non-humans were the moral equivalents of humans, I don't think destroying property is a particularly bad thing within their own little moral world, you know? ;-) of course even property is something that people buy with portions of their very finite lives, so I can't find even that totally harmless... but I think such methods are pretty self-defeating. guerillia tactics will probably always defeat a superior foreign military force if you're in your homeland with popular support, but I think most of the violent and destructive methods of fighting for their causes tend to alienate those they should be trying to win over. but more than that, as far as the whole animal rights stuff goes, I feel like indirect effects (like us having roads and cities and farms and fisheries) are many, many orders of magnitude worse than anything ever done in the name of science, etc. and most of these people live in cities and drive cars. I dunno... it just doesn't all connect for me so well... ;p
Oh, I agree with all that. I just mean theoretically I don't have a problem with property destruction if it served a more important good - but in this case it makes for bad advocacy. And it is more damaging, I think, for focus to be placed on areas where the threat is more obvious (scientific study), than where it is more serious albeit indirect - like pollution and the like, as you point out. It shifts focus away from the fact that the most dangerous activities are the everyday, in many ways.
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