Peta is going after a high school fundraiser in Connellsville, Pa.
The fundraiser is essentially cow pie bingo. A field is sectioned off with grid lines, and people buy squares for $10 each. If your square gets more “pie” in it than any other, you win $10,000. Tacky, or tasteless?.. probably. Funny?.. I think so. Cruel to the cow?.. I can’t think how.
Really now, would a cow even know it is participating? Is this going to emotionally scar the poor animal? We are talking about letting a cow out into a field of grass to eat and drop “pies”. How is this different (in the view of the cow) than any other day of its life? How is it different than an “ideal” day in the cows life.
“Opposed to any event that uses animals as a form of entertainment?” Holy Cow! (sorry bout that…) A National Geographic nature special should take heat with this kind of reasoning. “Demeaning to the cow” is a real knee slapper, if you ask me.
All I can figure is that animal cruelty must be nearly obliterated to make it worth Peta’s time to take notice of this.
Listen up Peta, if you want my money as a valid charity, quit doing dumb ass stunts like this. From what I have seen so far, the world would be a better place without ya.
Well, I for one think PETA is on to something. I mean, taking away a cow’s bathroom stalls so they can crap in a field?! How inhumane is that? What are they going to do next, make them go naked, too? And I bet those bastards don’t feed those poor bovines anything but grass and hay and water.
I know what I’m gonna do tonight. I’m gonna sit in front of the TV and watch “The Planet’s Funniest Animals” (or whatever that show is on Animal Planet) while eating a big ol’ burger. Then I’m gonna get the cat toys and play with my cats.
Muuuu Haa Haaa Haaa!
So turds are now classified as animals? I’m gonna eat at Taco Bell tonight, and tomorrow I’ll “release a herd”. Maybe I can sell some as pets, if I don’t get too attached to them.
And this is just another notch in the belt of “Why can’t PETA realize that the few good things that they do are horribly overshadowed by stupid shit like this?”
I think that what we really need now is the Organization for the Ethical Treatment of Fields. Afterall, the field is the one that is being sold as if it were property.
SLAVERY!
And then to make matters worse, we send a cow out to walk around on it. Have you ever been walked on by a cow? Those damn things are heavy!
ABUSE!
The ultimate indignity: The cow then eats the grass that the field has struggled to nurture and takes a shit on the ever suffering field!
The fields of the world are mad as hell, and are not going to take it anymore!
This is another item that helps to prove my point. I contend that most of the large, national “charities” really don’t care about their “causes”, they just are manned by people who need jobs and can’t get hired anywhere else. PETA has always been one of the worse, in my opinion.
And in case you are wondering, yes I am an animal lover. But instead of throwing paint on animals that are already dead, I foster cats who need homes and donate goods to the local animal shelters.
You know, I’m an animal rights type, and I ignore PETA entirely. But I always know exactly what they’re up to, because every yahoo with a chip on their shoulder about animal rights is guaranteed to start a thread about their latest stunt on no less than 5 billion message boards within seconds of learning about it.
This ensures that whenever somebody who loves animals feels like donating some cash, the check is always made out to PETA because PETA bashers have made them the de facto animal rights group through an unparalleled word-of-mouth campaign.
What you may not realize if you are not an animal rights activist is that animal rights never gets positive press, so they have made negative press into a fundraising high art form. And their best, most dedicated grassroots volunteers are you.
I suppose that they are against horse racing for the same reasons. In fact, I’ll be they’re against any form of domesticated breeding because it’s “Humiliating” to the animals to have to have forced sex in front of their owners. What next? Will they be against Groundhog day because it is humiliating groundhogs when we force them to predict the weather?
So the theory in play here is any press is good press?
I can’t see how that would work here. In my case, I once looked at these guys as sporting a good cause, and one I’d want to contribute to. What they said made sense back then.
But now, with some of these more outrageous stunts and claims, I take anything they say with a grain of salt. At the very least, it’s comical, at its worst, it’s frightening- these people are really out there.
But back to my main point- the bottom line in terms of financial support? Whereas I might have given these people money in the past, because their message seemed reasonable and appropriate, I now actively seek out other organizations that sport the cause, like WWF. Why? Because I can’t imagine giving money to these fruitcakes. They haven’t lured me towards their cause, they’ve pushed me away. It’s too bad too because they used to make sense, and they used to get a small donation from me (Years ago, when I was young).
No more though. I give my donation to causes that make sense to me, that seem to have a clearly defined goal that doesn’t reek of extremism.
So, to take your point that any press is good press- how has that been effective on their part? Aren’t they alienating their base support by going to such extremes? Or are people so stupid they think PETA is the only game in town?
I dunno, I’d bet dollars to donuts these kinds of stunts have hurt their cause more than it’s helped, simply because people will want to avoid giving them their money (IMHO).
I’d be curious to read the facts- has their funding gone up, or down?
As an aside, after I posted my earlier comments, I got to thinking that the support for PETA could conceivably be coming from organizations like WWF and other mainstream organizations. Think about it- if your organization is relatively unknown, and takes a semi-serious approach to animal rights, how better to get the word out to others about you mission than to give to the goofball camp. The more they’re heard and seen as being odd and out to lunch, the more others who once gave them money might come looking to less extreme organizations.
CnoteChris, one place they get their money from is flaky celebrities who’ve become so detached from reality that they think the folks at PETA are rational. (Wasn’t Bob Barker a big supporter of theirs for awhile?) Also, if the folks at PETA think that things like cow pie bingo are cruel, you can bet that there’s folks out there who feel the same way. And some of them have money. Lots of money. I know it sounds crazy, but I used to have a job where I dealt with people on a daily basis who made more money in an hour than I will in a year, and lots of them couldn’t grasp such basic concepts as how to operate a cell phone.
