Actually, I think she brings up an interesting point. I think what she’s saying is that she understands her situation, and that she’s profiting from animal testing, but that while that is bad she believes the good side (allowing her to continue to fight against animal testing) outweighs the bad. I’m not entirely sure that makes her a hypocrite.
PETA’s platform calls for the outlawing of all animal testing. PETA has provided financial and moral support to people who have fire-bombed animal testing labs. I’m pretty sure she is a hypocrite.
Of course, Sweetland’s a hypocrite. She says she’s opposed to animal products but she justifies her own use of insulin because she’s fighting for animal rights - in other words it’s okay for her to personally violate her standards of what constitutes animal abuse because she’s trying to stop other people from violating those standards. When you try to argue that other people should follow rules that you’re excused from, you’re being a hypocrite.
Y’know, I’m with all the people who are tired of the “hypocrite” charge. It’s ludicrous to imagine that the only immoral action is to violate your own professed code of conduct. Why can’t we condemn the code of conduct that such people profess? There are much worse things than hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a pecadillo, not a mortal sin.
Hypocrisy isn’t the only sin, but it’s a major one - look how many problems in the world have been caused by people trying to tell other people what to do. One of the few effective restraints on this behavior is forcing people to live under the conditions they helped create.
I’d say it was awfully convenient that she had her moral revelation after her life no longer depended on animal-derived insulin. As I find her opinion on medical testing on animals morally repugnant, I’m not inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt when it comes to her claims of what she believed and when she believed it.
Although it’s academic now, as flight’s cite* shows that the woman admits that the insulin she’s currently using violates her stated principles, but that she’s just so gosh-darn important that she gets to violate them. Hypocrite, with a huge ego.
[sub]*Hee![/sub]
Quite possibly. I’m just saying she isn’t a hypocrite for her usage of insulin. She may very well be a hypocrite in many other ways.
If only I had thought to say “I’m not entirely sure that makes her a hypocrite” and not “I’m not entirely sure she’s a hypocrite”. Ah, missed opportunities.
People get so vexed by hypocrisy not because it’s so destructive or evil, but because it’s so ANNOYING. Particularly when it’s someone whom you might agree with in some way who destroys his/her own credibility by being a hypocrite.
Oh, and if this thread had been any more effectively hijacked, there would be terrorists appearing on CNN demanding passage to Cuba and blowjobs from Campbell Brown.
I don’t get this. She believes that people should never use anything made from animal products. Shes uses something made from animal products. She is a huypocrite. She justifies her actions by their value to the cause, but that justification doesn’t relieve her of hypocrisy.
Hmmmm… I hate to leap into such a heated argument halfway, but is it actually PETA’s official position that we could immediately and entirely cease exploitation of animals, instantly, say, tonight? Or is it that they wish to wean humanity off dependence on animals as quickly and completely as practically possible?
Here’s the Mission Statement. Read into it what you will.
Whether or not PETA believes that exploitation could end immediately, the fact remains that they support, both financially and morally, groups that fire bomb labs that do animal testing. That suggests to me that they are in the business of immediate change, through violence if necessary. Their website asserts that diabetes can be controlled without insulin. Sweetland states here that she now uses a synthetic insulin, but neglects to add that it contains some animal products. For her to take the position that her use of it is justified while others’ is not is hypocritical.
I would say the justification does relieve her of hypocrisy, at least in this case. She’s accepted that her actions are contradictory to her beliefs, but she’s saying that the benefit outweighs the problems.
Now, if she’s said that there are no circumstances in which using products from animal testing is ok - that there are no “special situations” in which it’s reasonable to do so - then yes, that’d make her a hypocrite. Quite possibly she’s said that, too, since it seems like one of those sweeping statements an animal rights activist would use. But until then, I don’t think she’s a hypocrite.
Two pages and no one’s mentioned the “Sex” episode of Bullshit? With all the naked people striding around?
One of the finest television half-hours I’ve seen. Much more interesting than arguing ad nauseum about PETA.
I’m not sure that this quote is being taken in context. If it is (and if I had to bet, I’d bet that it is), then yeah, hypocrisy is a very fair charge against her. But by searching PETA’s website for “insulin,” I came across this article by her.
In it, she doesn’t advocate that diabetics give up insulin; instead, she advocates that they use other measures to minimize the amount of insulin that they take:
Her science may be questionable, but it appears here that she’s calling for diabetics to take the least-harmful path to animals that still keeps the diabetic healthy, not calling for them to die rather than take animal-derived insulin. That seems to me to be a consistent position.
It doesn’t seem to jibe with the earlier quote, though. If the earlier quote had left off the last sentence–“I need my life to fight for the rights of animals”–it would be innocuous. It’s the last sentence that really grates, with its not-so-subtle implication that those who don’t fight for the rights of animals don’t need their lives as much.
Daniel
No, everyone appears to be off on a PETA tangent.
Start a new thread, people!
Never saw the acronym “TBDITU” before, and my Google-fu has failed me. What’s it mean?
The Biggest Douchebag In The Universe. It’s from “South Park”
I see; thanks. There’ve gotta be some better claimants to the title, though, doncha think…?
I entirely agree, but I think that having Penn do it for so many episodes is like having a magician who works the same trick over and over again. Eventually, you just get tired of seeing the same sleight of hand, even if he keeps changing the patter.
In too many cases, P&T resort to ridiculing their targets (and, let’s be honest, some of these people are pretty easy targets) rather than actually offering any counter-evidence. It’s all too easy to poke fun at a cause by selecting its most ludicrous spokespeople to put on camera, which seems to be their stock in trade.
They are fond of accusing others of “cherry-picking” evidence. Yet, they are clearly willing to do the same. In the episode on 2nd hand smoke, for example, they proclaim that “there is no scientific basis for the belief that second-hand smoke harms people”, show the cover page of an oft-cited scientific paper from the W.H.O., highlighting one sentence in the abstract that says the study found no link between childhood exposure and alter cancer. A-ha, they say, no scientific evidence!
But if you hit pause and read the very next sentence after that highlighted one, it says that the W.H.O. did find evidence of a link between spousal and workplace exposure and lung cancer. By flashing something in front of us for a short time, using a video highlight to direct our attention to a selected place, they try to convince us that we have actually seen just what they claim we would see. It’s misdirection, pure and simple. Well, by golly, they are stage magicians, aren’t they?
I enjoyed the first episode or two, then started getting annoyed as it became obvious that they were pulling the same schtick over and over again. By the end of the 4th episode, I already felt that the fun was gone, and they just came off as rather manipulative and mean-spirited.