The fact that there is so much dialogue about something so trivial is exactly the goal of PETA. They know it’s ridiculous. There just trying to challenge some of the complacency in our society. You’re the fool that thinks PETA is serious.
There’s a good chance that one of you that is most defensive about eating meat will become a vegetarian. I’ve seen it happen all too often.
I’m not so sure. I’ve seen some of PETA’s spokesfolks on TV and they all seem like nut cases to me.
Band Name!
So what are you? A representative from the Beef Council? And what happened when someone went veggie the last time?
Beef Council Member #1: Filo Farnsworth just announced that he’s becoming a vegetarian!
Beef Council Member #2: God damn it! He was our best spokesperson, too!
BCM#1 (looking skyward and shouting): God damn you PETA and your crazy activist ways!!! We’ll get you for this!!!
BCM#2: Come on, let’s get a steak and plot our revenge.
BCM#1: I want to stop by R&D first to see if they’ve completed work on our Beef Jerky Ray[sup]TM[/sup]. That’s the only thing that might stop those damned PETA bastards!
Who actually eats canned veggies? Someone must be, for canned veggies are given shelf space in stores.
And this just in: the slaughterhouse in Notre Dame du Lac, P.Q. just burned to the ground.
I don’t think they’re serious; I think they’re a joke. I leave it to you to decide if that’s the impression they intend to send, or ought to send.
The joke is in all of the folks who think they are a joke. They’ve been around for years, probably longer than most of you have been alive. You don’t do that by being a joke or by being a bunch of “nut cases.”
They know what they’re doing all too well.
If anyone’s a joke, it’s those manly Beef Council folks who seem to get bent out of shape by a bunch of “tree-hugging flakes.”
The KKK has been around longer than many of us have been alive; does that lend them any legitimacy in your eyes?
A longstanding traditiion of idiocy is still idiocy, just more pathetic.
Oookay.
-PETA is not the KKK. They’re also not the ones who shot the Dutch tweaker, any more than the NRA are the ones who shot up the Clinton White House with an Uzi. Deep breaths, everybody.
-They’re also pretty clowny. In our local indy paper, some chick who goes topless at anti-fish protests writes letters regularly to the editor bragging about her latest hijinks and comparing eating meat to the Holocaust. Godwin’s law invariably kicks in, and the basic point gets lost. Deep breaths.
PETA knows what they’re doing. They’re taking an advertising risk, that pissing you off is an okay byproduct of recruiting more vegetarians from the ranks of teenagers. And I think that they’re reasonably successful: if you mention the “Got Beer?” campaign to your average college kid, I bet they’ll get an amused grin on their face. PETA deliberately says (and does) naughty things in order to seem hip, and I knew plenty of folks in college that thought they rocked for it.
I’m not excusing their outrageousness, but I think it’s important to understand that they’re neither stupid nor murderous. Just radical and not dedicated to truth or logic.
Daniel
PS My apologies in advance if this turns out to be a double-post.
I didn’t say PETA was the KKK, I was responding to this particular ridiculous statement by dnice2k:
Gotcha, Demise, but it’s still a pretty offensive comparison. PETA, as an organization, might be outrageous and over-the-top, but they don’t have too many lynchings under their belt. Compare them to the Commies-in-my-bathtub John Birch Society, or to the Cold Dead Hands of the NRA, or to Operation Rescue with their plastic fetuses, sure. Call them pathetic idiots, sure. But they’re not anywhere near the same league as lynch-mob-organizing terrorists.
(Note that while comparing the ski-lodge-burning Animal Liberation Front to the KKK would still be obnoxious in my view, it’d be more reasonable than comparing PETA: even the radical animal rights movement has different factions with different agendas.)
And I was also responding to the person who equated PETA with Dutch assassins. An unfair equation.
Daniel
oh, and for the record, dnice is either facts-impaired or a teenager. PETA has “been around for years, probably longer than most of you have been alive”? Then why does this paragraph appear on their Web site?
I’m guessing most of us are older than 22.
Daniel
All together now?
BAND NAME!
(Or at least a great name for a football team!)
. . . damn, somebody thought of it first. . .
Geez, pesch, you could at least give me a credit.
Hmpf, “somebody”, indeed! 
Daniel, I agree with your thoughts that PETA knows what they’re doing and perhaps they are targeting younger folks with their tactics. But hey, the beef and dairy industry gets us before we’re even in grade school, with all the McDonald’s commercials and the fallacy that we need milk after infancy.
If PETA is not dedicated to truth and logic, then certainly neither are those that are pushing meat as soon as we’re out of the womb. Truth and logic doesn’t seem to work in our world of soundbites as evident in some of these posts above.
It just comes down to a matter of convenience and complancency and if someone dares upset that, we all get a little nervous and defensive.
dnice, don’t think for a second I’m defending the beef and dairy councils. I know they’re a bunch of yutzes.
I used to work at a hospital, and our nutrition director (a brilliant and insightful person, normally) put up an education display about proper nutrition. There were some brochures as part of the display that explained the American Dietetic Association’s new guidelines on dieting.
Basically, the guidelines are that folks should eat a variety of food, focusing on vegetables and low-fat foods, and that folks should make dietary changes slowly rather than drastically, and that smaller portions are a good thing. The brochure illustrated these points with examples:
-When you go to a restaurant, order a steak, and then take half of it home with you for lunch the next day.
-Make beef tacos. After the beef is browned, run it under hot water to wash off a lot of the fat.
WTF?
I looked on the back of the brochure, and sure enough, it was produced and distributed by the American Cattleman’s Association. What purported to be a guide to good nutrition was really a cleverly disguised advertisement for the beef industry.
So I’m not comparing PETA’s logic and reason unfavorably to the meat/dairy industry’s. I’m comparing it unfavorably to what I wish it were.
Daniel