My statement that " I will eat meat the rest of my life in protest" was kind of in jest, as I am an omnivore already and this icky advert has not changed that fact.
My reaction, knee-jerk or not, was revulsion at the insensitivity and just plain fucked-upped-ness of PETA’s ad campaign.
A horrible miscalculation? Understatement of the century.
Sorry to pick on you, EJsgirl. You may have said that in jest, but I do think that this latest campaign is likelier to reinforce negative images of animal-rights folks, and by extension of anyone who works on behalf of the concerns of nonhuman animals. It gives ethical vegetarians a bad rep.
I’m not sure how to make “horrible miscalculation” less of an understatement. I disagree vehemently with this campaign: it’s in deadly poor taste, it invokes Godwin, it’s hypocritical (I hope – otherwise, they oughtta be organizing the equivalent of the French Underground, not just making melodramatic ads), and it’s terrible tactics. Is that better?
Daniel
Sorry Daniel, I got a little riled up there! 
It ain’t about you at all.
Stuff like this does give vegetarians a bad rap. It’s funny, I asked a vegetarian friend of mine what she thought of PETA, and she thinks they’re lame too.
I am still trying to picture the marketing meeting where some idiot said “yeah baby, run with that!”
If we’re not supposed to eat animals, then why did they make them out of meat?
BWAHAHAHAHA! You and X~Slayer need to get together and, I dunno, make bumper stickers or something. Your wit is as devastating as it is original!
Daniel
PETA will never jump the shark. Shameless exploitation of animals is evil, remember?
Shameless exploitation of humans, however, seems to be perfectly fine, as we see here…
I think PETA’s big mistake is to suggest that Auschwitz and factory farms for hens are morally equivalent. It is obvious to me, and by the sound of it to most others here, that they are not.
However I do think it is possible to see cruelty, together with abuse of power, as a continuum or scale. The Nazi concentration camps represent the most extreme form of what human beings are capable of doing to other human beings. They also represent the most extreme consequence of what happens when human beings de-humanise other human beings.
I would also argue that factory-farming involves both abuse of power and cruelty, but the comparison ends there unless you think hens suffer as people suffer.
Wait a sec, this part confuses me. Suffering just involves physical pain and discomfort, right? And animals DO have pain receptors, right? So how can anyone argue that animals don’t suffer? I mean, it’s another issue entirely whether we should take that pain into account as we do a human’s, but I would’ve thought that we at least acknowledged that animals DO feel pain years ago…
Yes of course I know that animals feel pain - sorry if my wording was ambiguous, I’m certainly not arguing that animals don’t suffer. My point is that the suffering is of a different quality (though even this is debatable I suppose because how do we know?). What appears to be true is that while animals suffer physical pain, they do not have human capacity to anticipate pain (which makes it so much worse) or knowledge of death.
I admit I find the whole question of animal rights/animal suffering quite tortuous…don’t have any simple answers.
Might have to come back to board tomorrow as it’s 5am here in UK and brain is muddy…
Knowledge of death, perhaps, but I always interpreted an abused dog’s cowering when faced with anger or a raised hand as a sign of anticipating pain; at the very least it’s a Pavlovian reaction.
Or did you mean that animals can’t dwell on it and be afraid of it outside of the moment, as humans can?
[Southpark]Dude, this is pretty fucked up, right here.[/]
I dare say that there are few cows who are intended to be slaughtered who are emiciated; that sort of defeats the purpose of raising an animal for food. Wouldn’t the better comparison be 40 fat cows> 40 obese humans?
I wonder how many PETA members are as apt to identify themselves are the members of other groups and associations. Especially with the crap they smear all over the place.
Yes, exactly that. It is imagination that makes the difference. The flicker of pain I feel at the dentists, for example, is a tiny fraction of the pain I experienced after scalding my leg. Yet it is the dentist that fills me with dread, not the kettle. Why? Because at the dentist I’m sitting in the chair visualising the drill penetrating a nerve, while the scald took me by surprise.
But, having said that, the other reason why being at the dentist is unpleasant is the experience of powerlessness. You could argue that farm animals’ experience of powerlessness and confinement is highly unnatural for them and a source of distress.
I just emailed the following to them…
…yeah, like they’ll read it.
I do believe that the reason people are putting them down so much is because of they blatantly using the holocaust as a marketing ploy. They are trying to get people who feel sorry for the jews, to feel sorry for animals, thus the pictures side by side, it’s just horrible. No one should use such a tragedy as the holocaust for any type of gain. I could think up millions of ideas for them to pull, but not this rubbish.
Oh, it’s been even “better” than this. We have a really bad murder case going on up here right now. A pig farmer out in Port Coquitlam, (close to Vancouver), is accused of killing at least fifteen women. Apparently PETA had planned to use this in a campaign, but actually decided not to after all. My computer is on dial-up, and slower than the proverbial molassas in January. Does anyone have a cite on this? It should be in the Vancouver Province, just before or after Christmas.
Idiots.
I’d just like to add that as a Jew I’m shocked and horrified by this. Words truly can’t describe the anger I experienced when I first saw this on the news. I hope this is taken down VERY quickly and PETA is ostracised by the rest of the country and fades into obscurity forever.
PETA has done the world a disservice. Now Palestinian suicide bombers will know to disguise themselves as donkeys so that Americans will have sympathy for them.