Yesterday I drove by a handful of flea-infested hippies protesting KFC. They had signs and a megaphone and a rope with a bunch of rubber chickens hanging from it. Seriously, do these people have so little going on in their lives that this is what they do in their free time?
Before anyone flames me, let me state that I admire their convictions about animal abuse, although I don’t agree with them at all. But I believe that if someone has a problem with KFC, they shouldn’t eat there. Remember when people were protesting the Harry Potter books and other people responded by saying “If you don’t like the Harry Potter books, don’t read them.” Can the same dictum not be true of those who dislike KFC?
While I respect everyone’s right to say whatever’s on their mind, I also subscribe to the notion that just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean that you should.
What good was being done by this protest? At best, these people were making fools of themselves. At worst, they were being a nuisance.
If you want to affect social change and/or do something positive, might I suggest doing something other than protesting? Perhaps something with quantifiable results?
[/list]
[li]Be a Big Brother/Big Sister.[/li][li]Teach at an after-school program in an urban school.[/li][li]Clean up a neglected park.[/li][li]Volunteer at an animal shelter.[/li][li]Give blood.[/li][li]Spay or neuter your pets.[/li][li]Say hi to Opal.[/li][/list]
… the list goes on.
But standing in front of KFC with a rubber chicken?
Just come by NYC during the Pubbies convention, I think you’ll get your fill of outraged protesters. Braniac that I am, I scheduled my upcoming nuptuals for the day after they leave… :wally
“I’m sure there won’t be any last minute details requiring a trip through Penn Station” :rolleyes:
This never works when I tell the protesters outside clinics that perform abortions. Pity, that.
The difference between Harry Potter books and chicken or fetuses is that in the latter cases, the protesters basically believe that murder is going on and they feel compelled to stop it. OK, so not all animal rights protesters believe literally that “Meat is murder,” but at the very least they see it as savage, widespread cruelty that should be stopped. You’ll have a hard time getting through to either of the groups that they might be approaching this the wrong way, and the “if you don’t like it, don’t do it” argument won’t mean much as plenty of other people will still be “killing” unashamedly.
PETA’s response to it would probably be to thank you for the free publicity. The way they see it, lots of people think they’re nuts, so that’s no big deal, but maybe it’ll lead a few people to read up on their issues and realize what’s going on, and those people will stop eating meat/wearing animal products/whatever.
Oh, and I’m a non-proselytizing vegetarian. I shifted my spare time to computer games.
I don’t have a problem with protestors per se, however last year some protestor on my school campus blocked me from entering the building of a class I had, causing me to be absent. This pissed me off to no end.
Back in the day when there were genuine hippies, my grandfather used to refer to them as “heepies”.
Ah, sweet nostalgia.* They just don’t make hippies like they used to.
*Just once in my life did someone call me a hippie. It was during the Indiana State Fair at the Dunk Tank (hit the target with a baseball and dump the obnoxious guy on the platform into the water). It was his job to try to infuriate the patrons with well-chosen insults to keep them paying for another shot at him, and his idea of insulting me (my hair was somewhat long at the time) was to call out “Hey, hippie? How was Woodstock?”
It worked, though, as I was laughing too hard to throw accurately.
Around here, there seems to be a rent-a-hippie franchise. A friend who lives north of here and commutes to SF by bus verifies that the buses do get filled with hippie-types with their huge backpacks and foul matted hair whenever Something To Protest is happening. Otherwise, the buses are strictly business people.
