Really? Remind me to tell you the story of the college who had an exclusive deal with Coke, then whose student activities board cancelled a speaker from Africa because during her speech she intended to criticize Coke’s practices in some African nations.
Gee, then why don’t we just sell the schools to McDOnald’s?
McDOnald’s was found guilty of animal cruelty in a court of law. THAT is a fact.
Don’t want one? Don’t take one.
Unlike McDonald’s. :rolleyes:
I do not agree with the tactic of vandalizing other people’s property.
“Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help–I’m being repressed!” :rolleyes:
Riiiiight. When was the last time you saw a vegetarian presented in the popular culture as anything but, at best, an amiable kook?
You know, I see they have at least 2 magazines devoted to vegetarianism, but there don’t seem to be any Meat Lovers magazines. Why not? Cause people wouldn’t Buy them!
Not much of a market for it, is there?
Sounds like the students didn’t really care about the speaker anyway or they would have done something. Apathy sweet apathy.
What the hell do you mean by that? What has that got to do with anything. Advertising is part of life. If Mcdonalds wants to dump a bunch of money into our schools to improve the facilities more power to them. No one requires the school to teach the McD’s curriculum. If you’re saying they do back it up.
I wasn’t calling that a lie. I am calling other facts by PETA bald faced lies.
Don’t shove it in my face either. You know some psycho PETA freak will be in people’s face. Also some people might take it and give it to their kid without looking.
Sure McDonald’s looks for free advertising but take a look at the method. :rolleyes:
If it is ok for you to attack me it is ok for me to defend myself BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.
Hold on, hold on… Let’s think about this one… Why are vegetarians portrayed as amiable kooks at best. Wait, I know this one…
Because the vegetarian community is obviously too fucking stupid to speak for themselves. Face it they have allowed PETA to become their spokesperson. How do you expect to be portrayed when the only image you allow to be distributed in the mainstream media is created by a bunch of whacko kooks. Speak consiously for yourself and don’t call me a murderer and we will be off to a good start. Calling me a murderer is a really bad way to convince of your opinion.
How about every fucking cooking magazine on the planet!
Outdoor Life, Deer and Deer Hunting, Field and Stream, Sports Afield etc. etc. etc.
Why would we need to devote a magazine solely to eating meat. Most meat eaters prefer a balanced diet.
Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I would be. Unless you’re going to Hamburger U., there’s no reason for any public school to fly the flag of any corporation. As far as sponsorship – and why put it in quotes? – is concerned, the more money Mickey D’s wants to pour into our public school system, the better, and I’d thank them for it. I am not aware of any arrangement by which they then get to supply food for cafeterias – a strict quid pro quo – but if they are selling lunches (or lunch components) to schools, just as any other food service company does, what’s wrong with that? Most school cafeterias are not vegetarian anyway, so then it’s just a matter of which “slaughterer” you’re buying your meat from.
This is overheated, pro-PETA bullshit that I’ll be damn surprised if you can back up. Either as a child or an adult, I have never seen any “literature” supplied by anyone to grade school children about how “wonderful” meat is. What do you mean by “wonderful”, anyway? Nutritious? Well, news flash: it is, and I don’t think an education that includes teaching children that meat can and often is part of a balanced, nutritious diet, is a bad thing. Should that “literature” come from “domestic cattle producers”? Maybe not, but the underlying nutritional facts often do, because it’s people like the Beef Council that have those facts at their fingertips. Why? Because beef is their product and their business is to know it and promote it.
This is a spurious argument anyway, since the topic is what sanctimonious, over-wrought, out of touch, clueless assholes the people at PETA are. A response boiling down to “McDonald’s is just as bad!” offers no defense for this latest example of their idiocy.
Oh, and since is the Pit and you’ve seen fit to insult us, you can kiss my rosy red ass while I have this nice juicy cheeseburger for lunch.
Why should McDonald’s have this level of access to children’s minds, but PETA shouldn’t? Defend that, you fucking jackasses.
People asked about details of corporate sponsorship in public schools. Here are some excerpts from an article about it:
And yes indeedy, some of the corporate contracts with schools are exclusive, and lots of them include curriculum materials that are just glorified advertising. A science course on analyzing cola samples? Pu-lease.
That’s 840,000 the tax payers of the district didn’t have to cough up. And I’m sure there are smaller districts where this additional income becomes a larger percentage of the budget.
Also, if I’m a poor district I would take them up on that deal. Apparently the State Officials aren’t exactly “ponying up” to help them out. To say they withhold funds if the district gets an endowment from an outside company seems ludicrous. They can still apply for the federal grants they qualify for and it should not reduce state money.
Analyzing cola samples seems ludicrous on the face but if it teaches the kids something about taking samples and analyzing their contents they could probably apply that logic to ground water sampling too.
I’ve seen fit to insult you? Listen, you arrogant, sanctimonious cunt, every goddamned time I read the board, I find several threads which describe in intimate detail what terrible people vegetarians – not PETA, but vegetarians in general – are, and frankly, I’ve about had it. Every goddamned day, a new one springs up, or people feel compelled to comment, apropos of nothing, how much they hate vegetarians. I cannot begin to imagine the general level of insecurity one must live under to feel so threatened by what other people choose not to eat that they must constantly get in their shit for it.
Does PETA use shock tactics to bring attention to the issues of animal cruelty and inhumane treatment? You bet your fucking ass they do. Why? Because most people don’t know. Most people aren’t aware of the astoundingly, mind-boggingly cruel treatment that goes on every single day that goes unnoticed and unpunished. And I’m not even talking about hunting; I’m talking about people needlessly torturing to death defenseless animals, both in the farm industry and just for the sheer hell of it.
If the only way to get people to listen is to be shocking and outrageous, well, so be it. Who else is going to go to bat against a little kid who was caught stoning neighborhood cats and their litters to death for the fun of it, and urge the court to get him counseling? Who else is going to make people aware of a woman whose dog was killed after some psycho, following a traffic mishap, grabbed it from her car and threw it onto a busy freeway? Who else is going to take up the cause of circus animals being beaten to death on a regular basis?
Are some of their campaigns misguided or ill-conceived? Undoubtedly, although I don’t think the McDonald’s campaign is. McD’s markets HEAVILY to children, so PETA is going to meet them on their own turf. ALL organizations and companies have misguided campaigns from time to time. Christ, PETA is trying to do something positive, like getting people to stop mistreating animals, and they can’t win no matter how they present the message. First they get accused of only caring about bunnies and kitties and deer and cute animals; then when they mention the rats and stingrays killed on “Survivor,” people bitch about them even more.
Fuck, I’m going to renew my membership today just to spite you bunch of no-life assholes.
PHIL spews (and really there’s no other way to characterize it):
Well, yes. See “carcass-munching goat-felchers” and “fucking jackasses”. Since you wrote that, it’s a little disengenous (okay, a lot) for you to pretend you don’t remember it.
Y’know, there’s a sort of elegant consistency to you, Phil; once a bile-filled prick, always a bile-filled prick. But as you surely know by now, I personally take such spittle-flecked insults as a sign of a truly weak argument – because if your argument wasn’t weak you wouldn’t have to rely on them.
Poor Phil. My heart bleeds for you, really it does. But in point of fact, if you’d stop going ape-shit long enough to notice, this thread isn’t about vegetarians, it’s about PETA. I don’t believe I’ve ever said vegetarians are terrible people and certainly no one else in this thread did, either. So maybe you need to decide just what windmill you’re tilting at.
Blah blah blah. Again, you seemed to have confused this thread with another, anti-vegetarian thread where your evident frustration would be more appropriate. But if you want to rant about what other, unidentified posters have said in other, unidentified threads, go right ahead. It’s just that we weren’t talking about that in this thread.
Uh, right. And passing out “Unhappy Meals” to toddlers brings this home how? It really doesn’t; it’s a tactic most people are likely to resent – some seriously, as I would if I caught them foisting that shit off on my child instead of approaching me. It’s a tactic that makes them look like a bunch of wacked-out idiots, just like the “Got Beer?” campaign did. I’m not saying their underlying purpose is absolutely unworthy (though I personally think it is); I’m saying they need some help in the “campaigns and P.R.” department.
See, this is really debatable. If you “shock and outrage” people, you run the very real risk of alienating them from the goals you purport to seek; they’re not listening to you, they’re laughing at you, and making mental notes to stay as far away from you as possible.
This, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with the ridiculous concept of “Unhappy Meals”.
So, despite your insulting invective (par for the course from you), you actually AGREE with me. That’s got to rankle. And of course, you’re free to think that “Unhappy Meals” are the apex of brilliant advertisement, just as I’m free to think they are laughable and obviously counterproductive.
Well, no; that’s not the limit of their “message,” which I doubt anyone should disagree with. They don’t want people to eat meat; they don’t want people to drink milk for God’s sake; they don’t want people to use life-saving medications, if created at the expense of an animal life; they don’t want people to test on animals, even if animal-testing saves thousands of human lives. Don’t misinterpret their mission when defending them; it only makes your argument seem that much weaker.
Just as I thoroughly enjoyed my medium-rare cheeseburger for lunch today, while thinking about you and your pathetic attempt to make personal something that is patently ridiculous and totally indefensible. In fact, I think I’ll have another one for dinner, which will basically double (in one day) the amount of red meat I generally consume in a week. But, heck, it seems the least I can do.
Oh, and attempt to keep a civil tongue in your head if and when you reply, or you won’t see any response from me. I have better things to do with my time than reply to impotent dickheads who can’t even track what the topic of a single thread is. I don’t think that’s asking too much. I doubt you talk to your wife that way; she doesn’t look like the type that would stand it, and neither will I.
Where did you get that idea? I answered your question; I didn’t put my stamp of approval on it. I agree with you that it seems very distasteful (no pun intended) to have a corporate banner hanging on school grounds. But the bottom line is that schools need money so they’ve resorted to prostituting themselves to big corporations. Feel free to protest this practice, but you might want to come up with a “Plan B” for funding the new gym while you’re waving the “McDonald’s sucks!” banner in front of a school board.
As far as vegetarians go, I don’t think they are nuts. The vegetarians that I know are all thoughtful, intelligent people. But PETA represents the extreme vegans who want to force me to adopt their lifestyle. And when they switched from the soft sell to the in-your-face terrorism I quit listening.
As far as you subscribing to PETA to piss me off, I can assure you that how you choose to spend your discretionary income has very little impact on my life. Follow your heart. And, for God’s sake, take an alka seltzer before you spit up your bean sprouts.
No, certainly not. However, is it worth the price? Schools plastered with ads, curriculum materials plastered with ads, whole courses basically designed around a sponsor’s product, kids getting yet more school-sponsored encouragement to consume yet more sugar and caffeine and all the other junk—shouldn’t we be getting more than a lousy half of one percent of the yearly budget if we have to put up with all this?
Me, I’m sure that the smaller districts are scoring less lucrative contracts; they have a smaller market to offer, you know, and the folks at Coke aren’t doing this for their health!
pldennison sez:
Aw c’mon, Phil—tell us how you really feel. I’m not sure I’d call it insecurity per se, it seems to be more of a power thing. As I said in an earlier post, there really does seem to be a global shift in opinion emerging on the mutual relations of humans and non-humans; and I think many people resent this. We certainly don’t want to make animals suffer, but it goes against hundreds of centuries of human experience to be told that we MUSN’T.
I don’t see how else to explain the rather puzzling correlation between criticizing AR positions and gloating over meat-eating. If jodih is pissed at you (and she has reason, I think calling a fellow poster a “cunt” is pretty out of line even in the Pit), why take it out on a cow? Why not just write your name on a piece of toilet paper the next time she needs to use some, or download a photo of you and throw darts at it? I enjoy a good cheeseburger now and then myself, but I’d never eat one as an act of defiance towards PETA supporters. Seems to be very much a “you can’t tell me what to do” reaction.
Same thing about animal testing, maybe? Many people are horrified that anyone could possibly argue against animal testing if it saves human lives. Well, face it: it’s not intrinsically right to kill or torture animals even to save human lives. Sure, we do it (and I don’t really expect or want us to stop doing it, as long as we need to), but only because we’re smarter and bigger and can get away with it, not because we have some kind of natural right to do it.
I think many people are fundamentally uncomfortable with that realization: we hurt and kill animals not because we have some kind of contract with reality that assures us it’s right or necessary, but because we can get away with it. This is starting to change how we look at what we do, and it’s really disturbing. Disturbs me, that’s for sure. Yeah, we like meat and we need medicines—but is there maybe a better way to do this? I think things really will change, eventually. But resistance, including vegetarian-trashing, is going to be strong.
Stupid confrontational tactics necessary? I don’t know; I loathe people getting in other people’s faces with destructive self-dramatizing tricks. But then I think of the suffragettes chaining themselves to railings and breaking windows. Is that really what it takes to get people thinking? Would we be thinking about this if somebody hadn’t got indignant over PETA’s silly Unhappy Meals?..
Aw man, there I go being contemplative and wishy-washy in the Pit again. Sorry: @#%#@*#@*)(*@#!!!
I recommend everyone look up the March 2000 issue of Harper’s and read the fine cover article: “Let Them Eat Fat”.
Read the exciting story of the super-sized fast food meal and its inglorious trip through your body! Marvel at the long-term affects of these fabulous feasts on your health! Share in the comraderie of national obesity of those who often partake of the fast food dinner!
My point being, of course, don’t worry so much about the effects of a few scary dolls on you kids. They’ll see worse on TV tonight. Instead, ponder the epidemic of poor eating habits of our youth, and the lifetime struggle against obesity they’re likely embarking upon as they munch down on those grease-filled fries.
Biotop, Harper’s probably has a much better chance at changing my mind about eating at McDonald’s than people screaming at me.
Besides, I think it’s pretty clear that it’s not PETA’s message that turns people off; it’s their manner of delivering the message. Throwing pies in corporate president’s faces, tossing paint on fur-wearing citizens, passing out bloody clowns at McDonald’s, their puzzling “Drink Beer!” campaign…basically they have lost their collective minds.
I hate to burst PETA’s bubble, but if I were a child (in age, not just in mental faculties), a Ronald McDonald wielding a bloody knife, slaying the cows, chickens, and fishies, it would be pretty kewl…
Ok, on the OP
PETA is going over the line. When you want to sway someone to your beliefs, you focus on adults. PETA has NO RIGHT to force their beliefs on children, nobody does. Parents have the right to raise their children as they see fit, until the children are old enough and mature enough to make their own decisions. Scaring a child to make them stop eating meat is low, underhanded, cowardly, and disgusting.
PETA is low, underhanded, cowardly, and disgusting. If testing medicine on animals saves one persons life, then that’s FUCKING GREAT. If I work my ass off and save for a brand new white mink full-length coat, I have every FUCKING RIGHT to wear it with pride, without the fear of some bunny hugging, sheep fucking, cow loving asshole throwing paint on it. If I get a hankering for a blood-rare steak it’s my FUCKING RIGHT to go and buy one. If PETA wants to convince me to love the animals, well I suggest they start using something that even remotely resembles logic. If they can’t even PRETEND their fucking brains are in some kind of working order, why should I listen to a fucking thing they say?
About schools…
As somebody who regularly goes to public schools, I have one thing to say about corporate sponsorship. So the fuck what? Are all of you self-rightious “Get McDonald’s out of our schools!” idiots willing to pay higher taxes? You willing to fork over your own hard earned money? Well, if everybody was willing to do that, school’s wouldn’t have the problems they are now experiencing. If schools are forced to deal with corporate sponsorship of ANY kind to buy new materials and books, it’s the COMMUNITY’s fault. If the community decides it doesn’t want its children exposed to advertisements during school, then they better damn well get their asses out there and raise some money for the schools. Otherwise, I suggest you shut up. If McD’s, or Coke, or Pepsi, or Taco Bell wants to step and pick up the slack in the public schools, maybe you should be thankful. They aren’t asking YOU to pay anything. They aren’t asking YOU to do anything. YOU don’t even have to get up off your fat vegetarian, PETA-loving, cow kissing ass.
Oh, and phil, thank you for one of the most entertaining posts I have read in a long time. I was living under the happy illusion that everybody on this board has more brain cells than the average person. Obviously, I was wrong. Very, very wrong. Hopefully you are the only brainless PETA-drone on this board.
I have to agree with the anti-PETA contingent on this thread. Trying to sway children by depicting a clown as a bloody murderer isn’t going to win you any friends. I think the latest rash of PETA commando tactics (pie throwing, Got Beer?, this one) shows that these people are nothing more than thugs. If you don’t want to eat meat, fine, but what gives you a right to throw a pie at the Secretary of Agriculture, or scare the crap out of little kids who want some food? You can not eat meat all you want, that just means more for me, but when you start telling other people what is right for them, you’ve gone to far. The Got Beer? campaign not only shows that PETA are desperate media-whores, but they don’t regard humans in the same way they do the stupid animals. Man, do they taste good…and I just got a George Foreman grill sizzle
I’d also like to point out that I made a pit post without using the word “fuck.”
thank you,
bradysg
“Heroic PETA commandos rescue bunny, kill 49” - The Onion
- wish you were here to properly toast this shit head, Wally.