Sigh.
I don’t even know what to say anymore.
Anne Frank… Ballpark Franks… I see the similarity… NOT!
I love animals (especially when they’re seasoned properly), but I have yet to see one, even an adorable puppy, that I would spare over a human baby or teenager, and having seen two roosters kill each other rather than share or divide 50 hens I really don’t think I’d compare the Tyson Plant to Bierknau in terms of lost intellect and realized misery.
Wow… that really made an impression… I can’t decide if I should stop eating animals or if I should start eating humans, since it is apparently all the same…
Let’s turn this from a pitting (and, Cecil knows, PETA has been pitted often enough around here for their antics) into a little discussion, shall we? (Maybe it’ll be moved. Maybe it’ll be closed without prejudice. It’ll be fun while it lasts either way.)
Thesis: Some publicity is bad publicity.
PETA is an example of an organization acting like a spoiled child. It screams and wails at the top of its lungs for attention, seemingly without regard for the harm it is doing its cause.
Harm? Yes. PETA’s repeated, continued attacks on the rational people of America have driven unneeded divides between the vegetarian community and the rest of the country. Granted that few would probably convert if PETA were more rational, but PETA’s rhetoric has raised tensions to the point where rational, calm debate is only possible after both sides explicitly disavow PETA. If the anti-vegetarian side, or merely those curious about the possibility of vegetarianism but undecided, can rattle off PETA’s actions, discussion has stopped. PETA comparisons are the notional equivalent of Nazi comparisons in the context of Godwin’s Law, albeit highly one-sided: Win or lose, the debate is over.
The only organizations PETA can be compared to are organizations so thouroughly discredited in the public eye no right-thinking individual would avow sympathy towards them or their aims. The Scientology cult is one of them, with is repeated barratry and extralegal harassment of anyone who criticises it. And, obviously, the Neo-Nazis fall into that ignoble crowd. PETA, if it had any PR sense beyond that of the wailing three-year-old, would not. Yet it does. PETA, theoretically, has a cause that is defensible on moral and practical grounds. That cause is completely lost in the sound and fury whenever it opens its mouth.
So, for all of you who come in here to utter that timeless chestnut `All publicity is good publicity,’ please explain how this publicity does anything but harm vegetarians and their cause, and how any right-thinking person could join an organization that has compared the intentional, cold-blooded homicide of well over eleven million people to the raising and eating of animals.
Thank you.
BTW, for the record Isaac Bashevis Singer (who is quoted on the site as saying “In relation to animals, all people are Nazis; for [them] it is an eternal Treblinka”), while a Polish born Jew, was never interred in Treblinka or any other camp but rather spent the entire war in New York City. I would seriously doubt that any Treblinka survivors would make the analogy.
There is GD about this subject going on right now, if anyone is interested.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=165787
Do the people at PETA actually think this going to change anyone’s mind? Are they trying to get Neo-Nazi’s to support them? (Well, Hitler did eat a mostly vegetarian diet latter in his life…) You think they would figure out the negative publicity would cost them more support than they would gain by this type of campaign.
Apparently 88% of the people who took the CNN poll that went along with the article cited thought it was an outrage. Unscientific or not, that’s pretty overwhelming. Unless PETA-sympathetic people never own computers, have anythiang to do with computers, and think the internet is evil, I can’t see the results being terribly skewed from a truly random sampling. Take that, PETA!
After a couple of shark attacks in Florida, PETA was rooting for the sharks. Nothing they say is too insane for me to believe anymore.
Umm . . . that didn’t quite come out the way I meant. I’m not saying I believe every wacky thing they say . . . oh heck, you know what I mean.
As a vegetarian, I am disgusted by PETA. I was looking for recipies, and stumbled across their GOVEG site. PROPAGANDA.
(Actuallt I am paraphrasing, as I refuse to go back to their retarded site.) (No offense to the retarded)
They seem to think that people need to be grossed-out into making decisions. I never preach to anyone. At dinner time I’ll pass on the meat, that’s all you need to know.
I think everybody over the age of 12 knows where meat comes from, and are also able to make their own decisions about what they put in their mouths.
Fuck them. Fuck them in their silly asses for giving vegetarianism a bad name, and causing people to lash out at me, because I obviously am in cahoots with them, even though I never said a fucking word
PETA sucks goat dick.
Jews were forced to lay eggs for the Germans?!
This is just one more thing, on the big pile, that makes PETA look like they need something better to do. Stick with vivisection and unnecessary research on animals. I might even agree. Even those kooks in Britan protecting the poor beagles - albeit with seriously screwed up means - have a point. This is pointless. I’m not going to eat chicken because, what?
I just ate a fast food hamburger to get back at them.
I’m so mature.
But not how!
Yes, what they did was tactless, tasteless, sick and counterproductive.
But imagine that you do feel billions of feeling beings are suffering and dying for no especially good reason, and everyone says ‘la-la-la-doesn’t matter.’ If you do, you see something very, very wrong (though nothing like the holocaust). There is a great temptation to shock, just to get anyone to see that anything is wrong at all.
Billions of living beings are killed every day in homes across America. This is simply unaaceptable to any moral human. Please join us in our crusade to ban the toxic chemicals that kill these innocent living things. PETA implores you to support the ban on household cleaning products. Save the bacteria!
If you believe that this sort of violence is wrong no matter what creature its done to, how could you not make such a comparison? I understand that people are outraged… but mostly it seems just for the sake of being outraged at the comparison, without bothering to see why it’s being made, and on what premises it would seem perfectly valid to people at PETA. I don’t really see how this is any different than what pro-lifers do (not that they have a good reputation either) with their photos of dead fetuses.
Let’s not forget those wonderfully fanatical Pro-Lifers who think life is so precious, they demonstrate that by killing doctors and nurses who work in abortion clinics. Yeah, that makes sense.
This goes back to the point the vegetarian made earlier. I am a pro-lifer myself, and personally, I agree with your sarcasm. What is killing doctors going to prove? nothing . If somebody wants to be a vegetarian: power to them. The moment they start acting like morons like the PETA is the time that they loose my respect. I dont judge vegetarians as one big group, and not that I think you are judging pro-lifers, I was just wanting to elaborate that some of us are actually a little rational on what we do about it.
I disagree. I think it is precisely for that reason that people find PETA’s actions so intolerable. Their philosophy is based on the foulest and most vapid kind of extremism, with no tolerance for rational thought or dissent. It’s dogma. And that annoys the fuck out of people.
There are many millions of pro-lifers who don’t kill abortion doctors, you know. Likewise, there are many millions of vegetarians who don’t have shit for brains.