As soon as I saw the video last month of President Barack Obama using his Jedi powers to swat that pesky fly during an interview with CNBC correspondent John Harwood, I knew the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals scolding wouldn’t be far behind.
Doesn’t PETA have better and more important things to do than pointing the finger at the leader of the free world for his “murder” of an insignificant housefly? Guess not.
PETA, shocked and saddened at the news of Obama’s heartless killing of a housefly, promptly sent him a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, which allows users to trap a fly and then let it go outside — unharmed. It’s a sweet gesture, but is it truly necessary?
This was just another example of PETA’s undeniable craziness, and it seems recently it has stepped up its insanity level by a couple of notches.
Before I continue, I’d just like to say that I am a true animal lover. I’ve owned pets and treated them as family. Often, when a cricket is in the house, I’ll trap it in my hands and throw it outside because I don’t want to kill it. I have done the same thing with a fly. I even donate money to Best Friends Animal Society.
But this faux outrage at the president swatting a fly, like most of PETA’s outcries, seems fabricated and dare fake. It is my humble opinion that PETA is just looking for attention.
Nothing details this attention-whore attitude better than several events in recent memory. Take, for instance, the following Australian Daily Telegraph article from January: “Radical international animal rights group PETA has launched its most bizarre campaign yet, demanding fish be renamed ‘sea kittens’ … PETA believes calling fish sea kittens will make seafood less appealing.”
So, let me understand this; if we stop calling fish “fish,” they cease to be appealing? I’m sorry, but you could call sushi “baby puppy meat” and it would still remain my favorite food because it’s that goddamn delicious.
How about in February of last year when The New York Times reported PETA was launching “an advertising campaign in New York and other cities that advocates dog population control, including one commercial that likens dog breeders to the Ku Klux Klan.”
The article stated, “One of the commercials shows a hooded Ku Klux Klan member walking into a meeting of the purebreds-only American Kennel Club, where the members eye him suspiciously. He gets the group to concede that they both believe in the ‘sanctity of pure bloodlines’ and a master race. He sits down, saying, ‘I’ll fit right in here.’ Then the message ‘All dogs are created equal’ flashes on the screen.”
Are people starting to finally realize that PETA is, in fact, a lunatic fringe group? According to several media reports, PETA provided money to the Animal Liberation Front, a radical activist group that ‘[engages] in direct action on behalf of animals,’ including breaking into laboratories and ‘sabotaging facilities.’ “
This would in normal lexicon be called vandalism and breaking and entering, but PETA doesn’t see it that way because animal rights and human rights are one in the same.
The craziness doesn’t end there, either. Ingrid Newkirk, president of PETA, has directed in her will “that her skin be turned into wallets, her feet into umbrella stands and her flesh into ‘Newkirk Nuggets,’ then grilled on a barbecue,” as a final “eff you” to the world for its leather using, nugget-eating ways.
The proof is in the pudding, folks — PETA is as crazy as they come. I support animal rights and I don’t agree with a lot of things that are done to animals. I cannot in good conscience, however, support a group like PETA, who in the past has compared the slaughtering of pigs to the extermination of Jews in the Holocaust and insensitively said that Steve “Crocodile Hunter” Irwin “made a career out of antagonizing frightened wild animals.” As Newkirk infamously told The New Yorker, “We (PETA) are complete press sluts.”
Does PETA have any real credibility left at all?
Gerry Wachovsky is a graduate student and a columnist for the Summer Forty-Niner.
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