I PETA the Fool

Snide Remarks #204

"I PETA the Fool"

by Eric D. Snider

Published in The Daily Herald on September 7, 2001

I'm not one to criticize or pass judgment, but if there's a bigger group of morons than the folks at PETA, I'll eat my hat (which is made of trumpeter swan, by the way).

PETA is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and the group's latest victory in the war against common sense is that Disneyland employees will no longer shoot fake bullets at the fake hippos on the Jungle Cruise ride. This was long overdue, as the fake animals have been tormented by fake bullets shot from fake guns by fake river guides for decades. It took a fake hippo nearly fake dying from a fake bullet wound before Disney finally did the sensible thing and began shooting PETA members instead.

I'm kidding on the last part, but the no-more-shooting decision is true. Disney allegedly made the decision on its own, but People for the Ethical Treatment of Fake Animals has been suggesting it for a while. Presented with the fact that Disney and PETA should both cheer up a little and enjoy life for heaven's sake, PETA spokeswoman Debbie Leahy was quoted in Monday's Los Angeles Times as saying:

"If it was a fantasy baby or fantasy toddler, I don't think somebody would find it funny. Clearly, we should not be accepting it for a hippo. It's not humorous. It's really a form of animal cruelty."

I don't even know where to begin here. First of all, I wouldn't say unequivocally that pretending to shoot a "fantasy baby" would NEVER be funny. Is the baby dressed as a clown, perhaps? Are the bullets made out of tickles?

As for being "animal cruelty": Even if it were a real hippo, it wouldn't be cruel to fire blanks at it. And if it were charging your boat, I wouldn't be opposed to firing real bullets, particularly if the hippo appeared to be rabid or shifty-eyed.

I do agree with one statement, though: "It's not humorous." This is true. Have you been on the Jungle Cruise? NOT FUNNY.

But I disagree strenuously with the idea that because it (generally) is not OK to shoot a baby human, it's also not OK to shoot a hippo. What happens over at PETA headquarters that makes the members so bereft of self-esteem that they truly consider themselves no better than hippos? Do they have demotivational speakers come in to talk them down off their high-horses (I'm sorry, high-humans)? I mean, I'm no great piece of work, but I'm better than a hippo. Even your finest hippo, the very champion of the hippo race, is no match for me and my opposable thumbs and my mastery of the microwave oven.

PETA was also in the news this week for its proposed billboard on the East Coast, which said: "Would you give your right arm to know why sharks attack? Could it be revenge?" That's right, all those shark attacks have been an act of revenge! The sharks have organized themselves and are systematically hunting down anyone who has ever wronged them. Also, they are eating innocent byswimmers -- but hey, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette, right?

So PETA's full of crazy people; we all know that. What I have the least patience for, though, is its attack on Wendy's restaurants, as outlined at www.wickedwendys.com.

PETA's beef (pardon me!) with Wendy's is that it uses chickens and cows that have been genetically modified, kept in inhumane enclosures and belittled with insults and personal attacks, including wedgies, at which point Dave Thomas himself goes out there on a moonlit night, kills every single animal with his bare hands, drinks their blood, and then uses his folksy charm to persuade people to eat them.

All of this may be true, but it misses the point: Wendy's food is delicious. If PETA would drag its pasty, tofu-weakened body down to Wendy's just once and have a Monterey Jack Chicken Sandwich, PETA would change its mind in a hurry. Of course, they'll have to lay off the fries, or else they'll anger the People for the Ethical Treatment of Potatoes.

Notes:

PETA is one of those topics where you wonder how I managed to write a humor column for four years without making fun of it already. It had always been in the back of my mind, but when the Disneyland thing and the shark billboard occurred the same week, I was roused to action. A visit to PETA's Web site (peta.org) led me to the Wendy's attack, which is truly tasteless, pardon the pun. The PETA folks are very dogmatic, to say the least. This column practically wrote itself.

For the record, I think one particular sentence in the column is funnier when altered slightly: "I mean, I'm no great piece of work, but I'm better than a damn hippo." I could have said it in the paper, but I decided to save myself the headaches that would have ensued.

Some 4 1/2 years after it was originally published, this column prompted an angry letter. She says she read all my PETA columns, but I'm including it here because of her reference to eating my hat, which suggests it was this column in particular that irked her.

Dear "D. Snider" if thats what you call yourself. [Um, no, I don't.]
After thoroughly reading your aritcles on PETA I concluded that you are an idiot. [Really? Most people figure it out a lot sooner.]You also seem incapable of writing a humour column, and would recommend that you don't call it that because really you are a disgrace to the world of writers. In my small amount of years upon this planet I have achieved a greater intellectual standard than you could ever hope to achieve throughout your hopefully short life. I really should eat that hat of yours [You should, or I should? Who's eating the hat here?] not just because you are wrong but because I hope it sticks in your throat and chokes you to death. Your "writing" [Like it or not, it WAS writing, so the sarcastic quotation marks don't make any sense] makes you sound like an old fat man who has no actual clue as to what is really happening and uses information he scrounges off the internet to write his "articles". [Which is odd, because all the information in my PETA columns comes directly from the PETA Web site. Also, again, it was an article whether you like it or not, so lay off the sarcastic quote marks.] Feel free to email me if you ever do come up with a decent argument against PETA. They do so much good for animal welfare worldwide and deserve to be congratulated not insulted. However I do not agree with some of their principles, for instance I am not a vegetarian but you would not find a piece of battery chicken on my plate. [Battery chicken? Is that a chicken made from batteries? Or is it battery-powered chicken?] If you feel happy eating a chicken that could easily have been scalded alive then you are more inhumane then i thought possible. I suppose with these views you also find hunting acceptable. [And I suppose with your spelling and grammar errors, you are retarded. See? Sometimes supposing things isn't logical!] If this is true I quite agree with you! I would be perfectly happy to ride out and hound you until you can run no more before skinning you alive. [You want me to choke to death on a hat and/or to be pursued and skinned alive. and I'm the inhumane one?] If this was legal I would not hesitate to do the honours.
Please do email me I would be happy to hear with any disagreements you have with my opinion.
Oh and please take some lessons in writing, because it really is atrocious

Four minutes later, she sent this addendum:

I also suggest you use your articles as bog roll because that is all they are useful for

It took her four minutes to come up with that. "Bog roll" is British slang for toilet paper, by the way. How I would use my Internet-only columns as toilet paper, she did not explain. Instead, I shall continue to use toilet paper made from the skins of baby seals.

This item has 8 comments

Johnny says:
March 18, 2007 at 8:44 pm
I'm thinking about making up a spoof website on PETA. There are a lot of short domains left that could be used like ipeta.net.

For ipeta.net you could use the ipod branding style and logos. It would basically be a high tech "People Eating Tasty Animals" site.

It think it would be hilarious and it brings a big smile to my face. You could probably even find sponsors and sell really funn T-shirts.

Let me know what you think.

I did work in a Tyson Foods chicken processing plant as an engineering intern. The way the chickens are killed is very humane. First they receive an electrical charge that "knocks out" the chicken. Next one side of the chicken's neck is sliced open with a very sharp rotating knife. The chicken is out, so it doesn't have any idea what is happening to it. If it were conscious it would be flapping around and the meat would be bruised. Blood is drained from the chicken for about a minute and a half. The chicken is then dead as a hammer. The chicken is placed into a scalding tank (water tank with air bubbled coming from the bottom, 120Â°F to 140Â°F water) for about two minutes. If the chicken were alive in the scalder the meat would still be full of blood and the meat would be all red. I have seen one of two birds like that out of hundreds of thousands (typical plant processes 250,000 birds a day, kill rate is 140 birds a minute per line and two lines are normally used). For some reason there neck wasn't cut. You have to throw them away because nobody would want to eat red chicken meat (except for a starving PETA person in the Sahara desert right before they were about to die).

Oh, I like your column. Keep up the PETA beatings.

Have a great week,

Johnny
Sarah says:
May 17, 2007 at 12:06 am
"If PETA would drag its pasty, tofu-weakened body down to Wendy's just once . . ."

This is possibly the funniest line ever.
Markk says:
May 19, 2007 at 4:05 am
Johnny: please do that. Please. The more PETA-mocking websites there are out there, the better.
Pumpkin says:
September 28, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Funny how she says that your writing is atrocious when she made so many spelling and grammar errors. What I think is disgusting is that there are so many people who whine about the treatment of animals and ignore the treatment of human beings. They'd rather save a cow than save the starving children in Africa and India and China and all the other countries with tons of poor people.
James N says:
February 12, 2008 at 11:19 am
Hehe, the PETA folks are very dogmatic; that should have been in the column itself.
PETA Eata' says:
April 30, 2008 at 7:32 pm
PETA will looove this...

www.TheMonkeyBox.com

there's a thing about making tigers into bread (don't worry tiger-lovers - it's just a joke)
Mark says:
September 3, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Wrong. The funniest line ever is "Even your finest hippo, the very champion of the hippo race, is no match for me and my opposable thumbs and my mastery of the microwave oven." I'm just picturing a hippo with horn-rimmed glasses and a cardigan, standing up from the table at his own dinner party where they have been discussing Nietzsche and Scorsese and of course, his own latest best-seller. He tries to reheat his own dinner--then the terrible reality hits him yet again--he is still a hippo, and he will have to suffer the humiliation of asking someone else to operate the microwave, as he has no thumbs. Sure, these people kind of like him, even pretend to admire him. But he will always be an outsider, and all of his friends will forever think they're better than him. Is it his fault that he opens his mouth wide enough to put a VW into when eating? Is it his fault that he is forced to use 200 pounds of deodorant everyday? Don't they know he has a Nobel Prize? Don't they know he solved the Uncertainty Principle? It's always the thumbs with those guys.
Roxana T says:
December 13, 2009 at 6:58 am
Mark, Eric's "Even your finest hippo" phrase is pretty darn funny, but your short sell of the Ivy League Hippo, is pretty hysterical, too! You both are talented writers!

A non sequitur but, I'm interested in why these few folks have come here to post comments.

In my case, I found this page while surfing for information about the processing of chickens/cornish hens at Tyson. I opened a Tyson cornish hen package last night and noticed immediately that the chicken had bruises surrounding a broken "elbow", and what looked like bruises made when some sort of wire pressed tightly against the bird's body (both sides).

It really bothered me that the bird could possibly have been alive to receive these bruises in this way. It looked like the bird was compressed so hard that the elongated bruise on the top of both wings appeared under each wing as well. There were also multiple cuts on the surface of the skin.

I did find a Mission Statement on Animal Well-Being explaining that the company has an ethical obligation to the well-being, proper handling, and humane slaughter of all the animals that are used in their food products. It does seem like they have procedures in place, so I am assuming that the incidence with the cornish hen was an anomaly.

Having said that, I may still comment to Tyson personally.

This work may not be transmitted via the Internet, nor reproduced in any other way, without written consent from Eric D. Snider.

Eric D. Snider