WTF, PETA?
By Nick Sifuentes - Aug 11th, 2008 at 9:15 amFull disclosure: I’m not the biggest PETA fan. But the group’s new ad campaign reaches disgusting new heights of insensitivity:
I can’t imagine there’s a person in North America who hasn’t heard about the horrible crime PETA’s ad references, and I’m pretty sure that this isn’t going to move very many Canadians toward PETA’s side of the animal cruelty debate. As someone who has read and deeply admires the work of Peter Singer, I totally sympathize with the animal rights movement, but PETA really goes about it all wrong. (I’m reminded of The Onion’s spot-on satirical take on the organization’s tactics. ) It’s okay to love animals, PETA, but it’s really not okay to put out deeply misanthropic ads in an effort to save them. You are trying to appeal to your fellow humans, after all.
People need to stop donating to this misogynistic organization. I hear about some a tactic nearly every week where they put women in cages, put women on display in bikinis, and always try to compare women to animals. I have nothing against vegetarianism/veganism, but PETA is not the organization that should represent the movement.
August 11th, 2008 at 9:44 am“You are trying to appeal to your fellow humans, after all.”
A fine point, and one that is quite obviously entirely lost on PETA’s advertising team. PETA’s increasingly offensive tactics are going to cause moderate animal rights folks to distance themselves (if they haven’t already) and they will cause a great deal of distain among those of us who are not specifically animal rights oriented - distain that may prove counter-productive to PETA’s efforts.
Not to get all Alex Jones, here - but, perhaps PETA’s secret goal is to bolster beef sales and indirectly demonize Hollywood while they’re at it? =P
August 11th, 2008 at 12:20 pmIt certainly didn’t help their claims to being genuine about animal rights when they got outed for going to get animals from shelters in North Carolina in order to find them homes in Norfolk, VA and instead euthanized them in the van and dumped the carcasses in a dumpster behind a Piggly Wiggly.
August 11th, 2008 at 3:23 pmThat Onion article is so spot-on, it’s scary. I dislike PETA intensely, despite loving animals and being all for love and kindness etc. They smack of hypocrisy: they’re pro-kill vis-a-vis animal shelters, and euthanize most of the animals that are given to them. The stance they hold on animal testing is anti-science and willfully ignorant. Animal testing, though abhorrent to some, has given us huge advances in medicine, and though there are instances of undue cruelty, it’s certainly possible to minimize this. More hypocrisy: their either once or current vice president (I can’t remember which) is diabetic—her very life depends on her taking doses of insulin, which was formulated using animal-human disease models. Their ads are tasteless and disturbing, too. Just look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Your_Daddy_Kills_Animals.png
Ingrid Newkirk’s affiliations with the Animal Liberation Front (a group that advocates violence in the name of animal rights) and connections with Rod Coronado (this guy once, in a talk on animal rights to a San Diego neighborhood, demonstrated how to make an incendiary device; this should give you some idea of his tactics) are disgraceful, too.
Anyway, I’m done ranting.
August 11th, 2008 at 6:26 pm