Have you ever heard that urban legend about animal rights activists liberating a mink farm and having their self-congratulation turn to self-flagellation as the critters bound off, not into freedom, but into speeding traffic cruising an adjacent freeway?
I thought of it when I read about the letter People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent to Chancellor Wiley last week asking the university to cancel its upcoming round of Taser tests, funded by a Justice Department grant of $500,000 in "blood money," on anesthetized, cocaine-injected pigs.
I imagined PETA activists bursting into the lab, bellowing, "Stop this barbaric, despicable torture!", then flinging open the doors and sending a swarm of swine, amped up on snout candy, carousing across campus.
Who knows what would happen then, but odds are it wouldn't be exceedingly pretty. One of my relatives used to be a Drug Enforcement Administration Agent, and his favorite story to tell was of confronting a man wasted on some hodgepodge of hallucinogens who thought he was an orange and wouldn’t let anyone touch him for fear of his juice running out–we could easily find ourselves talking tripped-out pigs down from the Humanities bridges.
Now, I realize that’s not how PETA’s plans would play out, but what can I say, I create my own fun. Still, I don’t think the reality is much more ridiculous.
I want to like groups like PETA, or at the very least respect them. The trouble is, when I go online for my morning news and, after being briefed on the day’s human violence and human suffering, spot a story on some group protesting Kraft Foods’ "cruelty" in making gummy candy shaped like partially squished, tire-treaded roadkill, I have a real hard time.
I think I suffer from guilt-fatigue. I can’t do anything to end the Darfur genocide, I can’t cure a single case of malaria, I can’t make my own government stop shipping its citizens off to be tortured in the same "outposts of tyranny" it denounces–must I also feel bad for trying to trap the über-mouse Varmint Cong insurgent that’s taken to noisily scavenging for popcorn kernels in my garbage can at 5 a.m.?
After rendering all the inhumanity in the world its due dismay and frustration, I just don't have enough energy left to rocket rodenticide near the top of my list of pressing ills, or enough energy to legitimately consider groups that spend theirs treating it as one.
But animals (except lobsters) suffer, too, they say. Attitudes like mine create a culture where animals are worth more dead than alive! Hell, I’ve sufficiently established I can’t give my pasty sack of bones away in animate form to amorous interests of choice–I’m sure I could get much more in pure dollars selling my parts piecemeal as well.
These PETA-types remind me of friends who never move out of that maddening neo-hippe phase of making snide remarks about your leather jacket or turkey sandwich, never minding their "cruelty-free" lifestyles are probably supported by sweatshop laborers and destitute farmers.
Not that they can’t theoretically redeem themselves: If ever one morning the news story that most offends my admittedly human sensibilities is one on freaking roadkill fruit snacks, I’ll be happier than a hopped-up hog.
Holly Noe’s column runs each Friday. Wallow in the delightful filth of it all at [email protected].