I thought the anti-meat Pamela Anderson boob ad we used to get was bad.
Then this appeared:
And yes, I know that:
1. I’m doing their work for them; and
2. as someone who writes about the First Dude shagging a septuagenarian or Donald Trump being bitten on his winkle by an angry chihuahua, I’m living in a glass house and throwing kidney stones;
but Jesus Hopscotch Playing Christ that’s offensive.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Ah the things I miss having ads blocked.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@ a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
You’ll still get to listen to the screams of outrage, which is the fun bit anyway.
Warren Terra
Not as bad as the Pam Ad. If anything, more obviously suggestive – but the image isn’t as grotesque. My problem with the Pam Ad wasn’t the failed attempt at sexiness, it was the nauseated feeling it gave me. This image is a pretty and cheerful girl in a stupidly exploitative pose, which is wrong but not disturbing.
Lysana
They have no shame, no morals, and no desire for truth. They also stand opposed to every pet/companion animal we know and love. Anyone who comes through here to defend PETA should be laughed at as if they were a Bachmann Republican.
JGabriel
Sarah:
What? She’s chomping down on a cucumber. Girl loves her veggies, is all it is.
Jeez, peoples here is so gutter-minded.
.
pythagoras frog
THAT IMAGE craP…capslock. that image would be the perfect album cover for a gay (not happy, but
faggyfabulous) band that does death metal versions of dresden dolls songs! …either that or a loverboy/lords of acid tribute band. YOU MAKE THE CALL! *(how do i put a poll in the….nevermind)*…also, too: never eat spinach with a stranger!pythagoras frog
errrg….+6, as if that’s an excuse.
nancydarling
Sarah, it was 3:31 AM at the Shady Pines when you posted that. What hours do you keep exactly?
kerFuFFler
@Lysana
You’re right about PETA not being interested in truth—-anyone remember their ill-conceived campaign to “re-brand” fish as “sea kittens”?
Not only are they equating fish with mammals, but by calling them kittens rather than cats, they are disingenuously ascribing ‘baby status’ to all fish. That’s right, anyone who eats fish is killing babies.
Xenos
mmmm… caviar!
JGabriel
kerFuFFler:
It’s just wrong to infantalize our piscine friends like that! I know that, if we just show a little respect, fish and the human being can co-exist peacefully.
.
scarshapedstar
Sure, the oceans are collapsing from overfishing, but some annoying librul says I’m part of the problem? How dare they?
Not a big PETA fan, mind you, and I wish they acknowledged the overpopulation problem when it comes to things like deer and nutria, but in general I think they’re right, and I wish my stomach would agree with my brain regarding the logic of vegetarianism.
someone
Well, for those interested in truth PETA is not opposed to pets / companion animals. They are against people buying pets from stores / puppy mills and the like. They would prefer people adopt animals to save them from being euthanized. I’d think that’s a position people here would agree with.
http://www.peta.org/about/why-peta/pets.aspx
As for the sexist ad campaigns, well, it does what they want, to get people talking. I disagree with the tactic and question its effectiveness at reducing cruelty to animals.
Joe Bauers
If children were taught to refer to PETA members as “talking sandwiches”, then maybe they would be so busy fending off toothy attacks from short people that they would have less time to think up stupid things to say.
4tehlulz
DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK CUKES
John Puma
To scarshapedstar:
Try a LOT more garlic and olive oil.
Betty Cracker
@ Joe Bauers — GENIUS!
MikeJ
Wasn’t it PETA who lied about research in an attempt to get the gay community to attack somebody they didn’t like? I don’t recall the details, but I seem to remember their spokescreature saying something along the lines of, “hey, if we have to lie to get our way, then we’ll lie.”
Sarah Proud and Tall
@ Nancydarling
Its a combination of old age and licentious living, dear. My body is so used to staying up all night dancing that I can’t sleep until about 5am, and then I only sleep for two hours anyway.
I get a lot of baking and writing done.
arguingwithsignposts
Hope no one’s planning to travel to minnesota soon. Minnesota’s closed.
Jared
Being a vegetarian = Good
PETA = not good
J.D. Rhoades
I’ve always held that PETA is run and funded by the fur and meat industries to piss people off and make the very idea of opposing actual cruelty seem ridiculous. I came to this conclusion after they “celebrated” Easter in Duplin County NC (very rural, very religious, and with lots of people employed in the hog industry) by putting up billboards with a picture of a pig and the caption ‘he died for your sins.”
The Ancient Randonneur
… hhhhmmmm PETA a false flag operation. Interesting.
nancydarling
Animal rights orgs would accomplish more if they concentrated on getting rid of CAFO’s and promoting smaller, less frequent portions of meat and fish. Converting people to vegetarianism or veganism just isn’t going to happen. We evolved as omnivorous animals. A close look at our teeth tells you that. (Sarah, as a retired dental hygienist, I hope you still have all or most of your natural dentition. Licentious living can take its toll.)
soonergrunt
Makes me want a nice thick T-bone steak, medium well with onions and mushrooms.
sb
nancydarling
Soonergrunt, I was thinking about you this AM and wondering where you had gone.
dr. bloor
@JGabriel:
I agree. As Freud said, sometimes a D-Cell ready gag-inducing cucumber is just a D-Cell ready gag-inducing cucumber.
WereBear
Sadly, this is the truth. PETA considers companion animals our “slaves” and they want to “free” them by letting them die out (since they are domesticated and no longer have a habitat.)
In such matters, I trust Nathan Winograd, who is a leader in the No Kill Shelter Movement.
I’ve come to believe PETA is actually a cover for a psychopathic vegan agenda. And the answer to that is a lovely book called The Vegetarian Myth.
/soapbox
Guster
There is nothing liberals hate so much as passionate political activists who believe their cause is so important that they don’t care if people think they’re taking things too far. It just makes us sick. Don’t you know you’re alienating the Heartland? Oh, Code Pink, you’re stabbing yourself in the back! PETA, you fools, you’re making me want a steak! Cindy Sheehan is stupid and Jane Hamsher is a traitor! (Huh. I hadn’t thought about the gender issue until re-reading …) Fucking purists.
I actually _do_ hate purists. I do think PETA and Code Pink are stupid and self-defeating. But I think that in exactly the same way that a self-congratulatory pro-Iraq-War-asshole thought that anti-war protestors were misguided children.
Robert Waldmann
Amusingly I didn’t have to click to see the ad you were discussing since it was displayed on this blog right when I opened it.
I am shocked and appalled. I live in Italy and when it comes to veggies, Italians understand that good taste matters more that size (when it comes to sex they tend to forget about good taste).
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
so what? her petting a lap zucchini would be wrong too? not sure i am with the outrage on this.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
so what? her petting a lap zucchini would be wrong too? not sure i am with the outrage on this.
gelfling545
As someone who strongly supports animal welfare and believes that vegetarianism is probably a more evolved form of existence though I have not completely evolved to it yet myself, I find that PETA does more harm than good (if it is trying to actually change minds). If they are merely trying to annoy people and/or be disgusting, then by all mean they should continue as they are although I suspect they do the cause a disservice.
SonjasPanties
At first I did not see what you are talking about because if someone is using a cucumber for sexual purposes shouldn’t it be something that would give pleasure to the person rather than to the vegetable which doesn’t even have a nervous system whereas a woman has a fully developed one and would just get a sore jaw plus with her lips pulled back a man would only think teeth so on the whole I am annoyed that as long as they were going sexual they didn’t just let loose and shove the damn thing up her butt.
D-Notice
It could be worse…
gnomedad
Sometimes a freakishly long cucumber is just a freakishly long cucumber.
Dan
Certainly I’m not aware of the sum total of PETA’s behavior, so I defer to the wisdom of others. All I know is what I read and see on TV, and this is a very limited topic, so that ammounts to this:
1). Jonathan Safran Foer says that PETA is the almost exclusive driver of reform in the unspeakably cruel meat industry and
2). Michael Pollan agrees with same, minus the word “unspeakably”.
I would have thought there would at least be some deference, or at least discussion of this topic but again, I’m speaking partly from behind the veil of ignorance.
Lysana
Bullshit. Their own materials say “animals are not ours to own.” That’s called “no pets.” Why do you think they push spay/neuter programs and ridiculous limitations on breeders as opposed to sane ones on puppy mills? They want to end human/animal interaction. It’s the logical conclusion.
Oh, I almost forgot…
points and laughs“someone,” you are 50 pounds of stupid in a five-pound sack.
eastriver
Ho-hum, another fake outrage to drum up some comments. If that image really, truly offends you, you should perhaps stay the fuck away from the intertubes.
Personally, I think the ad is brilliant. But then, I do grow a large garden.
(When you object like a stereotype spinster you’re helping to make the liberal left look illiberal and sexually dysfunctional. And also too may I add that you’re engaging in ABL-ism. Which is a crime unto itself.)
MazeDancer
@Dan
While PETA’s crazed tactics may do more harm than good in many areas, anything that can break through the collective denial about the meat industry has to have some value.
Wish that everyone who otherwise loves animals but mindlessly eats meat from tortured pigs, cows, and chickens, would help figure out how to change attitudes and stop these animals suffering.
Trying to have a reasonable conversation doesn’t even work. The bluest, most liberal, most active advocates for justice will just say “Stop, I don’t want to know.”
People are happy to put their love of bacon and brauts ahead of any animals having to spend their lives in hell. It’s like as long as people “don’t know” and can cling to their denial, it’s fine to torture animals. And anyone who even tries to create change and help animals is wacko.
Michael Pollan chooses to eat meat from sources where the animals led great lives and, as he said, “had one bad day.” That being the universal attitude would require less meat eating, because happy cows are expensive. And also a change in slaughterhouse availability. There aren’t enough humane, regional, nearby ones or ability to bring even more humane slaughter to the farms, thus eliminating even a few hours transport.
Any and all suggestions for change from those who are in the denial camp welcome.
WereBear
@MazeDancer
How about animal advocates struggling with a public perception that we are all “crazy like PETA”? Thanks a big bunch.
And to give PETA the credit undercuts the many other groups who struggled with promotion and legislation to actually push this awareness. In fact, it was McDonald’s, more than anyone else, who did make some changes for the better in this area.
Like it or not, we must eat animals or animal products to live. It’s called B12, and despite all the vegan screaming otherwise, there are no other vegetable sources of this vitamin. And that’s just one nutrient; I happened to pick one where deficiencies are fatal, eventually.
Absolutely yes; we must treat our slaughterhouse animals as humanely as our companion animals. But vegetarianism is not the answer, and never will be. That’s why I give PETA no credit; their goal is for nobody to eat any animal products, ever, and we’ll all die horribly.
nancydarling
Bless you MazeDancer. I am bemused by people who express outrage at deer or elk hunting, but are perfectly happy to sit down to a steak from an animal that spent his last weeks standing knee deep in his own shit and being pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones. There are more and more grass fed beef operations and organically, free range raised chickens available to us. I’m not aware of many humanely raised pork operations though. I split a hog with a neighbor this year to satisfy my pork cravings. Most of us eat more meat than we need to so the solution is smaller portions and meatless days.
eemom
I’ve been a monthly contributor to PETA for many years and it was this bullshit that finally convinced me to pull the plug.
imo, there was a time when they really did do good work. I.e., back when I started being a monthly contributor. Dunno when, or what it was that caused them to lose their shit and become self-caricatures, but they did and here we are.
eemom
@eastriver 40
“but then I do grow a large gaaaaaarden.”
Your smuggery is neck and neck with your assholery in the race to get fucked with a nice big rusty garden implement.
taylormattd
@The Ancient Randonneur – July 1, 2011 | 8:00 am · Link
Yeah sure. Because PETA would never do anything insanely fucking stupid and counterproductive.
Michael Demmons
@WereBear:
I don’t eat animal products (cheese MAYBE once a week). I’m not dead. Why? Must be the fact that most of the cereals and soy products I eat are fortified with it. Plus I take a B12 supplement.
Terrible, weak argument in favor of killing animals. Next.
Dan
WereBear:
Could you provide some context? That is, did McDonald’s reform their operation purely out of conscience, or was there an advocacy group that was applying pressure to their PR division, for example? The tone is getting kind of confrontational, so let me again state my ignorance on this subject and my eagerness to hear your input.
Another thing that confuses me is that the messages I get from PETA- billboards, facebook and so forth- are pretty benign (a word I’m using in the best possible sense). Bears shouldn’t be slaughtered to make hats for the Queen’s guard, the fur in stores comes from rabbits that are skinned alive, and so forth. I’m pretty confused over why there’s so much ire directed at PETA but again, that may be a consequence of my ignorance.
WereBear
Hi Dan,
Glad to!
McDonald’s reacted to pressure from all sorts of avenues. As detailed in this PDF link, it has been a longtime pressure campaign from many organizations. PETA has NOT played a prominent part in the internal pressure that made McD’s swing its considerable clout into the fray.
PETA does create splashy ads that get talked about, and recruits celebrities. Who wouldn’t fall for it? Few people don’t have a soft spot for their pets.
All that money donated by kind-hearted people does very little besides go for splashy ads that make Animals Rights Activism as much a caricature as a serious cause. For every teenage girl who gives up meat for a while, they probably create two or three adults who tend to dismiss animal rights issues as “extremism” because of PETA’s antics.
PETA gives not one cent to spay and neuter programs, shelter programs, and are avowed enemies of the No Kill Shelter Movement; which seeks humane treatment and local adoption. PETA, in fact, kills almost all of the animals entrusted to their care.
That’s why those involved in animal rescue have the urge to spit on the ground when their name is mentioned.
eastriver
eemom-
I trust the rust on the garden implement is from you pleasuring yourself with the implement night after night after night after night. Yes?
(That’s why they call it a hoe. And me a rake.)
Eeeuuww.
Shade Tail
MazeDancer:
Speaking for myself, I don’t get very bothered by “animal cruelty”. I don’t like it, but it’s not high on my list of outrages. “Human cruelty” bothers me much more.
That said, I am strongly against factory farms because they are utterly filthy, to the point where they literally damage the environment. Their meat is only less expensive because they are allowed to work without any environmental safety regulations, primarily by not treating their animal sewage as if it were actual sewage. Their primary “treatment” method, last I heard, was to dump animal shit into huge open-air tanks and just leave it there. Hog farms are particularly bad about this, since a pig can excrete about three times its own weight in shit rather quickly.
Inevitably, these lagoons of shit become evolutionary breeding grounds for vicious bacteria. They tend to leak and contaminate ground water. Sometimes, when they start over-flowing, the factory farm just sprays the excess on the near-by ground, literally poisoning it and killing any wild animals that live there. And on top of the obvious problems this creates for us humans, these factory farms also stink so bad that people living up to ten miles away couldn’t even give their houses away if they wanted to move.
If we simply forced factory farms to have a decent sewage treatment system, that alone would make their meat so expensive that they would not be able to compete with smaller local and/or family owned farms.
WereBear
@Shade Tail
Forgive me reading your words through a haze of irony. You place animal cruelty low on your list; yet humane treatment of animals also results in better food for humans… who are high on your list.
This is how humane concerns ARE human concerns; and yet you claim animal cruelty is low on your list. What kind of sense does that make?
Cris
It bears repeating. In my experience, most vegetables are better when they’re smaller (but still fully mature). Mostly it’s about texture; cucurbits and radishes notoriously become pithy when they get too old.
Shade Tail
WereBear:
Forgive me for rolling my eyes. Does the phrase “enlightened self-interest” not mean anything to you? What most benefits me and my family is my first concern. Happily, what benefits us also benefits them. What kind of sense does that *not* make?
WereBear
@Shade Tail
Your list placement. Is misplaced. For the result you seek.
Catsy
Your argument makes no sense whatsoever. I’ve got no love for these farms, but of all the sources of harm to humanity in the world, the health and environmental impacts of factory farming rank pretty low on the list. I doubt they’d even make the top 100.
This is one of the reasons why PETA and similar animal rights fanatics lack credibility: the tendency to wildly exaggerate risks and data when making arguments.
WereBear
@Catsy:
Thank you for making my point about PETA; they are clowns, or worse, who undercut the humane movement they claim to support.
But once again, how can factory farming be a low priority for anyone who eats? In the case of e coli contamination, which is a factory farming issue, the ones who die, or have permanently damaged organs, are overwhelmingly children, who are smaller and take on a proportionately greater toxin load.
Seriously. Will no one think of the children?
jim
Getting chuffed when people with an axe to grind treat pretty girls like slabs of meat in order to try to get people not to eat meat?
A stereotype spinster would think that ad is cute.
PROTIP: The liberal left aren’t the ones who keep getting caught raping children &/or plooking pets & livestock so gosh-darned often.
Less concern for outreach (to others uninterested or opposed to begin with) or optics (that are ephemera which can later be edited & retconned at will) & more for achieving minimal progressive social standards: this would be very good for the left.
Sadly, unlike hawt vixens in bodypaint with satirical chanting (or even one nomming on delicious cucumber), addressing the latter concern promises serious strife & risk, thus it has ZERO cultural sex-appeal. The right can keep up its depraved shitty Lowest Common Denominator standards & trump the left with their relative consitency every time, no matter how hard they fail (many who voted for Reagan in 1984 disageed with his policies).
xochi
When you’ve got ads for Ann Coulter’s new book, you’ve got a high bar to clear with regard to offensiveness.
MazeDancer
@Shade Tail
While clearly we don’t agree about animal cruelty – you don’t care enormously if animals suffer, I do – we do agree on importance of environmental impact.
But you’re not in the “denial” camp. You’re not denying animal cruelty, you just don’t care much about animal’s suffering. “Deniers” don’t want to know about the torture. Because they would care. Because it’s horror in action.
I was wondering about “deniers”, who don’t want to “know” about the unspeakable cruelty.
Pigs are often smarter than dogs. Denial doesn’t change the suffering. But feeling the suffering would force some people to give up their bacon or, at the very least, to have to pay more. And a lot of people who could easily afford to pay more just prefer denial.
This is a blog full of devoted animal supporters. And foodies who discuss meat eating all the time. Just wondering if some folks who’ve been using denial as a way to buy cheap meat have ideas about breaking through that denial.
RJ
WereBear said — “Like it or not, we must eat animals or animal products to live. It’s called B12, and despite all the vegan screaming otherwise, there are no other vegetable sources of this vitamin.”
WereBear — you couldn’t be more wrong if you tried. I’ve been a vegetarian (almost vegan) for the last 17 of my 50 years. I’m in good shape, haven’t missed a day at work for the last 15 years, and feel better than most of the 18-22 year-olds that I teach.
Michael Demmons has got the goods on you.
Cassidy
Vegetarianism/ Veganism is a great racket if you can come up with an overpriced product to sell.
WereBear
@RJ:
Almost vegan isn’t vegan.
There are Hindus in India who are completely vegan; but when they emigrated to Britain, they came down with pernicious anemia. It turned out that India did not clean the grain to the same level as in Britain; the insect remains the Hindus were eating in India were enough to stave off anemia; in Britain they were completely depleting their supplies of the B12 and became sick.
I am happy a vegetarian lifestyle works for you. There’s been several vegans having to renounce the lifestyle for health reasons in the blogosphere of late; and it’s because they are not vegetarians.
HyperIon
@38 (Dan)
Hmmm..dangerous on the ‘tubes where “wisdom” can be rare.
Yeah, I’m with you. These ads are stupid but, but it’s the internet. What do you expect?
Tehanu
Heaven – A Poem by Rupert Brooke
Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat’ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were!
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And, sure, the reverent eye must see
A Purpose in Liquidity.
We darkly know, by Faith we cry,
The future is not Wholly Dry.
Mud unto mud!-Death eddies near-
Not here the appointed End, not here!
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,
Is wetter water, slimier slime!
And there (they trust) there swimmeth One,
Who swam ere rivers were begun,
Immense, of fishy form and mind,
Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;
And under that Almighty Fin,
The littlest fish may enter in.
Oh! Never fly conceals a hook,
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,
But more than mundane weeds are there,
And mud, celestially fair;
Fat caterpillars drift around,
And Paradisal grubs are found’
Unfading moths, immortal flies,
And the worm that never dies.
And in that Heaven of all their wish,
There shall be no more land, say fish.
Dan
How about another question: Is there no way to get Vitamin B12 in a supplement? A vegan supplement?
HyperIon
@66 (Dan): Raw milk from grass fed cows contains B12. But not all varieties of vegetarians condone milk drinking.
More info but I can’t embed linky in edit mode: However, if you are not drinking raw milk and have no plans to in the future, and especially if you don’t eat too much meat, you might consider having your B12 level checked and maybe finding a supplemental source but remember there is no replacement really for real and natural foods, so if possible get your vitamin B12 from a natural source rather than a supplemental source.
DPirate
Do they acknowledge the overpopulation problem when it comes to humans?
heywho
thank god for
* AddBlock,
* and for ppl who post extended hosts files blocking ad servers
You can always white list content providers you want to support. Everyone needs to make a living