The Prez, a Bug and Some Nuts
By Beth Quinn
If ever there was a group of good-intentioned people who have lost their sense of proportion, it has to be PETA – the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
This is not news. I think most of us have had doubts about the group since they began their “Jesus was a vegetarian” campaign a few Easters ago. If that didn’t do it, a lot more fans bailed when PETA started bad-mouthing the nutritional value of cow’s milk because, they said, it’s cruel to milk a cow. (Believe me – cows really WANT to be milked every 12 hours. I know from experience that they complain bitterly if the farmer is late to the barn.)
Even so, we were once again reminded of PETA’s tenuous hold on reality this past week when the group took President Obama to task for killing a fly.
If you happened to have missed it, a fly intruded on a televised interview with Obama by CNBC correspondent Jim Harwood. When the buzzing, dive-bombing fly failed to follow a direct order from the president (“Get out of here,” he told it), the president caught the bug in his hand and smacked it dead.
I was thoroughly impressed. He seems to have some kind of laser bug beam, able to zero in on a flying target and take it out. He was proud of himself, too. “That was pretty impressive, wasn’t it? I got the sucker,” he said to Harwood. And because our president is no litterbug with dead bugs, he later cleaned up the carcass with a napkin.
Alas, PETA was not at all impressed with the president’s skills. After the bug slaying, the group issued a statement urging Obama to be more compassionate to all animals. They also sent a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher to the White House, a device that allows users to trap house flies and release them outside. I suppose the Secret Service could be enlisted to perform this chore.
I first became aware that PETA took a rather extreme view of bug-killing at least 15 years ago when I wrote a column called “Scout Catches a Bug.” Scout, as you may recall, was my little brown dog, and she entertained herself by chasing every bug that entered our house. This led to many ripped screens and much broken crockery, but that was a small price to pay for a bug-free house.
At any rate, in that column I described one particular fly-catching moment, during which Scout leapt onto my dresser in pursuit of a bug and busted just about everything up there, including a bottle of make-up. In the manner of good writers, I chose to be specific – it wasn’t just “a bottle of make-up” that Scout broke and smeared all over the place, but a bottle of “L’Oreal Shimmering Bronze make-up.”
Well, how was I to know L’Oreal did animal testing. If I thought about it at all, I suppose I pictured little lab rats checking how they looked in the mirror wearing the company’s latest lipstick color.
I was to learn otherwise. PETA began sending me pictures of little rats being waterboarded by cosmetics experts. The group accused me of aiding and abetting the torture of animals. They so intimidated me that, years later, when I included that column in a book of dog stories, I edited out the name of the make-up company.
In truth, I am horrified at the notion of animal cruelty. As a child, I had to leave the theater during “101 Dalmatians,” crying at the thought of what Cruella Deville had planned for those puppies. Now that we have the movie on DVD for our grandchildren, I’m only marginally less inclined to cover my eyes and ears at the scary parts.
Yet, like most people, I’m probably a little confused about where I draw the line. I wear leather and eat meat. If a fly is hurling itself at a screen in an effort to get out of the house, I’ll raise the window and try to assist. However, if my investment in the fly’s welfare goes beyond a minute or so, I lose interest and urge one of my dogs to have at it.
(Neither is as successful as Scout was. Huckleberry corkscrews herself straight up for a mid-air snatch at the bug, but she often misses. Tom is more of an ox, hurling his full weight in the bug’s direction but arriving at his destination long after the bug itself has moved on.)
In any case, despite my love of animals, I’m no purist and would never be a member in good standing with PETA. I’ll admit, though, that I’m grateful for their efforts, however weird they may sometimes be. We need such people. Extremists in any good cause help us to find a decent middle ground.
None of this, however, mitigates my admiration for the Fly Swatter-in-Chief’s mid-air zap. Of him, I have only this to say – that guy is soooooo fly!
Beth can be reached at beth@zestoforange.com.
Tags: Beth Quinn
June 24th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I can breathe again. I found Beth Quinn. I really missed your writing Beth and I’m so glad to find you here. Kudos.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
“Extremists in any good cause help us to find a decent middle ground.”
Wish I could agree but I’ve never met an extremist I wasn’t a little afraid of. Nature lovers are usually totally different than animal protectors of the extreme that PETA stands for and I oppose their fanaticism.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
I was trying to be reasonable, allowing for the possibility that PETA serves some purpose, but I think FManuele may well be right. I received this in an e-mail from a reader named Eileen this afternoon (who is a really good writer, by the way):
Years ago, on 60 Minutes, Mike Wallace interviewed a PETA woman. He asked, “Okay, so you can only save one creature: your grandmother or a fly. Who’s it going to be?” The woman shrugs. She throws up her hands. She’s tortured. It’s like
she’s Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice. “What a difficult decision, Mike,” she says…
Perhaps she’d choose the fly on the theory that he’s young and has his whole life before him. So … a really bad sense of proportion trumps the usefulness of extremists in this case, I have to agree.
Beth
June 25th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Hey I had to post this, got it in my email today, original source unknown:
Widow of Murdered Fly Seeks White House Apology
>>
> WASHINGTON — The widow of the housefly murdered by Barack Obama during a recent CNBC television interview announced this morning that she would be filing a wrongful death suit against the President in federal district court.
The plaintiff brief — citing pain, suffering and loss of income — seeks a formal apology and compensatory damages, including an unspecified quantity of shit.
“Bob was a wonderful husband and provider,” said the widow, Mrs. Vivian Vvzzvzwwzzz, wiping tears from her compound eyes. “Even though he was always busy at the Rose Garden turd pile, he always flew home in time to tuck in our maggots.”
The 17-day old widow said the grieving process since the murder has taken its toll. “Although it’s been nearly 48 hours, I still get an empty feeling in my thorax everytime I think about it,” she said. “I feel like I’ve aged an entire week. Mating season is over, and here I am, stuck trying to raise 532 larvae on my own.”
Vvzzvzwwzzz described the “abdomen-wrenching horror” she experienced while watching the President casually assassinate her husband during the live broadcast.
“It was just before supper time and I was predigesting the evening shit for the kids,” she recalled. “When I looked up at the TV I saw Bob there, and of course I was pretty excited. He started waving at me, and then, all of a sudden, SLAP! My whole world, my life, layed smashed across the back of Obama’s left hand. And with 360 degree peripheral vision and hundreds of eye facets, it was impossible to look away.”
Ever since the incident, Mrs. Vvzzvzwwzzz said she had been trying to piece her life back together. “I just get paralyzed wondering how I’m going to raise my larvae for the next six days, alone, without any kind of support,” she said. “Most days I just end up on the clung to the ceiling, numb and crying,
eating a rancid bowl of Ben & Jerry’s.”
Breaking down, an emotionally distraught Vvzzvzwwzzz was comforted by PETA President Ingrid Newkirk and ACLU President Nadine Strossen. The two groups announced they will file an amicus brief in the case and file a separate class action suit against the insecticide, flyswatter and pest strip industries, seeking over 1 million metric tons of compensatory shit on behalf of 200 billion Fly-Americans.
“The President’s treatment of the Fly community has been extremely disappointing,” said Newkirk. “He almost seemed to relish his bloodthirsty attack on Mr. Vvzzvzwwzzz. It’s obvious he’s in the pocket of Big Manure.”
University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds said Vvzzvzwwzzz v. Obama is likely to raise several thorny constitutional issues. “The courts have a lot of questions to sort out here,” he said. “For example, can a sitting president be forced to testify in a civil suit? Can he give himself immunity? How does this effect the rights of cooties and crab lice? Also, just how completely batshit insane is PETA?”
Despite the prospect of facing a challenge from the President’s
formidable legal team, Vvzzvzwwzzz said she was prepared to pursuit it all the way to the Supreme Court.
“If Mr. Obama thinks he can shoo me away with his legal briefs and his rolled-up New York Times, then he is sadly mistaken,” said an angry Vvzzvzwwzzz. “He has no idea how persistent and annoying I can be. I’m in this for the long haul. All the way till July, if I’m still alive.”
Reynolds cautioned that no matter how determined the plaintiff, such a prolonged legal battle against the President could prove prohibitively expensive. “Mrs. Vvzzvzwwzzz is likely to end up spending millions in legal fees, with an unknown probability of success. Even if she prevails, the ACLU and PETA lawyers will eat 40% of her shit settlement in contingency
fees,” he said.
Vvzzvzwwzz said she would be establishing a legal fund to help defray the cost of the suit, and appealed to the public for contributions. “PETA has been very generous in relocating my family to a welcoming new neighborhood filled with filthy, stoned, slow-reflexed vegans, but we still need money for court costs,” she said.
“Help meee-eee!….Help meee-ee-eee-eee!”
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