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.

By Beth Quinn

The folks on the political Far Right have been getting madder and madder since President Obama was elected. Mad as in both “angry” and “crazy.”

I learned this in person a few months ago in the Quick Stop downtown, and it took me by surprise. I was by then no longer writing my newspaper column, in which I often criticized the Far Right’s leader, President Moron. I had been under the misapprehension that one of the benefits of being laid off from my job was that the Lunatic Fringe would quit being mad at me.

Alas, I learned I was wrong on a very cold day last February when I ducked into the Quick Stop to warm up during my morning walk. A customer paying for a cup of coffee at the counter looked over at me while I was blowing on my hands and sneered, “Yeah, right. Blow on your hands. You Pinkos and your global warming.”

I had no idea who this guy was, but I felt like I was suddenly in the middle of a scene from an Indiana Jones movie when that guy brandishing a sword jumps in front of Indy. Given that I had no sword of my own to brandish, I tried having a conversation with the sneering man. A fair exchange of ideas, if you will. So I said, “Well you know, global warming is a trend, not a single day. Also, it’s really more accurately called climate change.”

This reasoning did not win him over. “Right, so what was the Ice Age?” he sneered.   “Another trend? I suppose that was our fault, too?”

The Quick Stop workers were getting nervous. Fights among customers are bad for business.

I said, “Look, I’m not the expert. But on this hand, we’ve got hundreds of reputable scientists concerned about climate change. On this other hand, I’ve got some guy at the Quick Stop sneering at me. My money is over here with the scientists.”

Then – because I never know when to shut up – I  added, “Actually, we Pinkos are inclined to believe in science in general. No dinosaurs and people living here at the same time as far as we’re concerned.”

He started sputtering and turning purple, so I left and went to the liquor store to warm up instead.

This would be funny except it isn’t. This guy was genuinely furious at me because he’d been wound up and primed for attack. That day he was sneering. Maybe next time he’ll throw coffee in someone’s face. Who knows what’s next.

Part of the blame for this kind of fury (over climate change of all things) belongs to newscasters and media stars who have become leaders of the Far Right – people like Rush Limbaugh, along with Bill O’Reilly and the rest of that merry band of hyperbolic fact twisters at Fox News. These folks are deliberating fanning the flames of anger in people who want to believe idiocy like Obama isn’t a U.S. citizen, global warming is a conspiracy, there’s a war on Christmas.

When such people get amped up by their media manipulators, they lash out. They kill people like Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas City abortion provider, who was gunned down in his church three weeks ago. Bill O’Reilly had called him Tiller the Baby Killer and compared him to the Nazis 29 times before someone out in TV Land took a gun in hand and murdered the doctor.

And the Right Wing media is egging on hate-filled bigots like James von Brunn, the white supremacist who killed a black security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., last week. Von Brunn is one of countless white supremacists in this country who believes blacks and Jews are an affront to his master race. It is Limbaugh and the folks at Fox who whip such bigots up with their talk of “racial turnover” in America.

These would be isolated incidents except they’re not. The Far Right is seething. They’re furious that we have a black president. They have short memories about just who caused this economic mess, and they’re furious because it’s all Obama’s fault. They’re furious at people on welfare and even those on unemployment (like me) for stealing their tax dollars. They’re furious at immigrants, at people who speak a foreign language in OUR country (how dare they!), at the effrontery of a Latina woman to think she could be a good Supreme Court justice.

I am very afraid of such people because, wound up tight enough on hatred and caffeine, they become the terrorists. And they aren’t across the ocean. Sometimes they’re in the church vestibule or the museum lobby – or maybe even right downtown.

Beth can be reached at beth@zestoforange.com.

Tom and Huck Quinn

By Beth Quinn

With the arrival of grandchildren, one tumbling into life after another now, the dogs in our family have had to trade in their erstwhile peaceful existence for one fraught with excitement and some danger.

None of the children actually mean to cause a dog harm, with the possible exception of 2-year-old Devon, whom I recently caught standing face to face with Tom, our yellow Lab. She had his lips gripped firmly in her little hands, and she was twisting them backwards, causing Tom to have a most peculiar and unnatural smile on his face.

Devon

Tom rolled his eyes toward me in a mute plea for help. He dared not move a muscle lest she tighten her lip grip. I saved him from the enfant terrible, and he will forever love me for my intervention – and for the time-out Devon had to serve in hopes that she will reform.

(She claimed she was “thorry” and they kissed and made up, but I suspect she will have to serve a few more time-outs before she fully embraces the notion that she’s never allowed to hurt a dog.)

That Tom, he’s a good dog. All the Labs in our extended family are – Tom and Huckleberry, Gus and Little Mac. Not one of them would harm a child no matter what body part that child poked or prodded or twisted. Soon after the lip-gripping incident, I watched the care Tom took with Devon when she climbed onto his back to play horsey. Tom slowly lowered himself to the floor, then gently rolled over onto his side to unseat her.

She had to serve time for that infraction, too. No riding the dogs, I told her. Again, she was “thorry” although she stuck out her lower lip to pout for the duration of her sentence this time. I sensed she thought my rules were “thupid.”

But the dogs also manage to inflict punishments of their own, though I’m certain they don’t mean to. Huck’s tail, after all, is just the height of a toddler’s eyes, and there’s no managing the thing once it’s revved up to full wag speed. Devon has developed a defensive blink when she’s in the same room with a dog. Her older cousin Sam did, too, during his own toddlerhood.

Sam

Now Sam has twin baby brothers, and the wagging Lab tails have created a problem of a different sort. The babies were premature, weighing in at 1 pound and change, each barely bigger than an ear of corn. They had to finish cooking at the hospital, and when they were finally sent home a couple of months ago, they arrived with oxygen tanks and monitors and tubes and wires.

My son’s house looks like a nearby hospital exploded and rained durable medical supplies into their living room.

The Labs went into nanny mode when the babies got home. There isn’t a Lab on this earth who doesn’t get involved when a baby is in the house. Sit down with a twin and a bottle, and there’s Gus on the couch next to you, resting his chin on your shoulder to supervise the meal. I’m sure Gus would remind me to burp a baby if I forgot to.

And Little Mac. Well, the very prospect of a lickable baby in the house – two lickable babies! – brings out the whirling dervish in him and sets his tail wagging faster than you can see it moving. It practically hums.

Twins Austin, left, and Bryce.

Therein lies the problem, of course, when there are wires all over the place connecting two babies to oxygen and monitors. After Little Mac has been through the room, it’s not uncommon to discover a wire just dangling there, just hanging from a twin, unmoored from an oxygen tank by the swipe of a dog tail.

Oh my, we say when someone discovers an unattached wire. Who’s not getting oxygen? Is there a twin turning blue in here?

Fortunately, neither Austin nor Bryce has ever turned blue and, really, they don’t seem to need the oxygen all that much. Still, Little Mac gets a time-out of his own whenever this happens, banished to the yard to wear out his exuberance by chasing a squirrel or two.

And while a Lab never pouts while serving his time, I’m certain that, on some level, he’s “thorry” too.

Beth can be reached at beth@zestoforange.com.

By Beth Quinn

Even after the Record put me out the door last May, I continued to dutifully tear off calendar pages each evening from my George Bush Countdown Calendar.

It is one of many Bush calendars that readers gave me after I began counting down at the end of each column about 1,200 days ago. I saw no reason to stop just because I was out of a job.

I have just now torn off Jan. 19, 2009. That was the “1 day left” page. It is a few hours short of midnight, but, after eight long years of waiting, I confess I could wait no longer to see the words on the very last page.

And now I sit here drinking a glass of wine – well, all right, a bottle of wine – and I’m looking at those beautiful, gorgeous words on the Jan. 20, 2009 page:

“0 days left.”

There is a Bushism on each page of this calendar, and the one on this last entry quotes Bush thusly: “I hope you leave here and walk out and say, ‘What did he say?'”

As usual, who knew what he was talking about back in 2004 when he ended a speech with those words. In fact, who ever knew what he was talking about, really. Surely not even Bush himself.

But tonight my calendar says “0 days left.” Those are the only words that matter now. Those are the words you and I have been waiting for so long to say. And we most certainly have some idea what those words mean, so filled with promise and hope as they are.
The moment we waited eight years for.I would like to move on forever from talking about George Bush – I resent the fact that such a mean, shallow, greedy man has occupied so much of our time – but before moving on, I will say two more things.

First, I’m torn between wanting to see him tried as a war criminal and wanting to never hear his name again. No one should be above the law, especially a president. But I understand Obama’s need for a cooperative Congress, and if he goes after Bush, he will have a partisan mess on his hands.

Ideally, perhaps the World Court will do the job for us. Bush has offended all of the people on this good earth. He has tortured and lied and spied and wrecked and killed and maimed. He has brought us all to the brink of another Great Depression. Let’s hope the world at large takes on the task of treating him as the villain he is.

Second, I’d like to thank George Bush once again for being such a dismal failure. Had he not been, I suspect this last election would have been business as usual. Instead – imagine it! – Americans have actually elected a man whose last name rhymes with Osama, whose middle name is Hussein and who, by the way, is black.

And, most preposterous of all – imagine this! – he’s smart. Good lord, we actually have a smart president. And we have a First Lady is who the real McCoy. If Barack hadn’t been running, I’d have voted for his wife.

With Obama at the helm – and with the incredible brain trust he’s bringing to his cabinet and other leadership positions – I feel that I can go back to doing what I used to do. I can go about my business and trust that our country is in good hands.

And I can stop being so mad all the time.

I want to help. I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and do anything this president asks of us to restore our once-proud America. I’ve got all the time in the world to help – I am, after all, among this nation’s growing millions of unemployed. I will gladly toil at public works projects, I will gladly bring whatever is needed to President Obama’s table, I will gladly be any small part of this new Camelot.I am grinning with the joy of it all.

Meanwhile, Tom and Huck join me in hoping the Obama family is successful in finding an awesome hypoallergenic pound dog for Malia and Sasha.

My dogs, by the way, are still happy to have me home most of the time although I can foresee the day when they’d really like me to get the hell out of the house so they can take an uninterrupted nap.

* * *

As I hit the “send” button on my computer, I’m happy to report that there are 12 hours left ’til noon, Jan. 20, 2009.

Halla-freakin-lujah!

Beth can be reached at beth@zestoforange.com.