This is a blog for animal rights activists who are concerned about the misogynist, racist, homophobic and transphobic tactics used by PETA.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Cruelty is sexy
If you ever take any advice from me, let it be this: Do not ever, under any circumstances, sign yourself up for a PETA Google news alert. Every day I must subject myself to an email full of their relentless stupidity, and every day I want to bang my head relentlessly against the wall upon reading it. In today's Stupid PETA Stunt, which contrary to PETA's "sex sells" mantra has received pretty much no media that I'm aware of, our darling idiots did the following (from a PETA press release):
Bowling Green, K.Y. -- Two PETA members in red bikinis will be crammed together in a tank of "bloody" water with the message "McDonald's Scalds Chicks to Death" outside McDonald's restaurant in Bowling Green on Wednesday to protest the abuse that chickens suffer in slaughterhouses that supply the fast-food chain. Other PETA members will hold signs reading, "McCruelty: i'm hatin' it."
When: Wednesday, April 22, 12 noon
Where: 1925 Russellville Rd., Bowling Green
Hey, everybody, what's sexier than scalding animals? Scalding half-naked women, er, I mean, scalding chicks, hell yeah! And obviously there aren't nearly enough images of sexualized violence against women around, so we need to make some more! Seriously, I wonder if the fuckbrains at PETA have taken a day of psychology in their lives. What's more likely to happen as a result of protests like this is that people will further associate violence against women with sexiness, and if they do happen to connect it to the issue of animal rights, they'll view violence against animals as sexy as well. See the boot study by Rachman and Hodgson in the 1960s, which showed that paired with sexual stimuli, researchers could create sexual response to a boot. A fucking boot, just because it was paired with pornographic images of women.
And as usual, PETA's attitude of "fuck everybody who's not a straight white cisgender man" is in full play here. Because despite the fact that viewing images of violence against women disempowers women and despite the fact that 1 in 7 people in Britain believe it's okay to hit a woman for wearing sexy clothing in public, clearly showing the link in people's minds between violence and women being sexy, and despite the fact that every day and everywhere we go we are barraged with images of sexy violence against women to the point where one in four women will be raped and most of us won't be believed because pretty much everyone thinks we asked for it, despite all these facts, PETA still thinks this shit is okay. Rather than having fully dressed people imitate chicks being scalded, or rather than having them wear a body suit of some sort, PETA has decided to once again portray violence against women as sexy. Never mind that the majority of vegetarians and vegans are women, and never mind that women are not viewed as being worth as much as men, which means that people don't care as much when they see us suffering or will even be turned on by it. Never mind the fact that they could have had men do this protest just as well. No, none of that matters, not a bit. What PETA wanted and doesn't seem to have gotten is headlines, headlines at the cost of the lives of the most ardent supporters of animal rights, headlines that very well may have linked murdering animals with sexiness in people's minds. Oh, and did I forget to mention this study, which shows that sexualized pictures of women make men view women as having as much agency as power tools and that included this interesting and disgusting tidbit?
Scans of some of the men found that a part of the brain associated with empathy for other people's emotions and wishes shut down after looking at the pictures.
The most important part to take away from this particular finding, of course, is the role that such pictures play in promoting rape by encouraging men to not listen to women's wishes. It also follows, then, that faced with some half-naked woman asking him to go vegetarian, a man is less likely to follow that woman's wishes. After all, if women only needed to get naked to convince people to see things our way, wouldn't female lawyers all present their arguments in bikinis? And hell, don't you think we'd have naked women taking to the streets to convince men to stop rape? Huh, yeah, I'm sure that would work really fucking well. Honestly, PETA, why don't you crawl back under the rock from whence you came and let the human race get on with the business of making things better on this planet? We won't miss you, I promise.
On a humorous note, as I was searching for PETA's press release, my browser became momentarily possessed and deleted part of my search term, resulting in a search for the term "Two PETinis will." I wonder what a petini is?
Happy Earth Day, everyone! In honor of this magnificent day, it seems that everyone has given me a profusion of things to write about. Because I love all of you, I have decided to share some of them here.
First off is a video which is posted and discussed at Vegan.com. The video, as they write, "concerns a veggie activist who is encouraged to be as loud, strident, and judgmental as possible — in an ongoing effort to attract greater attention to vegetarianism and to keep more animals from harm. It becomes a vicious cycle, with him having to top himself each time. At the end of the video, he’s probably won a few new vegetarians, and he’s earned a few dollars. But it’s come at the price of antagonizing millions, and getting them to permanently regard vegetarians as dickheads." If nothing else, watch it because it's probably the only place on the Internet where you can hear the phrase "you're...the neo-Nazi cult leader anti-Christ PETA-loving superfreak."
After reading the comments at YouTube, I couldn't help but think that the same people who don't understand that this is satire are probably the same ones who watch misogynist videos and tell everyone to lighten up because "it's just a joke." Though given their obvious lack of a brain and understanding of what constitutes humor, maybe I could convince these dumb saps that it would be really funny to go around town spray-painting the words "Fuck your fascist beauty standards" on every misogynist ad they find. The humor, I would inform them, comes from the presence of the word "fuck."
Anyhow, I've lost my train of thought. (Fantasizing about revenge on misogynists does that to me.) The next awesome link I've received lately is from Adam at the blog H.E.A.L.T.H. It's a review of the insipidly stupid, misogynist, self-hating book Skinny Bitch, and he breaks that shit down, tying it into PETA's body hate tactics. The whole blog is really great, so look around it sometime if you get a chance.
Finally, here's a great article that asks for unity between animal rights activists and the No-Kill Movement. Nathan Winograd writes about how, after learning about PETA's insanely high euthanasia rates and having PETA try clumsily to defend themselves, AR-News removed PETA's posting privileges. I was very heartened to see this article, because it's only recently that I've learned about the tension between animal rights activists and no-kill advocates.
And that, folks, is your vegan roundup for this Earth Day! Don't thank me, just send chocolate.
One might think that given my recent post on the Center for Consumer Freedom, it would be clear where I stand on stooges for the meat industry. Well, that fact has escaped the brilliant folks at PETA Watch Australia, who support animal slaughter and have seen fit to link to me, and whose readers probably don't know that one of the major sources at PETA Watch Australia, PETA Kills Animals, is opposed to cancer research because it's shown that red meat and smoking are bad for you. So, for these more intellectually challenged visitors, I would like to present some photography of what goes on in the slaughterhouses you so love (and I've seen much worse than this, but don't have time to hunt it down at the moment):
UPDATE: The turd faces have finally removed their link to me! Hurray! But not before a lot of them clicked over here to see animal torture pictures and read about the irreversibly corrupt, cancer-lovin' Center for Consumer Freedom. Because their link has been removed, I've put the pictures below the jump.
The take-home message: Meat industry patsies, please fuck off. This blog is not for you, and you are NOT welcome to appropriate my work to your abusive, ignorant, totally-in-denial ends. Nowhere on PETA Watch Australia do you make mention of human rights in any way, shape or form; your only reason for opposing PETA is because you get off on eating animals and can't stand the fact that not everyone does. Have fun killing animals, fuckheads. I hope you don't sit around shaking your heads and asking why the next time you hear about a mass murderer in the news.
As I am currently in a monumentally foul mood, all I can say to PETA's latest fat-hating stunt is: Please fuck off. When you are done fucking off, head over to Kate Harding's blog for some intelligence. That is, if intelligence isn't one of the many things that's below you.
Following is the Press Release of Fuckedness that has made me want to rip my teeth out and throw them at my computer:
PETA Offers to Help Massachusetts Schools Crack Down on Childhood Obesity
For Immediate Release: April 15, 2009
Contact: Lindsay Rajt 757-622-7382
Springfield, Mass. - After learning that that the Massachusetts Department of Public Health is reportedly planning to start sending "fat report cards" to students' parents, PETA has sent a letter to school district superintendent Dr. Alan Ingram offering to help students trim down by educating them about healthy and humane vegetarian diets.
PETA points out that meat-eaters are nine times more likely to be obese and suffer from the debilitating and life-threatening consequences of obesity than vegetarians are. Researchers have found that children as young as 3 can already begin to show signs of coronary heart disease (hardening of the arteries). A vegan diet has been shown to reverse the symptoms of heart disease.
"Kids' addiction to hot dogs and chicken nuggets may be making them fat and increasing their risk for deadly diseases," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "Teaching kids about the benefits of vegetarian foods like PB&J and orange juice is as important as teaching them their ABCs."
Oh yeah, and please note that Lindsay Rajt wants you to contact her at 757-622-7382. She should be glad I don't have an unlimited calling plan. That is, unless she likes to have people scream profanities at her.
Generally I try to cover things that are as new as possible on this blog, but since it's new I'm also playing catch-up. And one thing that I found from this October is an incredibly hate-filled page on PETA's Fur is Dead website:
Dressed to kill in gaudy furs and enough makeup to conceal their five o’clock shadows, our cross-dressing activists have been hitting the streets letting people know that fur is a drag. Looking more like lettuce ladies than broccoli boys, a group of gender-bending PETA drag queens even took home a third-place trophy in an April Fools Day costume parade. Want to help educate people about the cruelty of the fur industry? Put on some pumps and show the world what a fashion faux pas fur really is! Whether you’ve got a flair for the flamboyant or you’re just an up-for-anything activist, staging a “Fur Is a Drag” protest is a terrific way to show people just how ridiculous fur really looks. You can enter a contingent of cross-dressers in a local parade or stage a drag of a demonstration outside a fur retailer. We have everything that you’ll need to make your event a raving success. You just need to supply a time, a location—and a few daring drag queens! And remember, a few hours in heels is nothing compared to what animals killed for fur go through, right, guys?
The Vegan Ideal breaks it down better than I can, but I thought I'd add to it a bit. First of all, as I've noted before, transgender people are 17 times more likely than cisgender people to be murdered, and are the most likely to be murdered of any minority group. Every year in November a day of remembrance is held throughout the United States where the names of all transgender murder victims from the past year are read, and candles are lit for them; oftentimes the programs for these events are out of date by the time the vigil happens because another murder has happened in the few days between printing and the Day of Remembrance. Furthermore, some studies have shown the unemployment rate of transgender people to be as high as 70 percent.
Yet somehow, it's still okay to call transfolk and drag queens "ridiculous" and foolish and to make fun of what are in PETA's eyes transwomen's pathetic attempts at "looking" like women. It's okay to reduce trans women, yet again, to their bodies and fashion choices, which are usually found wanting. They're flamboyant, they're hitting the streets and they're up for anything because get it? they're all prostitutes! And rather than bothering to educate themselves about where the term "drag" came from in this context, PETA uses it as an insult. The amount of hatred in this one short, completely stupid page is staggering; literally every sentence is offensive, transphobic and just plain ignorant. Not to mention the headline is just flat-out racist to boot. And of course it's misogynist, as transphobia usually is, because duh, everyone knows that anything feminine and even remotely resembling a dress is ridiculous and not to be taken seriously! It's completely revolting that PETA has taken one of the most completely vulnerable and reviled groups in our society and piled onto them like the cowards they are, leaving straight white men untouched and up on their thrones as usual. Somebody needs to tell Ingrid and Co. that minstrel shows weren't funny then, and they aren't funny now.
One might also think that given the recent anti-gay assault on Nathan Runkle, the openly gay founder and executive director of Mercy For Animals, PETA might stop to consider how much GLBT people have contributed to animal rights and the effect that their hate might have on people in their own community. But instead, they seem to assume that the only people worth having around are racists, homophobes, transphobes and misogynists. One has to wonder what the animal rights movement would be like for the rest of us if PETA got their wish and recruited all the world's bigots to their cause. I know that would be enough to make me run like hell from the cause I've supported since I was twelve.
Holy Isis, Sekhmet and Ra. PETA is totally targeting kids with their body-hatred tactics. But first, let me say that my friends and co-workers rule. They are always sending me great ideas for this blog, which prevents me from having to constantly wade through the dreck on PETA's websites. The times when I do have to be a big girl and look at their websites (which I will post about next) usually give me palpitations, so THANKS, y'all!
It is with this spirit of awesomeness that a friend alerted me to PETA's latest Hotness by Tofu contest. For the purposes of this blog, Hotness by Tofu will be PETA's tactic of banging people over the head with their opinion that veganism makes you HAWT!!!! And it is the only way you can get HAWT!!!! Today's totally transparent Hotness by Tofu tactic comes courtesy of PETA2, PETA's site targeted to high school and undergrad college students. (And if PETA reaching out to high schoolers doesn't scare you, then a career in running haunted houses is for you.)
Anyhow, here is the totally stupid bullshit that littered my friend's inbox earlier today:
Dear [Awesome Friend of the Empress Who Will Bring Us to Ruin]
I can hardly believe it, but it's time for our fourth annual Cutest Vegetarian Alive contest! We're on the lookout for the vegetarian guy and girl who get people's hearts racing — the two who use their cuteness to make the world a better place for animals. Does that sound like you? Well then, enter now!
Did you get that, y'all? "The two who use their cuteness to make the world a better place for animals." That's right folks, for us vegans, it's not about using your brain or your heart to make the world a better place! No sirree, it's all about how CUTE you are! And just think, while you're busy shopping for things to make yourself cute, how much you could be actually DOING for animals, or how much of that money could've gone to an animal rights group. Or wait, don't think about it. And never mind that you're probably not gonna win that contest if you have buck teeth, which can only be solved by certain animal-tested procedures. And never mind that if you're acne prone you're more likely to win if you've kicked that acne through use of animal-tested treatments, while that poor ethical sap who's suffering through it rather than line Galderma's pockets won't even make the first cut in this contest. Yes, folks, this is in fact what hypocrisy looks like. It is what hierarchical thinking looks like, it is what the cult of materialism and anti-environmentalism looks like, but it is definitely not what smart looks like. And vegans are smart. We've just got bad PR thanks to these clowns.
And honestly, what the fuck does "using your cuteness to make the world a better place for animals" even mean? You can't booby-flash the world into veganism, otherwise PETA totally would've accomplished that by now. And really, do teens even buy these stilted, overcompensating attempts at speaking their language or whatever? I mean, come on, at least say "I can't fucking believe it's the time of year for this goddamn contest again! Shit, where did the time go?" I would've loved that as a teen.
Speaking of vulgarity, next year me and my middle finger are totally entering the Sexiest Vegetarian Alive contest. With the words "FUCK" and "YOU" painted on my ta-tas.
They might have gotten to Adam Ant (see the change from "Stand and Deliver" to "Save the Gorilla:), but they'll never get to the Pet Shop Boys.
Sounds like a joke, but it isn't-- representatives of PETA, with straight faces and everything, asked the long standing new wave band to change their name to Rescue Shelter Boys, after more than 20 years under their current moniker.
Well, at least it isn't vile like so many of their other publicity stunts, I'll give them that, and it could bring attention to the issue of puppy mills and the like. But really, PETA's been around since 1980. If they genuinely think this is such a great idea, maybe it would have been a better idea back in the Pet Shop Boys' heyday. Except oh wait, back in those days PETA was actually, you know, doing things to help animals rather than gazing at their collective navel.
The astute Vegans Against PETA reader is probably wondering by now whether I read any blogs other than Shakesville, as at least half the things I link to lead there. Today I read with disgust and interest this post at Shakesville about an ad for Burger King and another ad for milk. The Burger King ad is a rap to the tune of Sir-Mix-a-Lot's one and only hit "Baby Got Back," and is a rather clever ode to SpongeBob's square butt, accompanied by....women shaking their asses, with no SpongeBob ass in sight? And the icing on the shit cake is that "the Burger King" in this kid-targeted commercial is going around measuring the women's asses in the video. The milk ads, which are from Russia and haven't run (yet) feature women stylized to resemble cows, with milk standing in for semen, which is being shot into women's eyes like the money shot in porn, coming out of their mouths, and running down their bodies.
Of course, no industry has the lock on misogyny in advertising (though the beer industry comes damn close) but once you've read the Sexual Politics of Meat, it's hard not to notice the extent to which misogyny and hypermasculinity are used to advertise animal products. Of course, this makes sense since eating animals and degrading women are all part of a hierarchical system with straight white men at the top, and everyone else falling in line below. What's confounding is why PETA is always trying to out-misogyny the meat industry, as if the victor will be the one who can be the most misogynist and hypermasculine. Looking at commercials like this makes me worry about where PETA will go next, since they've now locked themselves into a game of misogynist oneupmanship with the meat industry. Are they gonna make their campaigns directed at children even less tasteful and incorporate games where some Vegan Overlord orders girls to weigh themselves every time they eat a vegan meal vs. a meat meal?
This is why you don't get into a dick-measuring contest with misogynists -- as the ever-escalating extremism of the porn industry has shown, you have to be willing to constantly up the ante if you want to use objectification to sell your product. One second you've got soft-focus pictures of smiling naked women that seem relatively harmless, but before you know it those women have toilet bowl seats around their necks or are being orally raped by the entire football team. PETA's argument is that they use sex because "nobody is listening," but if you want people to listen to sex in a world that's already sex-saturated, you have to make it more extreme and hardcore and offensive than anything else out there, otherwise it just gets lost among all the objectification that isn't going to extreme lengths by targeting children or splattering semen in women's eyes.
Finally, in case anyone wasn't aware, Burger King's veggie burgers are not vegan and haven't been for a long time. At the beginning they were (and I believe they were soy-free as well?) but they now have dairy, eggs and soy in them, thus rendering them inedible for vegans and a lot of other people. That's one king who won't be getting this Empress's business any time soon.
(Edited to add: Holy crap, I actually got through an entire post without using the f-word! **Cue applause and fanfare**)
No, really, they are! You see, as I'm sure everybody reading Vegans Against PETA has been waiting to hear, our hoseheaded friends at PETA have finished their Sexiest Vegetarian Next Door contest. And the winners are....a skinny blonde chick and a muscular black guy! Who would've guessed? It's almost like I never left my black intellectual studies class earlier this week, where we were talking about the idealization of white women, the more Aryan and skinny the better, and the hypersexualization of big buff black men. Really, PETA, could you be any more boring? Are you TRYING to make me fall asleep at my desk while visions of American history 101 dance through my head? Couldn't one of 'em at least have had a tattoo or body piercing or something? Or better yet, couldn't you just have saved me the trouble and not run this stupid contest at all?
You see, we all know by now that PETA is trying to get people to go vegan/vegetarian by convincing them that not eating animal products magically gives you Teh Hot. Better still, if you are a guy you will get your very own Pet Vegan Woman who is also very, very, very hot and likes to sit around in cages for your titillation. You will probably even get one of these women if you are gay, just so people don't start thinking that being vegan gives you Teh Gay.
However, in addition to objections I've previously raised about the Hotness-By-Tofu tactic, and the obvious objections that feminists have been raising for years about this sort of thing, PETA's tactic fails for another reason: There are plenty of hot meat-eaters out there, too. And there are plenty of vegans and vegetarians who don't measure up. I recently took one for the team (again) and looked up Maxim's most recent Hot 100, their list of the year's hottest women or whatever. Well, actually, I went to a blog that listed the top ones, as I couldn't stomach actually going to Maxim itself. This blog listed the top however many, and I double checked them against a list of famous vegetarians and vegans on Happy Cow. The verdict? One woman on the list is a vegetarian. (And to be honest, I don't even remember who the fuck it was. Sorry.) Here's the list of women who aren't vegan or vegetarian yet somehow manage to fit society's stupid standards for fuckability:
Lindsay Lohan, who PETA hates Jessica Alba Eva Longoria Jessica Simpson Christina Aguilera Jennifer Garner Scarlett Johansson Ali Larter Fergie Sienna Miller Angelina Jolie Katherine Heigl Sarah Silverman Keira Knightley Julia Roberts Cameron Diaz Shakira Mandy Moore Halle Barry Penelope Cruz Danica Patrick Ciara
And yes, I double checked, and no, Angelina Jolie is not vegetarian or vegan, which surprised me. I then made my own very short list of other celebrities who are widely considered attractive and cross-checked it with the vegan and vegetarian celebrity list, and none of them came up as vegan. These are Selma Hayek, Cate Blanchett, Rihanna, Liv Tyler, Beyoncé, Viggo Mortenson and George Clooney. (And in case you noticed a pattern, yes, goddamn it, I watch too much Lord of the Rings. Interestingly enough, though, a lot of the rest of the cast is vegetarian or vegan.)
And then we get around to the fact that a lot of vegetarian and vegan celebrities don't fit the standard for super-mega-charged hotness. I mean, let's face it, people who are willing to buck off society's expectations of what they should eat are probably also more likely to be willing to buck off societal expectations for looks, and they may also be aware of the animal cruelty involved in most methods for achieving beauty. Of course determining beauty is subjective, and most of the people in the following list are celebrities who I consider far more talented, amazing and beautiful than any of the people on the "hot" lists. In fact, my favorite singer is on this list. But I know that society doesn't see things as I do, so I've picked celebrities with society's fucked up standards in mind:
Meatloaf (Hey! I didn't say I liked ALL the people on this list, K?) kd lang Sinéad O'Connor, also known as the MOST FUCKING AWESOMELY AMAZING SINGER IN THE UNIVERSE OMG!!!!!!!! Moby Boy George Seal Chelsea Clinton "Weird Al" Yankovich Yoko Ono Michael Jackson Prince Tracy Chapman
I hope you can all tell who my favorite singer is on that list. But anyhow, what are we to do about this? Should we tell less attractive people to eat meat so they don't embarrass us and so we can make an example of them? And, what about all the vegetarians and vegans who have done amazing things for the world? Think Corretta Scott King, Rosa Parks and Gandhi, to name a few. Long after Pamela Anderson is dead and forgotten, these three will still be in the history books. As my co-worker said today of PETA's Hotness-By-Tofu tactic, "it's baseless and it's stupid." It tells us nothing about the real reasons to go vegan or vegetarian, it devalues people's real contributions to the world, it's completely and totally refutable by the mere existence of meat eaters who are "hot," and worse yet, it says to those of us who don't measure up: This is not your movement. We don't want you, you make us look bad. Go somewhere else, anywhere but here.
Normally you'd think I would be thrilled to be getting tons of mail about PETA getting bad press. Well, usually I am happy when somebody in the media takes them down a peg or ten, but this week the bad press has not been the type any ethical, honest person would like to see.
You see, for some absolutely harebrained reason, PETA's (admittedly too high) euthanasia statistics are back in the news. Mainly it's been blogs, but one of my Google news alerts showed that the Telegraph of the United Kingdom has gotten in on the action as well. The driving source behind these articles has been one Center for Consumer Freedom, a front group for the meat, tobacco, junk food and alcohol industry. One of my friends who's heavily involved in animal rights pointed out to me that it might be a good idea to let the world know up front that these haters are not welcome to appropriate or twist my work to their ends. I'm guessing this wee blog isn't even on their radar yet, but should that ever happen, here is the official Vegans Against PETA statement on the Center for Consumer Freedom and the many other industry front groups they run:
The Center for Consumer Freedom is made up entirely of money-hungry, lying, manipulative, selfish, life-hating, fear-mongering fuckdongs who have absolutely no good purpose in the world. They and their affiliates will never be used as a source on this blog, and discussion of their possible merits will not be tolerated since none exist.
There, CCF shills. Is that clear enough for you? Now run along and go smother infants or whatever it is you sick lot do with your spare time.
With that out of the way, let's do a brief rundown of what CCF is all about before my lunch break ends:
They regularly attack the National Cancer Institute for publishing studies showing that, for instance, red meat and smoking are bad for your health. Their most recent press release against the NCI was just a week ago. (Link is to the cache so as not to send them traffic.)
They have spread lies about the Humane Society of the United States, claiming in front of Congress that HSUS is in league with the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation front. Read HSUS's response here. (And I'm sorry, anybody who honestly thinks HSUS is in league with terrorist groups is a dingaling of the highest order.)
They've had domain names taken away for posing as a consumer group and trying to purchase domains similar to those of groups they oppose in hopes of tricking people into going to their sites.
Finally, one of the many front websites CCF runs is PETAKillsAnimals.com. (The link is to Source Watch's article on PETA Kills Animals, not the website itself.) They note that CCF's major funders are groups that PETA has targeted in their campaigns, hence it is clear that CCF's opposition to PETA has nothing to do with concern for animals or anybody else, but rather their own financial interests. After all, if CCF gave one sixteenth of a shit about animals, why would they be receiving money from the meat industry and why would they attack cancer researchers who question the value of meat eating?
As my friend wrote to me, "They say that consumers should have freedom...But shouldn't consumers have the freedom to know if their foods have GMO's in them? Or if they are produced by egregious animal abuse?" Which is a pretty good summary of their dishonesty. Like Concerned Women for America, their name is a misnomer. CWA isn't concerned about women but rather upholding patriarchy. CCF isn't concerned about consumer freedom but rather about protecting the worst forms of corporate exploitation and dishonesty.
It's pretty clear that CCF has been fighting a losing battle these days, as states increasingly ban smoking in restaurants, lower DUI limits, restrict the availability of junk food and implement protections for farmed animals. As more changes like these happen, we can expect to see the so-called Center for Consumer Freedom and other similar interest groups go more and more over the edge as things get more and more desperate for them and the economy starts to take a toll on their profits as well. (We can see a similar phenomenon right now among extreme gun advocates and racists with the election of Barack Obama.) When people are desperate and losing, they resort to lies, scare tactics, hatred and flat-out stupidity, which is about the only thing CCF and their associates have going for them. People of principle and honesty are best off steering clear of this self-interest group.
Name: The Venerable Vegan Empress Home: About Me: See my complete profile If you have any ideas for an article here or would like to write a post, I'd love that! I work full time, volunteer and take classes at my city's university, so I don't work on this project nearly as often as I'd like. Just send me a comment with your contact info -- I approve all comments before posting, so if you include info that you don't want published let me know and I won't publish your comment.
