The most recent issue of the New Yorker magazine includes a 14-page essay on People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) President and co-founder, Ingrid Newkirk. It is entitled "The Extremist: The Woman Behind the Most Successful Radical Group in America." Perhaps the article should instead have been titled "The Nutcase." It reveals Newkirk as simply, incredibly bizarre.
Newkirk on violence
"[People] need to understand that if
they support the torture and misuse of other animals they will be made to pay.
The animals are defenseless. They can't fight back. But we can. And, no matter
what it takes, we always will."
Newkirk on former employees calling PETA "the cult of Newkirk"
"If you put the cult stuff in [your article] nobody will take what we do
seriously."
Newkirk on the press
"We are complete press sluts."
Newkirk on being a press slut
"That Reuters reporter was
so thrilled when I told him my position on hoof-and-mouth disease. Don't you
need something like that [i.e., an outrageous quote for your article] too?"
Newkirk on what she strives to be
"The biggest nag on
earth."
Newkirk's last will and testament
"That the meat of my
body, or a portion thereof, be used for a human barbeque...my skin, or a portion
thereof, be removed and made into leather products...my feet be removed and
umbrella strands or other ornamentation be made from them...my eyes be removed,
mounted and delivered to the administrator of the Environmental Protection
Agency..."
Newkirk on Kentucky Fried Chicken's Colonel Sanders
"Why
not find out when his birthday is, call the newspapers, and go dance on his
grave?"
Newkirk on drooling
"People drool when they look at
[Pamela Anderson, who poses for PETA ads]. Why wouldn't we use that? We need all
the drooling we can get."
Newkirk on her divine mandate
"I am just trying to make
the best case for animals. That is clearly what I was put on this earth to do.
Even after I am gone, I will try to continue."
Newkirk on having children
"I am not only uninterested
in having children. I am opposed to having children. Having a purebred human
baby is like having a purebred dog; it is nothing but vanity, human vanity."
A few of the author's observations are also worth recounting.
On PETA's press strategy
"PETA's publicity formula --
eighty percent outrage, ten percent each of celebrity and truth."
On Newkirk's view of Seeing Eye dogs
"She regards the
use of Seeing Eye dogs as an abdication of human responsibility and, because
they live as 'servants' and are denied the companionship of other dogs, she is
wholly opposed to their use."
On Newkirk dreaming
"Ingrid Newkirk told me once, with
genuine conviction, that McDonald's -- which feeds hamburgers and chicken
nuggets to twenty million people a day in the United State alone -- would stop
serving meat in her lifetime."
On attacking Seinfeld's Jason Alexander for appearing in KFC
commercials
"Then PETA's Dan Matthews spoke up again. 'Do you know that
fat little guy from Seinfeld? He has become the main pitchman for KFC, Jason
Alexander. And beginning in May he is going to star in the West Coast production
of 'The Producers.' It's made for us. We can be slamming him as the play opens.
If we do this properly, he will wish he never saw a chicken."
On mad cow disease
"Next on the agenda: the case of
Charlton Heston. Heston has fallen ill with Alzheimer's, a disease with symptoms
that can resemble those of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD, the human form of
mad-cow disease. Deer have a chronic wasting syndrome similar to that found in
cattle, and, tenuous though it is, the link presents PETA with an opportunity
to, as Newkirk put it, 'toy with the idea that both Alzheimer's and CJD are
related to meat consumption.'" (The Center for Consumer Freedom wrote a white paper on activists
raising unwarranted fears about mad cow disease.)
On PETA supporting violence
"Its leaders wholeheartedly
defend and encourage guerilla groups like the Animal Liberation Front. In fact,
Bruce Friedrich, one of PETA's most prominent leaders, says in a speech readily
available on the Internet [CCF caught and
recorded Friedrich saying this at a 2001 convention] 'I think it would be a
great thing if, you know, all these fast food outlets and these slaughterhouses
and these laboratories and the banks that fund them exploded tomorrow.'"
On PETA's success
"PETA is by far the most successful
radical organization in America, raising more than fifteen million dollars a
year, most of it in small contributions from its seven hundred and fifty
thousand members and supporters. Newkirk believes in spending as much of that as
she can."
On Newkirk's extremism
"She told me, in the most
unequivocal terms, that the world would be an infinitely better place without
humans in it at all."
Source: http://www.consumerfreedom.com/headline_detail.cfm?HEADLINE_ID=1865
Legislature’s Iraq resolution is embarrassing
Hawaii legislators -- taking time from their busy schedule of deciding whether they should raise, lower or leave the cost of a fireworks permits the same, allow or not allow Segway computerized scooters on Honolulu sidewalks, and let or not let male poultry fight to the death -- managed to squeeze out a resolution urging that the war in Iraq should be ended by peaceful means, using the spirit of aloha.
It takes a certain amount of versatility to jump from contemplating firecrackers, scooters and cockfighting to issuing suggestions to the U.S. Congress and the president of the United States on how to contain a madman head of state with weapons of mass destruction. Although, considering the legislature's inability to come to agreement on the regulation of firecrackers, it seems a tad presumptuous to lecture world leaders on the regulation of chemical and biological weapons.
Look, the State House resolution urging a "nonviolent" solution to the war in Iraq by demonstrating a commitment to the aloha spirit is just silly. I can't even get upset about it. It's that stupid. Yes, we all try to keep the aloha spirit in our hearts and we do it a little better than King Kamehameha did when he united the islands using an extreme version of the opposite of nonviolence. I don't think Hawaiians being chased off the Pali cliffs were sensing a whole lot of aloha.
THAT THE House would pass such a goofy resolution should scare the aloha out of rank-and-file Democratic Party members. It shows that higher ups in the party not only did NOT get the message during the last election -- which put a Republican in the Governor's Office -- that Hawaii residents have had enough of the status quo, but that they don't understand that they were put in there to solve Hawaii problems, not because they are international war strategists.
Where's the Democratic leadership? Where's the call from Dan Inouye to House Speaker Calvin Say saying, "With all due respect, Cal, U.S. tanks are rolling through Baghdad, I don't think Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld wants to chat about the power of aloha and nonviolent meditation."
I'm told there is a famous book that says something like to every thing, there is a season; a time to build up, a time to break down, a time to win, a time to lose, a time to bring in the laundry, a time to put out the cat, a time to gather stones together and then hurl them with great force at the guys with the other pile of stones. If there was a time for the use of intercontinental ballistic aloha, it ended when one of Saddam Hussein's suicide maniacs blew up a jeep that happened to contain Sgt. Eugene Williams, a soldier from Hawaii.
Aside from being an embarrassment to the state, this "aloha"
resolution is an insult to Williams, his wife and children. The legislators who
voted for this nutty resolution should meditate on that.