Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Feathers ruffled over proposed PETA float
Rendering courtesy of PETA
Spectators won't see this float proposed by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in protest of McDonald's. Parade organizers nixed the idea.
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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Dan Casey
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This Saturday is the big day in town, the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade and Celtic Festival.
If the weather is nice -- unlike last year -- it will draw 10,000 to 12,000 spectators downtown. More than half will be kids.
They will watch Ronald McDonald lead 2,000 or so bagpipers, Boy Scouts, politicians and others strutting their Scots-Irish stuff along Jefferson Street, Campbell Avenue and Williamson Road.
Later at the Celtic Festival folks will dance some jigs and drink a whole bunch of beer, too.
It's the biggest single revenue day for many downtown businesses, says Larry Landolt, executive director of EventZone, which organizes the parade.
What those spectators won't see this year, if EventZone has its way, is the float People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals would like to put in the parade.
It has been rejected.
You see, the parade's title sponsor is the fast-food chain McDonald's, and PETA has about 300 million or so bones to pick with them.
That's because, according to PETA, the company is responsible for the inhumane slaughter of 300 million chickens annually.
You can see a cartoon representation of the float that PETA submitted with their parade application right here, blood-crazed Ronald McDonald and all.
It is similar to an also-rejected application PETA put in for a float in last year's Thanksgiving Day parade in Chicago, also sponsored by McDonald's.
Yuk, yuk.
I don't know about you, but I like to eat chicken.
But those chickens have to be killed before you cook them. There's no way around that step.
So I asked PETA about this. And I got an earful from their spokeswoman, Ashley Byrne.
It is the method that the processing plants use to kill chickens that's so awful, she said. It involves knives and whirring blades and hot scalding water inside big factories.
There are much less cruel and more efficient ways, she noted.
The best way, she added, is something called "controlled atmospheric kills."
That's a fancy term for gas chamber.
"Are you serious?" I asked.
To boil it down, her answer was, "Yeah."
But that's still killing them, I told Byrne.
"Next you'll be coming out and saying we shouldn't ever kill them at all," I said.
Which she admitted is true, because PETA advocates a vegan diet.
Just like, for example, the vegan diet adhered to by Adolf Hitler, a well-known historical figure, animal lover and gas chamber advocate.
Which PETA has heard before, yuk, yuk.
Hitler was evil, and PETA is not that. But it's quickly becoming sad. The group seems to have lost its sense of humor.
Remember the days when PETA's stunts seemed cute and eyebrow-raising, rather than blatantly offensive?
Back in the 1990s they'd send a couple of lithe, near-naked young women whose bodies were painted with black, orange and white tiger stripes to picket fur stores.
Silly, drooling men would gather, and TV news crews would take footage and newspaper photographers would snap pictures of those fawning potential fur-buyers, and their wives would get mad.
There was a humorous genius behind stunts like those.
It was kind of like the old yippie trick of fluttering dollar bills from a catwalk above the New York Stock Exchange and then watching the money-mad traders below fight for the falling loot.
But somewhere along the way, PETA became unfunny. I guess the cute adult stuff doesn't work any longer. Nowadays to grab their headlines, they need to aim shock and gore at children.
(Right, they got a headline here).
So now we have come to knife-wielding, bloodthirsty clowns who would (presumably) scare the beejeebers out of Happy Meal-eating kids excited to see a big parade.
You're not funny any more, PETA.
You're creepy.
The attention-whore act is turning us against you.
