(This is the fifth part of Douglas Anthony Cooper's examination of PETA. The first is "PETA's Celebs: Naked in the Name of Mass Pet Slaughter." Part two is "Ingrid Newkirk's Death Wish." Part three is "The Humane Alternative to PETA's Pet Slaughter." Part four is "Katniss Fight: Could Jennifer Lawrence Take Down PETA?")
Bill Maher is a merciless bastard. And I say that with the greatest respect. Lesser guys may be conned by righteous charlatans -- not Bill. He's the one in the front row, shining a rude light on the emperor's flashed genitals. Lo, if you have stupid beliefs, Maher's going to haul your ass onto the Carpet of Reason. Hence, he is pretty much the last person you'd expect to get sucked in by PETA, Ingrid Newkirk's cult of euthanasia.
Somehow Maher has decided that the one charismatic leader who ought not to be questioned -- after he's finished ripping Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha -- is Newkirk, the "animal rights" firebrand who insists that animals have no right to life. A woman whose organization is responsible for the pious butchery of 27,541 innocent pets.
These facts are not a matter of dispute: the kill record can be found in legal documents signed by Newkirk herself and her chief lieutenants. Nor is the truth all that obscure. I've covered this in various articles for the Huffington Post, but I am by no means the first: PETA's duplicity and viciousness have been widely reported by the mainstream media, and by committed activists, many of them former PETA members.
I don't expect blissed-out adolescents to do the research necessary to see through Newkirk's quackery, but yes: I do expect Bill Maher, scornful enemy of fraudulence, to do at least a little bit of homework before endorsing an impostor.
For a man who prides himself on drinking no one's Kool-Aid, Maher's certainly developed a taste for Ingrid Newkirk's. He may well be friends with this woman: I'm told she can be quite charming if you catch her without her needle. Certainly he knows lots of people who swan about with the Empress of Euthanasia -- she gets around. And I'm sure he's been exposed to the lie that this critique of PETA is entirely the work of the meat industry. (Some of it in fact is. The most rigorous critic, however, is Nathan Winograd, the vegan who heads up the No Kill movement.)
So, yes: unmasking Newkirk would likely have personal consequences. But this is the test of a man's character. It's also a test of moral acuity: The charlatans closest to home are always the hardest to identify.
Some would argue that Maher, by virtue of his radical rejection of religion, is more likely to be gullible than most. Consider the remark generally misattributed to GK Chesterton: "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything." According to this notion, Maher is especially vulnerable to the pretenders: the sleazebags in messiah drag who work the global whorehouse.
Eh. I'm not sure that I buy this: Sometimes a psychological theory is simply too elegant. Me, I think it's just an instance of intellectual laziness. He let down his guard, and in wandered Tartuffe.
Maher's valentine to Newkirk focuses mostly on her book Free the Animals, which was first published 20 years ago. And there's no question: Newkirk's early work was instrumental in bringing animal cruelty to light. But that work has been more than eclipsed by over a decade of mass pet butchery.
We've seen this pattern before. Jim Jones was in many ways a good guy before he decided that his People's Temple would better serve mankind as a death cult. Not many people know this, but Jones was on the forefront of efforts to integrate Indiana -- he and his wife were the first white couple in the state to adopt a black baby. Worthy stuff.
But it doesn't quite compensate for the 909 deaths at Jonestown. And Newkirk's early efforts don't really make up for the mountain of dead pets produced by her cult.
Now is not the time to be praising the pre-Kool-Aid Jones. Nor Newkirk's kinder, gentler self, before she became the Butcher of Norfolk.
It wasn't Kool-Aid, by the way: it was grape Flavor Aid. While we're being accurate: Newkirk's euth fetish isn't a recent phenomenon. She happily recalls putting down an unspeakable number of pets in the 70s: "I must have killed a thousand of them, sometimes dozens every day."
These cults are almost never reported accurately in the mass media. Serious journalists, wedded to fact, can get blind-sided by the surreal.
PETA's current work in the area of animal cruelty lies somewhere between very slightly useful, and a menace to the innocent. Michael Vick's pit bulls? PETA wanted to kill them. Luckily, a small group of pit-bull advocates got to them before Newkirk could "euthanize" them. The story of how Vick's dogs were rescued from Newkirk is in fact a harrowing tale in itself: It would make for a mesmerizing Hollywood thriller.
Luckily, it has a happy ending -- 47 of the 51 Vick dogs were saved. And it wasn't as difficult as anyone expected: "'We had been told these were the most vicious dogs in America.' So what they found in the pens caught them off guard. 'Some of them were just big goofy dogs you'd find in any shelter,' says Zawistowski (the animal behaviourist involved). No more than a dozen were seasoned fighters, and few showed a desire to harm anything."
The most famous of them, Leo, became a beloved therapy dog; he spent his final days with patients undergoing chemotherapy, and seniors with Alzheimer's. (Leo died of a seizure a few months ago. R.I.P. He had five good years, however, after being rescued from Vick's dog fighting ring and Newkirk's hypodermic.)
PETA, by the way, thinks that all pit bulls should be killed. All of them. As soon as we can get our hands on them:
"At many animal shelters across the country, any pit bull that comes through the front door doesn't go out the back door alive," Newkirk tells us. Furthermore: "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals... supports the shelters' pit-bull policy, albeit with reluctance."
"Reluctance." That would be, I guess, the "ethical" part? Oh, but don't you worry your little head about it, Newkirk adds, with the special condescension she reserves for animal lovers:
"People who genuinely care about dogs won't be affected by a ban on pits. They can go to the shelter and save one of the countless other breeds and lovable mutts sitting on death row through no fault of their own. We can only stop killing pits if we stop creating new ones."
Er, no. We can stop killing pits bulls if we stop killing them. Just as we can stop killing shelter animals if we defund PETA and the HSUS, and give the money to No Kill organizations like Best Friends, and North Shore Animal League, and Scooby Medina in Europe.
Oh, and speak for yourself, butcher: I happen to genuinely care about dogs; and I will be affected if you are successful in rendering an entire breed extinct.
How about those horses being inhumanely slaughtered in Mexico? PETA wants them slaughtered stateside. It's a subtle distinction, I guess: getting killed by Newkirk-approved killers counts as humane.
I'm not convinced that faith is a fool's journey, but I'll grant Maher that most religions pour you more than a few body shots of silliness and hypocrisy. Not one world religion, however -- even at its most radical -- is remotely as bizarre and disturbing as PETA. Certainly not Christianity, or Hinduism, or Islam. To find the equivalent of this cult, you have to go deep into the rabbit hole: You have to look at Tom Cruise's Scientology, or Soka Gakkai International (Orlando Bloom), or Madonna's faux Kabbalah.
In short, you have to examine the extreme wackiness that appeals especially to celebrities, spiritually and optically deprived in their bubble of unreality.
I find Maher's naive zeal here particularly disturbing. Nobody looks to Tom Cruise as a hammer of hypocrites; nobody expects Madonna to comprehend the Good. (Madonna, don't preach. Please.) But for Maher to uncritically cheerlead for one of the ugliest cults in America is truly disheartening. And, unlike most of the celebrity cults, PETA does real damage, on a gruesome scale.
Four million shelter animals will be killed next year in America. If these shelters followed Newkirk's example, the numbers would be triply obscene. Yes, PETA pays lip service to adoption, but just try to adopt one of the pets that gets delivered to their headquarters in Norfolk. Your odds are slim (three per cent, to be precise); because that animal, even if perfectly healthy, has a 97 percent chance of dying swiftly at the end of a hypodermic.
Again, without apologies for the repetition, here is the archetypal PETA anecdote:
"A former PETA employee spoke of one particular incident that burned into her mind forever: A teary-eyed man showed up at PETA headquarters one day with his beloved pet rabbit. The man had grown old and sick and was no longer able to care properly for his friend. He supplied a cage, bed, toys, and even vet records for this pet. He was assured by PETA workers that they would take 'good care' of his rabbit and find him a home. The man left distraught but no doubt believing that his friend would be able to live out the rest of his life in a loving, compassionate home... PETA workers carried him to the 'death house' immediately and ended his life."
I've promised to re-tell this story in every article, because nothing else so accurately encapsulates Newkirk's approach to animal rights. Animals have one unalienable right, according to Newkirk: the right to die. A right that she'll defend to the death. (Theirs, not hers.)
And Maher, of all people, is singing this woman's praises: Newkirk, Flavor Aid of the Week.
How best to deal with celebrities is a real issue for activists. The PETA approach -- pornographic exploitation -- is remarkably successful, but many refuse to lower themselves to that level. I respect that: the No Kill movement, for instance, has been much more restrained in promoting a vastly preferable cause. On the other hand, they've paid the price: "PETA" is a household word. "No Kill" is a concept properly understood by a relatively small community of hyper-informed animal lovers.
For the sake of these animals, I am proposing a third way. No, you don't have to whore yourself, but celebrity is a potent force, and should be harnessed. Either that, or the good guys lose. I have already done my best, loudly and thus far without success, to draft Jennifer Lawrence into the No Kill movement. Her valiant words, "Screw PETA," have been heard by millions; let's append them to an intelligent and irrefutable critique.
Inspired by Newkirk, I also have plans to conscript an army of porn stars. We require them fully clothed. I intend to put them in the most conservative and unrevealing outfits -- business suits, burkas -- and have them staring demurely from posters: "We refuse to get naked for Newkirk's death cult. Screw PETA."
If you're reading this, and you happen to be a famous adult actor or actress, please contact me. I'm quite serious. It will be the most boring and least lucrative gig you've ever had. And you'll be instrumental in saving the lives of America's millions of shelter pets.
Celebrity, like wealth, is neutral and often fungible. Celebrities -- I know this will disappoint you -- can be good people, and bad people, and mediocre people: they are, in short, people. (Often short people.)
That said, fame is unquestionably potent stuff. It is, like it or not, useful. It can be used to accomplish virtuous things: witness Bono's guerilla humanitarianism. And it can be used to kill: witness every naked celebrity who's posed -- knowingly or not -- to further the cause of Newkirk's butchery.
Maher has an unusually effective bully pulpit. He is a celebrity himself, and he can offer a bullhorn to any celebrity he chooses. Talk show hosts are essentially celebrity squared: they bring fame to the famous. Unlike many of these, Maher has tremendous credibility: he has earned an almost unparalleled reputation for exposing self-righteous hypocrites.
With great fame, however, comes great responsibility. (Someone almost said this once.) Look, big guy: you're welcome to pimp anyone you please. It's your prerogative, being a famous funny person in a free country. But don't pretend the high moral ground if you're going to shill for this particular version of "animal rights." The right to death is not a right, and it's not right. You may think of yourself as PETA's hip badass St. Paul, but if Stephen Colbert were to characterize the creed of slaughter you've decided to sell to the world, I suspect he'd call it "animal rightsiness."
Bill? Sit down. Can we have some Real Time? You are -- and again I say this with great respect -- a merciless prick. But your unthinking support for Newkirk's death cult suggests that you're not quite merciless enough. And -- like Mick Jagger -- a prick of slightly less noble dimensions than previously thought.
Follow Douglas Anthony Cooper on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dysmedia
Shelter intake rates have been reducing themselves drastically o and continue to decline. Fewer animals are killed now, some of the most recent estimates were at about 2 million.
Of these,many died due to breed ban policies- they could not and would not be adopted out under any circumstances and were killed only because of their breed. Others were feral cats, who never had a home to begin with, and without TNR programs in place, are needlessly killed. some were brought specifically to shelters for inexpensive euthanasia; owners simply could not afford a private veterinary visit when the time came, or afford cremation, and in some communities, were not able to bury their pets at home (shelters charge a modest disposal fee). Even more on that list of 2 million were already DOA
The numbers are inexact because few state require stringent reporting of intakes and placements. Shelters also engage in "humane relocation", each one counting dogs they took in as a new arrival, so a dog may be counted multiple times. Then there are the hundreds of thousands imported from foreign countries to public shelters- YES, public shelters. local dogs are being turned away or killed to make space for a smaller/cuter/younger import with a sad story. Shelters nationwide are shipping adoptable animals in by the TRUCKLOADS to meet adoption demand. Some even FLY the dogs in at great expense. So if they have the resources to do all this, why are they still killing????
@averagezoe: As I've said, you're doing great work. No question -- you're already on the side of the Good Guys; it remains for me simply to demonstrate that No Kill is possible. Your critique from the front lines is real, and devastating, so I took the liberty of emailing it to Nathan Winograd. I told him, essentially: if we can't answer you, then No Kill is a pipe dream.
His response was 2000 words long.
I can't quote anywhere near all of it here -- I'm going to write an entire article about this debate. Suffice it to say, he takes your observations seriously, and has seen this before.
"To those with first-hand experience either working or volunteering at a traditional, high kill shelter, 'pet overpopulation' is a logical explanation for the situation at the shelter with which they are acquainted. Not only have they been given this explanation by the shelter itself and every large, national animal protection organization confirms it, but the circumstances they see around them do as well. They see a lot of animals coming in, few adoptions, and conclude: what choice is there? And hence, the inevitable question, and the logical one, that is constantly asked of No Kill advocates: Just what are we supposed to do with all of the animals?"
(TO BE CONTINUED BELOW)
"As you yourself told him, animal control is not a fixed entity. Their mission is what we say their mission is. They are paid for with our tax dollars, they are killing in our name.
"If this isn't keeping with his values, he needs to change it. It may not be easy, but it is not impossible. In fact, that is what they did in Reno, NV, Austin, TX, Shelbyville, KY, Marquette, MI, Ithaca, NY, Ivins, UT, Berkeley, CA, Charlotteville, VA, Seagoville, TX, Arlington, VA, Benzie County, MI, Chippewa County, MI, Duluth, MN, Rockwall, TX, Allegany County, MD, Southampton, NY, Terre Haute, IN and all the other communities once steeped in a culture of killing and now saving better than 90% of all intakes."
THE SUPPLY SIDE
"Actual experience tell us it is possible, and so does the data nationally. About four million dogs and cats are killed annually. Of those, 95% are savable. That puts the number of healthy and treatable animals at 3.8 million. Of those, about 3 million are being killed but for a home (the rest are unsocial cats who need neuter and release, and those animals who have families looking for them). That is the supply side. If we are going to claim that there are more animals than homes, we need to know the demand side."
(TO BE CONTINUED BELOW)
THE DEMAND SIDE:
"Nationally, roughly 23.5 million Americans add a new dog or cat into their home every year. When you remove those already committed to adopting, and those committed to getting an animal from another source, you have roughly 17,000,000 people who will acquire an animal but have not decided where that animal will come from.
That's our target market (or "swing voters"). If we can convince just 20% of those to adopt from a shelter, we could zero out the killing. And when you look at the best performing communities that have increased market share, and compared their per capita intake and adoption rates, it's very doable – and has been done.
There are communities with per capita intake rates 8-10% higher than NYC that are No Kill. And if every community did as well as they do, nationally we should be able to adopt out about 9,000,000 animals a year, more than total intakes (about 8,000,000). And not all animals entering shelters need adoption: they need to be reclaimed by their families, they need neuter and release, in the case of those who are hopelessly ill or injured, they need either hospice care or humane 'euthanasia.'
"The problem is that the person who runs the rescue group can't see that, because he is in the trenches."
(TO BE CONTINUED BELOW)
So, overpopulation is not the issue. The issue -- the one that you (averagezoe) have run up against, is a matter of legislation. Bad laws. Bad methods, enforced by our elected representatives. Animal control is *not being done properly*, because nobody believes that it can be done better. Now that we have proof that it can be done better, laws and methods have to change. And they have, in all of the communities listed above.
In short: join us. Get the legislation changed. (The No Kill community can help with this.) It works.
There is funding in place to take care of a move, if a rescue group steps up.
Beautiful dog.
http://sarasotadog.com/2012/02/24/princess-fiona/
The shelter just had an intake of over 200 dogs from a hoarder. They need help. :D
However, this story makes me livid.
We adopted our pit bull, Tyson, from the Arlington Va animal shelter. He was only the 2nd pit bull to be rescued from that shelter. Before Tyson, pit bulls, (regardless of age) were led in the front door, only to take a needle in the back of the shelter.
We adopted Tyson when he was 5 months old, now he is a therapy dog for the elderly, and young children with a life threatening illness.
My husband and I now visit prospective adopters, to make sure if the home is suitable for the breed. Shame on PITA.
Yes, letting feral cats roam the streets is a perfectly decent thing to do. Spay them, release them. Don't KILL them.
Just because PETA has come up with some crackpot notion that free-ranging cats aren't a good thing, doesn't make it *true*. Every ditzy idea cooked up by this woman is immediately acted upon by her army, in good faith, so suddenly every free cat in America is in danger of being euthanized by PETA. It's grotesque.
No Toby, this is not the alternative to killing them. Please stop killing. It is not necessary. Let those of us who know how, save them. What you have outlined above is the nonsense that PETA tells people.
He gives anecdotes without back ground information. PETA runs animal shelters that immediately kill animals? Where? Why? What's behind this position? Why was this woman so effective at one time and now so monstrous (according to the article). He's writing/preaching to a choir I don't sing with, but now I feel compelled to check out the tune. Elsewhere.
(Frederick the Great had it right: dogs are preferable.)
But if PETA ever wants to be treated seriously, then when they go on TV or radio to discuss the ethical and humane treatment of animals, they should stick to that issue instead of (a) pretending like one small problem is how everyone acts, and (b) trying to turn the issue into veganism and accusing anyone and everyone who eats meat of personally abusing cattle the way the previous issue implies.
If you want to promote veganism, then fine. Do it. But to try and use animal cruelty as the trojan issue, then lying about the extent of the problem and who is to blame, then lying about the solution, then ranting about people eating meat doesn't win people to your cause. It makes you all sound like crazy people.
Long Live Pets. Long Live Pet Lovers. For We are One.
I'll be glad to tell you why it makes me mad.
Come closer to the computer screen so that you can read this nice and clearly.......closer...........come closer....I won't byte (computer lingo)....closer.....are your eyes almost touching the computer screen, so that you can read this clearly and enjoy the optimum impact?
Good.
The reason why I get mad when liars, or the abundantly ignorant say that "No Kill isn't possible" is.............BECAUSE THERE ARE OVER 30 COMMUNITIES IN AMERICA WHO ARE ALREADY NO KILL COMMUNITIES!
And those are only the ones we are AWARE of...the number may be close to a hundred....but all we need is ONE. ONE baby! To prove that No Kill IS possible, all we need is for ONE community to become No Kill. We have atleast 30.
Thus, the pet murderers have lost their arguments, with a surplus of atleast 29 No Kill Shelters still not taken into account.
No Kill CAN be accomplished. We can prove it, because No Kill HAS been accomplished.
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored"
~Aldous Huxley
http://www.no-killnews.com/
If No Kill is possible, then it is a moral imperative.
No Kill has been proven possible.
Therefore it is imperative.
The first great prejudice: Racism.
The scond great prejudice: Sexism
The third great prejudice: Speciesism
http://www.all-creatures.org/aip/nl-20090408-1.html
In my opinion, the ignorance required to support PETA is now so willful, such a level of willful ignorance, as to be immoral and anti-animal.
What bothers me though, beyond the PETA issue, is the fact that these heated discussions among people who do care about the general well being of animals, whether they are abolitionists or welfarists, are fractioning the movement.
And along come all the true winners of all this internal struggle, we've seen plenty of them in these forums, you know the ones I'm talking about: those who cynically shout at the world how much they enjoy killing (hunting or otherwise), wearing fur, dogfighting, bullfighting, circus that exploit animals, etc; the ones go beyong the mere justification of an omnivore diet, and take pleasure in ridiculing the vegan lifestyle. And although I am aware at how annoying and right down useless some of the self-righteous vegan rants are, we have to remember that they come from a very different mindset than the one that tries to vindicate killing just for the fun of it (where I'm pretty aware you'll place PETA)
PETA is not on the pro-animal side.
The pro-animal side is many people, most dog owners, most dog breeders, most vets, most dog food manufacturers, the slaughter houses that help make dog food, but it does not include PETA.