Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Rampant Misanthropy, Gadfly Style

PETA. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. You'd think a group who are for the ethical treatment of animals wouldn't be so bad, right? Because who wants animals to be treated badly besides kitten murderers and other nefarious folk? I'm all for animals being treated ethically and I don't even like animals.

So how is it, then, that PETA manages to be the most annoying group of any group in the history of ever? (Incidentally, on that list, I included LFO and D-12, just so we're aware of how lame, exactly, PETA is) They take a noble goal and fuck it up by being obnoxious. So obnoxious, even, that it makes me want to parade about town in a chinchilla coat, leater boots, a rabbit's foot bracelet and a necklace made of teeth and claws of various animals.

PETA is militantly anti-fur and anti-cruelty to animals. So they protest people who wear fur, experiment on animals and are cruel to animals in any way. This includes:

  • Throwing red paint at people who wear fur. Red paint, get it? GET IT? It symbolizes animal blood, see? See how DEEP they are? You best recognize.

  • Throwing pies at other people, like Vogue editrix and Calvin Klein. Except, oops! They didn't mean to actually hit Calvin Klein with a tofu (eyeroll) pie, they meant to get Karl Lagerfeld instead. How fucking hard is it to identify Karl Lagerfeld? Are there really that many short men with leathery skin, long white ponytails, enormous sunglasses and FANS running around? He's the most easily identifiable fashion designer around and they mess it up!

  • Launching an anti-fishing campaign with slogans such as "Would you give your right arm to know why sharks attack? Could it be revenge?" and "Dangerous predators in the water. You?"

  • Suggesting that Fishkill, NY change its name to something less violent.

  • Generally being loud, in-your-face and dumb. I would get into specifics, but I don't have the time.

    These people have made me like the people that they hate, and when someone makes me like Star Jones, there is a big problem. I was filled with delicious glee when Cindy Crawford, who one appeared in their anti-fur campaigns, became a model for Blackglama. It was fabulous.

    So I was understandably filled with rage when I came across this comment by PETA Pal Pamela Anderson:

    People who wear fur smell like a wet dog and they look fat and gross. They look really immature and unenlightened. Every season the furriers put propaganda everywhere that fur is taking off again and they give free coats to idiots like Jennifer Lopez and Puff Daddy. It makes me nauseous.


    For starters, he goes by P. Diddy and she had best watch the hateration. I understand that not everybody shares my love of Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, but I have to say that I love his thirst for riches and fame with the occasional good deed thrown in for good measure, not to mention dapper suits.

    Secondly, "they look fat and gross"? Did she hire an eight-year-old to write her snaps for her? And "they look really immature and unenlightened"? Right, because this woman truly is the definition of maturity and intelligence.

    And really, every single part of this woman has been tested on an animal of some sort and that isn't even a Tommy Lee joke although the woman has slept with both Tommy Lee and Kid Rock so she ought to stop with the condescension asap.

    This may be, of course, related to my irritation with the fact that FOX is airing her sitcom Stacked (get it? Hardy har har) while the brill Arrested Development is in danger of being cancelled. I hate the world.

    I also hate being part of the same species as Sean Penn. Not just because he is a greasy midget who occasionally rocks a fugly mustache, but because he is a shrill, humorless tool. When asked about his hissy following Chris Rock's very mild joke about Jude Law, he said:

    No, I tell you what bothers me. I saw that part on television from my hotel room before I got there, and the problem was that this f__ing punk town that we work in, nobody in that f__ing place booed the dumb joke. Chris Rock's really funny and talented, and in a three-hour set you're allowed to make bad jokes, but the audience should respond. Instead, it's just a bunch of schadenfreude-ists sitting there wanting Jude's parts and looks...But bottom line: I didn't think it was funny.


    Oh, Sean. Are we really back to the "All y'all just jealous" excuse? That's why people laughed at the joke? It couldn't have been because, I don't know, the joke was funny? Or because Jude Law--who I adore, as you all know--really was overexposed, what with his six movies in three months last year? Or because they knew it would piss off Sean Penn if they laughed so they did because they hate him?

    Then Nicole Kidman chimes in,

    Neither did I. I laughed at other things Chris Rock said. Just not that.


    Thanks SO much for your input, Nicole, whenever I need advice, I always turn to women with unnaturally plastic faces who spent ten years married to an asexual cult member and who wore a leotard that Tonya Harding rejected (with a headband!) to the Golden Globes. I appreciate it.

    Also, Sean and Nicole, your recent forays into comedy were a guest spot on Friends and The Stepford Wives, respectively, so excuse me if I don't really trust your judgment as to what's funny and what's not.

    Why not make this entry a hat trick of misanthropy? I also hate, to an unhealthy degree, one Mr. Johnny Damon of the Boston Red Sox. CLC recently summed up why, exactly, he is worthy of hatred. It's not just that he's ugly (though he so is) or prone to wearing cornrows (though he is), but because so damn charming. Like when he said he just wanted to settle down with his new wife--two years, bear in mind, after leaving his wife--or talked about his keen sense of style and the style of gay men and wrote such lovely passages like this in his book:

    If you're good-looking and a ballplayer, girls want a piece of you,'' he spills. "For the rest of the season, I met some women, some good, some bad. I had some one-nighters that I had never gotten to experience before. It was fun. I ended up having to carry around a separate cell phone for the women to call me. I didn't want them to have my main number because my phone would have been ringing off the hook and it just got tiring.


    ...so they wanted a piece of you why, exactly? Does he not realize that his children are going to hear this shit? It's bad enough that their father is a caveman, but to go through life hearing about what a ho he is? That's just wrong.

    ***


    To summarize--PETA sucks, Pammy sucks, Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman suck in myriad unfunny ways and Johnny Damon is a sucky caveman.

    I used to like people at one point in time, I swear. I just don't remember that time very well, the memories are fuzzy and I believe it may have been in third grade or so.

    Mallory at 4/20/2005 07:37:00 PM

    3comments

    3 Comments

    at 9:49 PM Blogger CLC said...

    More PETA lunacy this crowd may appreciate:

    Out here in CA we have an ad campaign that goes something like this: "Great Cheese Comes From Happy Cows. Happy Cows Come From California." And said campaign goes on to show cows in varying states of jubilance, or sad cows trying to trek through a snowstorm (to show how sad Wisconsin cows are in comparison... Oh those dairy wars!) Anyway, PETA has sued the Milk Producers Advisory Board in CA that sponsors those ads on the grounds of false advertising, yadda, yadda yadda, because cows are not in fact happy. Why pray tell? Well, according to PETA:

    "Actually, PETA declared, California dairy cows commonly spend their lives in dirt and mud, are repeatedly impregnated and milked throughout their pregnancies, often suffer painful maladies and are slaughtered when they can no longer meet the industry's production demands. A court may not be able to tell whether cows are truly happy, the animal- rights group said, but it should decide whether consumers are being misled."

    California Supreme court said no thanks and passed on hearing the appeal. You know you are sporting a pathetic argument when the crazy CA supreme court won't hear your appeal...

     
    at 4:05 PM Blogger Rayanne Graff said...

    After a spectacularly crappy week, wherein I threw many items of crockery and it didn't make me feel any better, it was fantastic to read such spewing vitriol.

    Especially as every word is oh-so-true. Awesome in every way.

     
    at 11:24 PM Anonymous Anonymous said...

    As a vegetarian and animal rights supporter, I believe that PETA is simply full of shit. They seem to care less about actually advancing animal rights causes through, say, open dialogue and more about putting on really bad performance theatre that just makes all us sane veggies/vegans/animal rights supporters look bad.

    And while I think cosmetic testing on animals isn't necessary at all, I think animal research can often be beneficial, if conducted in a humane manner, of course.

     

    Post a Comment