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K, so Joe Biden’s a liar.  That’s hardly big news, is it? It’s not like the American people bought a vice-presidential pig in a poke, after all.  But buying vice-presidential puppies from a … the  horror! … breeder, now that’s news.  Even more newsworthy is the governmental response.

In case you missed the basics, Lyin’ Joe was much quicker than his boss.  He wanted a pup, so he went out and got one - a German Shepherd from breeder Linda Brown in East Coventry, PA.  Ah, how sweet.

But not in whacko America.

After the local rag wrote up the story, readers started posting comments, says said local rag.  Ugly, hateful, insane comments:

Following a story about Brown and Biden in the Daily Local News, readers posted 131 comments, some chiding Biden for having the Secret Service with him when he went puppy shopping and others complaining he did not get the dog from a shelter.

Brown was taken to task for selling pedigree dogs.

Brown said she has read the comments, even the one that said she was sued.

“I’d like to meet that person,” Brown said, adding that she has not been sued.

Some people were outraged about the photograph of Biden holding a 5-week-old puppy, Brown said. But, the breeder points out, Biden only came to select a puppy on that visit, left it with its mother and returned three weeks later to take it home.

Brown was not only vilified in posted comments to newspapers but also on the Web site of People for the Ethical Treatment Animals, or PETA.

According to a Dec. 12 press release from the animal rights group, it aired its controversial TV commercials “Buy One, Get One Killed” in Biden’s home state of Delaware after he bought his dog from Brown. The commercial blames euthanization of animals in shelters on people who purchase pets from breeders.

Goodbye, choice.  Every decision we now make is monitored by those who deem themselves to be more pure than us, those who live on a higher moral plane.  Nevermind that supposedly sentient purebred dogs have a right to breed and bare pups just like mutts.  Doesn’t matter; mutts are morally superior.  Tell that to our purebreds, Cammie and Pepper.

But the outraged psycho-moralists were just the beginning of Brown’s problems.  Perhaps the shirts the agents of oppression were brown, too:

Brown also was cited for record-keeping problems and warned about maintenance and sanitation shortfalls by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

“I was cited for a piece of kibble on the floor and five strands of dog hair. They took a picture of that, they walked around, snapped pictures and don’t tell you why,” said Brown, who disputes all the items where she was written up.

Brown’s case was heard by District Justice James DeAngelo in South Coventry on March 31. She was found “not guilty” for each citation, the judge’s office confirmed Wednesday.

Chris Ryder, press secretary for the Department of Agriculture, said Brown was inspected in December because of a complaint. He said it was department policy not to release the name of the person who complained.

Is it just me, or did Ryder’s comment sound like it fell just a bit short of an apology?  But then, why should an Agency of the State apologize for overtaking a private enterprise, terrorizing its proprietor, and actually bringing her up on charges that cause embarassment and worry, and take time and money to defend.  It’s her fault for daring to be an entrepreneur and not a government lackey.

What a sad, disturbing story.  And even sadder is this:  It happens all the time.

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or those of you not familiar with the lingo, let me quickly tell you before you click that little arrow that NSFW stands for “not safe for work,” and as you might guess from the broccoli lust in the image, this video is definitely NSFW.  That is, unless you work at a lingerie model agency.

So if you’re at work, I’ll describe it to you.  It shows women in the sort of state of undress that would cause al Qaeda to plan another terror attack to take out the Great Satan.  They are lithe, lingerie clad, and given to provocatively licking and sensually fondling … vegetables.  In soft light.  With nasty music.

In a sign that our civilization has not completely crumbled (yet), NBC rejected the ad, which was submitted by PETA (People Eat Tasty Animals) for a Superbowl showing.

The message of the ad is simple enough, in bold headlines between the photos:

Studies show vegetarians have better sex. Go Veg.

I take issue.  Most vegetarians are young, for example, while thirty somethings constitute only 19 percent of all primary
grocery shoppers, they account for 26 percent of vegetarian shoppers. Since they’re basically younger, they’re going to have basically better sex, with our without a veggie diet.  That’s if you can define “better sex.”  PETA doesn’t.  And I don’t really want them to.

Be that as it may, it wasn’t the words that killed the ad, it was the images, which according to PETA, NBC summarized as:

• licking pumpkin
• touching her breast with her hand while eating broccoli
• pumpkin from behind between legs
• rubbing pelvic region with pumpkin
• sex with broccoli (fuzzy) [and edited by me]
• asparagus on her lap appearing as if it is [well, I can't really let that description in this blog]
• licking eggplant
• rubbing asparagus on breast

You get the idea.  Do you also get the idea that PETA never intended NBC to run this ad?  Indeed, its Web site shows eight other ads classified as “too hot for TV,” most of them apparently too hot for the same sort of reasons.

If they really wanted to get an ad on the Superbowl, you think they’d have learned by  now.  But of course, they don’t want to pay a gazillion bucks to get an add on the Superbowl.  They want to produce an ad the networks can’t run, get it rejected and get a bunch of publicity.  Like this.  I’m a pawn.  It’s no different than their scantily clad demonstrations, which are guaranteed to make the sex-starved evening news.

(I guess you could conclude that if a lot of vegetarians are young women who are prone to taking off their clothes in public, then it would explain why they have more - if not better - sex.)

I post this up under the “Our Crumbling Civilization” banner in part because PETA in all that it does is emblematic of crumbling .  They’re too addled to understand that humans have the God-given gift of sentience and other animals don’t, and society is too enthralled by their reliance on sexy publicity to whack ‘em upside the head.

But more, it’s here because of how thoroughly exploitative of sex our society has become, and how hypocritical we are about it.  Watch NBC any evening and you’ll see tops lower and skirts higher than any you’ll see on any street because they’ve found it’s easier to get viewers through great bodies than through great drama.  Yet when they rightly turn around and axe the PETA ad, they do it without a blush of shame.

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n John 21, which takes place after the crucifixion and before the resurrection of Jesus, we’re told the story of several of his disciples, who do what men do when confronted with a tragedy of earth-shaking proportions: They go fishing.  And as if Jesus being crucified was not bummer enough, there were no fish - empty nets from dusk ’til dawn.

But Jesus appeared before them and told them to cast their net on the other side of the boat and as they say in the Bible, behold, the net became so heavy with fish they could barely haul it in.

Nets full of fish. To be eaten.  By people. Jesus says so - not just here but also when he divided the fish to serve the multitudes.

Not that any of this matters to the people at PETA (which if memory serves stands for People Erroneously Traumatized over Animals).  Michelle Malkin set off a Twitter-storm this morning when she linked up this piece about about PETA’s new campaign to rename fish “sea kittens” to discourage their consumption.  Quoting PETA:

People don’t seem to like fish. They’re slithery and slimy, and they have eyes on either side of their pointy little heads—which is weird, to say the least. Plus, the small ones nibble at your feet when you’re swimming, and the big ones—well, the big ones will bite your face off if Jaws is anything to go by.

Of course, if you look at it another way, what all this really means is that fish need to fire their PR guy—stat. Whoever was in charge of creating a positive image for fish needs to go right back to working on the Britney Spears account and leave our scaly little friends alone. You’ve done enough damage, buddy. We’ve got it from here. And we’re going to start by retiring the old name for good. When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it’s time for a serious image makeover. And who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?

As a PR guy who stands for the ethical treatment of PR guys, I take great offense. We just promote the product, we don’t design it. We can’t do anything about slime or scales or biting faces off if the product is designed specifically to be slimy and scaly with a propensity for face-biting.  It’s not bad PR that gets fish eaten, it’s good-tasting fish flesh.

This is not the first time that fish have been recast as land animals.  Long before there were sea kittens, there was Chicken of the Sea - made famous by Steve Martin when he and Sara Jessica Parker shacked up at the ritzy El Pollo del Mar in LA Story.  That’s a name that’s got it right.  Fish are for eating, just like chicken (which are so tasty I suppose PETA would call them Farm Kittens).

But seriously for a moment here, PETA is particularly offensive because it extends moral relativism far past such timely issues as Israel vs. Hamas to state that we are morally equivalent to fish, slugs and microbes - worse even, less than equivalent.  Here’s an example, taken from a cute but appalling book of fish stories on the PETA sea kitten site:

Sally is a sea kitten with an attitude.  While all other sea kittens are washing themselves or chasing balls of yarn, Sally is busy swimming upstream to see where life will take her next.

Unfortunately, years of watching her friends and family being hooked through the mouth and dragged into a harsh, alien world above have driven her mad with grief.

Bitter and insane, she spends her days plotting revenge against the land kittens who live such happy lives in comfortable homes, free from the terror of being eaten.

That’s the entire kiddie story.  Its message - besides that fish are sentient, capable of fear, grief and anger - is that violence and terror are appropriate responses to the eating of animals.  That’s the evil that lurks behind all the supposedly cute - but really quite awful - illustrations of sea kittens on the PETA site.

PETA has its Sally the sea kitten with an attitude, but here’s a fish story I like more.

Billy went fishing.  His sharp hook snared quite a few of those scaly, slimy creatures, which he hauled up and threw into a bucket. Then he went home, cut off their heads, gutted them, scaled them, cooked them and ate them.  Yum!

Update: The Nose on your Face has chimed in:

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ETA may think ethically about animals, but it has some serious ethical issues dealing with people. The organization’s chosen communications vehicle - outrage and outrageousness - is good at getting attention, but is it effective to their larger mission of saving animals?

Previously, PETA has offended most of the world by comparing the butchering of animals to the holocaust. in effect comparing Jews to pigs. Now they’re exploiting a much smaller issue, but one that also raises big issues.

PETA’s latest ad focuses on an act of cannibalism that occurred on a bus that was crossing the empty plains of Manitoba on July 31. If you haven’t read details of the incident, you might want to think twice before reading the quote below; it is unbelievably disgusting:

[Prosecutor Joyce Dalmyn] said Mr Li had severed the victim’s head with a large knife and then carried it up and down the bus, brandishing it to passengers and taunting police.

He was also observed “cutting body parts from the victim and eating those body parts”, she said. A plastic bag later found in his pocket by police contained his victim’s ear, nose and part of his mouth.

This is a story that should upset all decent humanity, but we should be particularly concerned about the poor victim, his family and the people who were on the bus and have to deal with the memories and burned in images.

PETA has no compassion, as usual, for human suffering. Always opting for the extreme, they are now running this ad:

The concluding paragraphs, if you’re having trouble reading them, take the analogy further, saying the same thing happens to many “sensitive” victims who “value their lives.” It says if the ad offends, think of slaughtered animals and consider becoming a vegetarian.

As well you should. There are lots of good reasons for being a vegetarian, just as there are lots of good reasons for being an omnivore. But there’s no good reason for exploiting tragedy.

Worse, the ad reeks of PETA’s contention that animals and humans are spiritual equivalents. They feel and fear, for sure, at some level, but they do not have the capacity to “value their lives.” Valuing is much too complex and subtle a process for a chicken or cow; it was a gift bestowed on us by God so that we could live at a higher level, and to higher standards, than mere animals.

The truth of PETA is seen in how they treat people. They offend them and hurt them and seem not to value them much at all (witness their outrage when Palestinians killed a donkey in a terrorist attack - they had never taken an anti-terror position when mere people were killed). They, it appears, are not much better than animals at all, which may be why they see equivalency where we don’t. But they shouldn’t expect we higher beings to blithely follow them down to their level.

Back to my original question: Do these sorts of communications work? Yes, to an extent. They have succeeded in finding for PETA everyone who feels the way they do, giving a bunch of otherwise powerless fringe activists some social, but not political, clout.

But because PETA’s approach is so offensive to so many, the group’s communications strategy holds it back from ever becoming a broader social movement, which translates as more people not becoming vegetarians and more animals being slaughtered as a result. But PETA is having too much fun being outrageous and offensive to worry that their strategy isn’t working and poor, pitiful, all-knowing, all-feeing animals are suffering as a result.

Hat-tip: Jim

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he envirocrats succeeded this year in getting one fireworks show canceled because of imagined or fleeting impacts on animals. It didn’t take long for PETA to ratchet up this single ban, of Gualala CA’s show (here, here, here), into a call for a nationwide ban of 4th of July fireworks.

Speaking on Fox Business (here; sorry I still can’t load clips into the new layout), PETA spokesdope Lisa Lange (wasn’t that a comic book heroine?) said it is specifically because 4th of July fireworks shows occur only once a year that they are such a threat to wildlife.

Well, the shortness of the fireworks display actually has a lot to do with this. Animals, not just birds, but dogs and cats, when they hear something once a year that sounds to us like entertainment, but to them it’s bombardment. I mean these sounds are supposed to sound like bombs to us … they don’t know that they’re not completely under attack.

But no matter; to PETA it’s bombardment, and that means fireworks shows should be banned from sea to shining sea in this land of the free PC-chained and home of the brave indoctrinated cowards:

Fox Business: Are you suggesting that we should just cancel fireworks displays across the country?

Lange: I’m suggesting people should consider it, absolutely. … This is something that will make an animal … feel that it’s under attack.

And if you live in a backward, un-PC place that refuses PETA’s suggestion? Well, then she advises, “Stay home if you can.” Do not participate in patriotic displays.

Me? I’m going to wear fur to the next fireworks display and stand there chewing big fat sandwiches made from recently slaughtered animals. But others will catatonically fall in line behind Lange and start showing up at City Council meetings demanding that the good night’s sleep of birds be placed above pride in our country’s birth and its subsequent greatness.

And in many cities, where “leaders” are mere followers, PETA will prevail and another heart-stirring and grand American tradition will begin to go the way of the community Christmas display.