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Has Palin Been Pallin' Around With PETA?
Looks like plucky Sarah Palin is expanding her fan club from evangelicals to vegangelicals. Seriously, how could any animal rights activist not love the sight of Palin blathering to the press while a worker in blood-spattered overalls blithely slaughters turkeys a few feet away?
The media deemed it necessary to blur this bloody backdrop, in deference to the "unspoken covenant of ignorance" between consumers and the food industry that historian Ann Vileisis documents in Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need To Get It Back:
...we have ended up in the absurd situation today that most of us, as consumers, know very little about what we eat; and, sensing a "dark side" to our food production, many of us don't even want to know.
So now the blogosphere's a-Twitter with talk about "turkey carnage" and the "surreal... gruesomeness going on over her shoulder".
But you could argue that Palin performed a public service, however inadvertently. Americans are totally in denial about the way our livestock live--and die. Can you imagine the Food Network ever allowing Rachel Ray to slaughter a chicken in front of a live audience and millions of viewers, the way Jamie Oliver did back in January? After electrocuting the chicken, he told the visibly shocked audience:
"As far as killing anything's concerned, it's never nice. I was trained to do it, I don't feel particularly good about this. But, I eat chickens, and I'm a chef."
As the New York Times noted:
Mr. Oliver said that he wanted people to confront the reality that eating any kind of meat involves killing an animal, even if it is done with a minimum of pain.
Michael Pollan took it upon himself to learn how to slaughter chickens because, as he wrote in The Omnivore's Dilemma:
It seemed to me not too much to ask of a meat eater, which I was then and still am, that at least once in his life he take some direct responsibility for the killing on which his meat-eating depends...
...In the end I personally killed a dozen or so chickens before moving on to try another station...I wasn't at it long enough for slaughtering chickens to become routine, but the work did begin to feel mechanical, and that feeling, perhaps more than any other, was disconcerting: how quickly you can get used to anything, especially when the people around you think nothing of it.
Sarah Palin clearly thought nothing of the fowl play taking place behind her, and why should she? She may be disconnected from the "fake" America, but as someone who's comfortable gutting a fish or field dressing a moose, she's more connected to the food chain than most. The fuss over this clucked-up photo op says as much about our own willful ignorance as it does about Palin's blasé embrace of topless turkeys.
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I'm no fan of Sarah Palin (to say the least) but I will say this - at least she isn't a hypocrite about all the meat she eats. She at least has the guts (excuse the pun) to be able to slaughter the animal and eat it as well. Most meat eaters I know do not want to know how meat got onto their plates. Perhaps they like to think of steak and porkchops, not to mention turkeys as growing on trees or something. Shocking really as the meat industry is responsible for unimaginable animal suffering, not to mention environmental pollution and escalating health problems for us humans. Perhaps they should check out www.factoryfarming.org and see for themselves!
Just like all the ills brought about from discrimination and oppression throughout human history.. animal exploitation utilizes the sad "might makes right" doctrine that allows one group to dominate another group without ever acknowledging the wrongful aspects involved. Racism, sexism, child exploitation, anti-Semitism and homophobia all employed the same prejudicial hype that because one group can discriminate and hold power over another that somehow justifies the oppression and brutality involved. Animals are now subjects of horrible abuse due to economic reasons disguising itself behind the mask of entertainment, science, food and clothing. None of the industries mentioned here require the use of animals as necessary in these modern times. Every reason for killing animals is now done for either economic purposes or for the sheer pleasure their deaths (eating them included) gives to humans.
Lets truly begin to bring about CHANGE and allow our footsteps to bring us closer to the animals of the world. There are many reasons (human health, global warming, water pollution, grain shortages) to stop eating animals but ending the violence and ushering in a new era of compassion is the best reason.
Evolve Now...Go Vegan!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4
Sarah the Palin knew Bob the Butcher was doing his thing behind her,as we have seen so often Silly Sarah lacks common sense and tack and so receives the flak.She should have filmed her interview in front of the flock of live ones but,to each his own.The same goes for eating meat or vegies,mankind has been eating meat and vegies since time began,to each his own.I enjoy it all-----especially dessert!!
It was sickening and callous, but it says so much about her, doesn't it?
I find her a hateful person. I'm sorry I just do. I see so little awareness and compassion in her behavior. She's that type of closed-off, ignorant American who cares and understands only what's right in front of her. And I so hate small-minded people.
Yet the world can't get enough of her. Even Oprah wants her, apparently. God, I'm so put out.
I know how you feel, I don't see why people want to do interviews with her, and Oprah too?? I just get upset everytime I see or hear Palin even talk.
Sarah Palin is a blatantly ignorant fool for disregarding the events occurring directly behind her and in view of the camera. Whether televising the murder of living creatures is something that will improve public consciousness or not, I don't know. But for her to disregard the offensive nature of the setting is just typical and one more reason I'm delighted they lost.
I've read the entire first page of comments. There are many I agree with & many I don't.
I don't eat animal flesh. I choose not to. I share my life and home with several creatures & species. I respect the lives of all creatures. I learned by research that humans do not need to consume animal flesh to survive. I have not eaten red meat in over 30 years.
I haven't eaten poultry in almost 20 years. Fish and dairy are out too. Whole grains and legumes provide more than enough protein for any human barring one with allergies to those items.
I am also a conflicted person because I have pets who are obligate carnivores. I must provide food for them that is the flesh of other animals. Though contributing to the death of animals raised for food in this way is bothersome to me, my pets who are obligate carnivores would not survive, even with supplementation of certain nutrients, without a meat diet. I have researched this too. I must make a choice out of the desire to care for my pets the best way possible.
No one else who commented (of those I read) managed to bring up this point. For this reason, I can't truthfully say I'm a complete vegetarian. I don't put animal based food products into my body. However, I must purchase and feed them to my pets who need them. Is there anyone else out there professing to be vegetarian who will
Don't be conflicted. Enjoy your Veg's. No one's telling you to stop or change your ways.. Nor, is anyone "suggesting" your dietary choices mark you as some kind of savage. It would be nice if the courtesy would be extended both ways.
Don't fret about your meat eating buddies either. One wouldn't happen to be a pitcher plant or a venus fly trap, would it.? There is no sane reason that eating flesh should be the sole prerogative of insects, rodents, plants and microorganisms. And, before you react, all plants eat animals, some in cooperation with insects and microorganisms, just the way we do them. Bee spit anyone?
I have two cats. I love them dearly bless their bloodthirsty little selves. I also have my favorite plants who I know are just waiting for me to die so they can feast on my nitrogen not to mention those tender bits of essential minerals, etc that animals concenttrate so nicely. I find my cats and my plants as worthy as I to ascend to heaven should such a place exist. In the meantime, this isn't a bad place, even with all the terrible goings on. In fact, the terrible goings on mark the challenges the meeting of which, diety derange us, gives life its savor.
Take vegetarianism to an extreme and you end up with a world in which only a very few animal species survive: insects and our pets. Take it even further and you end up with soylent green.
Look, I'm as titillated by the train wreck that is Sarah Palin as the next guy, but honestly, I just don't see what the big deal is.
In fact, watching that interview actually endeared me to her; it seemed down home in the most genuine of ways.
Despite my better angels, I love the blood sport of eviscerating this woman and the masochism of gawking when she makes a hash of things, but in this case, nothing to see here, move along.
It's not what she's doing which is the usual political baloney. Who among us can honestly say we don't occasionally with attendant guilt scarf down Oscar Meyer's finest on white with mustard, mayo, butter or, gasp, all three. It's the incongruity. Even the guy killing the turkeys in the background is wondering when she's going to get a clue.
Watch the video again. Reserve some attention for Butcher Bob.
What's the big deal? Death is life...Shiva's eternal dance and all that jazz. As Joseph Campbell said, vegetarianism is a turning away from life, not a recognition of it's sanctity. Indian religions tend towards vegetarianism because the whole point of the religions is to be released from the cycle of birth and death (in Sanskrit, samsara). That is not why the vast majority of western vegetarians do it, even if they mangle Indian traditions with a new age profession of devotion to them.
You're still killing another form of life to eat. The same traditions that tend towards vegetarianism also recognize plant life as sentient life, they continue to eat plants because they have to eat something. A few groups are extreme (e.g. the Jains) and will only eat fruit that has fallen from the tree. These groups recognize that their need to eat, even just vegetables, still brings suffering and pain into this world. That's a lot different than the Western vegetarians who seem to think that they've done something amazing by giving up meat, but live in a picture that is incomplete.
I'd be willing to bet that most vegetarians would starve if they had to raise and slaughter all their own plant food, especially the ones who live where there is winter.
That looks like a pretty honest to goodness farm to me, yet the vegetarians still have to cry havoc and let loose the dogs of self-righteous and incomplete compassion.
you betcha
Be careful when painting people you disagree with as ideal to the point of stupidity. I've noticed that when I flip to FOX "news" for a laugh, all the ultra-conservatives like to pretend that there is no such thing as a moderate progresive. If you disagree with them, as most people do, then you are presumably on the far left. This is how they paint the disagreeing majority as a crazy and uncomprimising small group of extremests so they can insist that they are in fact the normal group.
You make some good points, but if you don't give us some credit then you actually could undermine your own pragmatic pitch and come out as a moralist on the opposite end.
Hey Jack, fruit grows back when you pluck them and lettuce grows back after you chop them.
Most of the lettuce consumed in the United States is grown in Arizona, using irrigation systems that can hardly be considered sustainable.
Everyone, regardless of what you eat, should know where your food comes from.
So you're essentially comparing the life of an animal with that of a tomato plant? I think you're getting a little carried away with your bizarre rhetoric.
WE humans are animals - not plants - in case you didn't notice. If you've ever had a pet then you've seen them happy, said, afraid, and feel much like humans. I've watched an animal cry over its dead baby. If you can't distinguish between plants and animals then that says more about you then those who feel compassion for animals.
Probable average age of mortality prehistorically - 35
Average age of mortality in the US in 1900 - 46
Average age of mortality in the US now - 78
Smoke whatever new age facts you like, eating meat isn't going to kill you or put a black mark on you akashic record. Your Vegs quite likely have as much consciousness or soul as your Meats Members of the plant kingdom are just as vicious and brutal in seizing territory and eliminating rivals as their animal counterparts. Just because you don't find kudzu cuddly, doesn't mean it doesn't deserve as much as any fuzzy bunny to have the right to die of overpopulation rather than our tender depredations.
We're nomadic omnivores in our cells. We survive very nicely on a wide variety of diets and best on a varied moderate diet of anything edible.
There is no special virtue in solely eating meat or solely eating vegetables. Both extremes in fact challenge our metabolisms, albeit in somewhat differently.
That all said, gotta find La Palin's Pardon interview appallingly, gruesomely humorous. Was she as clueless as so many of us suppose? Or, did she knowingly stay in scene with Butcher Bob? He looked like he was wondering, too.
Well, bubbuh and jackpine, this vegetarian (of 20 years) definitely disagrees with you. First, may I assume you kill your own meat? Doubtful. Moreover, there is a lot more to the "moral" aspect of being vegetarian, one of the main ones being that raising animals for food is highly destructive to the local and global environments. Bubbuh has it right when he says we're "nomadic omnivores in our cells," but the key word there is "nomadic." There is a lot of research which concludes that we were originally nearly completely vegetarian, and it was the nomadic journey northward (primarily) which introduced the need to add more animal protein into our diets. In any case, your (and jackpine's) comments are equally as incomplete in strength as you find vegetarians'.
Bonobos and chinps, our close chromosomal cousins, are nomadic ominvores. In fact virtually all primates are nomadic ominvores. Futhermore, all fariming and herding "is highly destructive to the local and global environments." The Dustbowl of the 1930s was the result of the plow, not the cow. Being nomadic doesn't mean one has to travel any great distance. It means one travels a "circuit" that is big enough so that the land has time to recover somewhat before he and his buddies show up again.
Research is interesting stuff. The tobacco companies have a lot it which purports to support their various claims about the efficacy of tobacco.
Finally, being a vegetarian is no more spiritual than being carnivore. History is replete with religions which meat is elevatted meat eating above eating vegetables. Read the story of Cain and Abel with a fresh, unbiased eye. As for plant consciousness, its indistutable By my lights, where there consciousness there is soul. Ahimsa isn't just for animals and insects if one believes in fairness.
The word of the day, of most days, is moderation.
The thought of the day: Doubt is the guardian of the mind.
That's why doctors always advise heart patients to give up eating fruits and vegetables.
Nor, do doctors ask heart patients to give up meat. Sheesh.
Naw, you're missing the point. Giving that interview just a few feet away from the bloody slaughter of several turkeys shows an apalling and singular lack of sensitivity. The woman had just finished pardoning a turkey, a cutsie modern Thanksgiving "tradition." It is akin to going to an animal shelter to preside over an adoption of a puppy and then moving into the back to give an interview while the unfortunate dogs and cats that can't be adopted are killed by lethal injection. There's a stongly dissonant disconnect there. I'm surprised you don't see it.
Imagine her pardoning the turkey in front of an abortion clinic..................
Imagine her cutting the ribbon at the opening of a new sperm bank.
Part 1.
I stopped eating meat 20 years ago when I read a quote a certain paragraph in Ernest Becker's classic book Denial Of Death. The words were more symbolic regarding facing our own mortality than a description of inside a slaughterhouse. However, I did not become a vegan until a year or two later after someone showed me pictures of dairy cows who had lived their whole lives in milking stalls and then being brutally slaughtered. I do realize that most people watching the footage here will not care about the turkeys whose lives are being ended for no other reason than some human somewhere takes pleasure in eating their flesh. However, the facts are that those animals are sentient beings and really no different than the animals you share your home with and in the big scheme of things, I don't know maybe like the universe they as fellow earthlings are no different from you or I. They wake up in the morning and move throughout their day doing little things to try and make their lives better.
They want to live just like you or I and they also have an interest in not being treated as a piece of property. Turkeys are not chairs or iPods.
Part 2
First off, this next section is not me telling people what to do. So relax.
One of the main issues I have with killing animals for food is that humans impose so much suffering and death on so many billions of innocent beings merely for nothing more than selfish pleasure of liking the taste of their flesh. That's it. The point I'm making is that humans do not have to eat animals at all to live healthy lives so the only reason humans eat them now... is for pleasure. And there are many who admit they love the taste of a big juicy steak.
But what bothers me worse is to read how so many people claiming that they are against violence and causing suffering to animals when really literally they are being completely inconsistent with what they actually claim. And here is my point. Eating animals is really no different from torturing them or abusing them for fun and pleasure because that is really all that is the main motivation.
I'm hoping that this video will allow people think about why they eat animals and also to maybe contemplate on giving up the practice because it is completly unnessecary to eat them and it cannot be justified morally at all. Unless you are a religious kook like Sarahcuda and believe animals were put here on earth by God to be shot from the landing boards of helicopters.
Go Vegan!
Eat each other and leave the animals alone.
Very well put, however if I was a "food" animal I think I would prefer to live free and get shot by a hunter than be clubbed in the head and have my throat slit on an assembly line.
Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife - birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes and dingoes - by the million in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billion and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year, sends out cards praying for Peace on Earth.
-David Coats, Old MacDonald's Factory Farm
Perhaps vegetarians and vegans wouldn't be so smug if they knew what it took to put veggies on their plate, be it spring, summer, fall or winter. Most produce grown in the United States comes from the arid state of California where irrigation has caused the salinization of the land and, in some cases, has also deposited toxic levels of selenium, causing birth defects in wild animals. It seems to me that this situation would be exasperated if we all became vegetarians.
For the record, there are humane and environmentally sound ways to raise and butcher meat animals. There are also moral arguments for for doing so. Since World War II, some 49% of farm breeds (cattle, sheep, goats, etc.) have become extinct and most of the remaining breeds are now endangered. There are also farmers who would like to save rare breeds, but they need a market for their products so they can afford to do so. As for why we should be concerned about saving these breeds, it's all about diversity and the survival of the species. These animals are, after all, the only descendents of their wild ancestors.
Oh please! Would you ever cut the neck of a chicken or cow for your own meal? If not, then you have no business eating it.
Honey, I've been elbow deep in warm guts more times than I can count.
I've been raising dairy goats for twenty-five years. Of course, goats have to birth before they can produce milk and half of their kids are males, meaning they only produce meat and sperm. In other words, why use my resources to provide for bucks when those same resources can be used for the does who give me milk and meat. And this applies to nature too. Males are more expendable than females when it comes to the survival of a species. (One male and twenty females create more offspring than the opposite.) That's why the female offspring of deer, for example, remain with their mother's herd while the male fawns are run off by the dominant bucks in their territory during the rut. (Safety in numbers, right?) Or why some female spiders eat their mates after they breed.
lol. what a crock. My 88 year old mother says we all should own our own farms and grow our own food. nice thought, but like most ideals, not practical or efficient or desirable. I could easily say to you, if you don't till the soil, plant and harvest your veggies, you have no business eating it. See how absurd that sounds?
Dear Vickster,
More plant foods are fed to the animals who we end up killing for food in this country than are fed to humans here. Look it up.
If we all became vegans we would actually not have to grow near the amount of vegetables, grains and plant based foods to feed the human population here in the US than we actually do now. Look it up.
What a huge waste it is to cycle so much grain and plant foods through the animals that humans eat rather than feed a tiny portion of that plant based food to humans. Every year in the US alone we raise, feed and kill nearly 13 billion land animals. Look it up. Do you have any idea how much more grains and vegetables are needed to feed that many animals compared to feeding 300 million humans? If for some wonderful reason everyone went vegan in just this country here we really would have a much healthier environment. Animal agriculture is the biggest cause of water pollution and the biggest cause of global warming. Look it up.
We would have a much healthier human population as well and the horrible misery and suffering that the billions of animals raised for food must endure would never have to occur.
This is not the cleanest, kindest or healthiest way to get your protein. Go vegan Vickster and leave the animals alone!
Veganly yours,
Philip
IF we all became vegans? No thanks. I like my chicken, fish and ocassional steak or chop. You can struggle to get enough protein to remain healthy if you like. Leave me and the other omnivores out of your equation.
You should read the comment that you replied to again. Vickster said nothing about grain. He was discussing vegetables, and livestock does not get fed winter produce from California. Winter produce is for all the people who think that red, ripe tomatoes should be in season all year long...without worrying about where they come from or how they get to your plate.
Once upon a time, livestock was grazed (and it can be done sustainably) rather than fed farm raised grain. A cow would much prefer to eat grass than corn (granted, corn is a grass, but cows like the vegetative growth more than the seed). Some of the biggest advocates for taking livestock off grazing during the 80's were vegetarian groups, and they used the same argument you're using now about how land could be better used to feed people flora. Look it up.
And you're missing his point anyhow. He's drawing a parallel between meat eating behavior and vegetable eating behavior. You may not want to see it, but it's there. A plant is just as alive and conscious as an animal. And the environmental damage of industrial plant raising is right there. Do you contemplate that when you cook dinner? If you buy the "organic" California/Florida/Arizona winter produce to you think about how all the chemical components of the process were simply replaced with Mexican slave labor?
It's about stones and glass houses...
I'm a vegetarian less out of concern for animals than for health reasons: meat causes colorectal cancer.
BTW, factory farms contribute to global warming almost as much as - if not more than - all motor vehicles combined.
Meat does NOT cause colorectal cancer. SEARING it to carbon does.
Sarah Palin is the FIRST Alaskan Governor to ever pardon a turkey.
The POTUS does it every year on the Front Lawn of the White House.
She'd do anything that made her look Presidential.
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