PETA has been trending in the news but not for the reasons they should. In a tweet, they criticized Google’s decision to honor Steve Irwin, the Australian conservationist, by doing a doodle of him. Stories taking them to task appeared in USA Today, BuzzFeed, NBC, Fox, and more. They have appeared in Australian newspapers, Indian newspapers, British papers, and newspapers elsewhere across the world. Meanwhile, not a line of print is dedicated to the real controversies involving PETA:
- Rounding up and killing, sometimes by lying and even theft, thousands of dogs, cats, kittens, puppies and other animals, only to immediately inject them with a fatal dose of poison.
- Misappropriating donor funds to pay attorneys to intimidate critics of this killing into silence through strong-arm legal tactics designed to undermine their First Amendment rights.
That a powerful, wealthy organization taking in over $60 million dollars a year on the promise of helping animals is actually using those donations to kill them is ignored in favor of hand-wringing apoplexy over a tweet deliberately intended by PETA to get everyone talking about them. To quote Howard Cosell in Monday Night Mayhem, one of my favorite movies of all time, this is truly an example of “whimsy over substance.”
If some other brave, intrepid, truth-seeking journalist were interested in writing a hard-hitting, meaningful, investigative treatment of PETA rather than jumping on an overcrowded bread and circuses bandwagon, they could start with all the evidence about how PETA betrays the mission they publicly claim to champion, including:
- Rounding up to kill baby kittens;
- Routinely putting to death or causing the death of upwards of 99% of the animals they impound, while only adopting out 1%;
- Calling for the killing of every dog labeled a “pit bull” in every pound in America; and,
- Stealing and killing pets.
Instead, we are once again told that PETA is misguided, has gone too far, dismissing it all as some silly overreach by a group that otherwise does good things, allowing their truly nefarious actions to go unchallenged in the court of public opinion or for PETA supporters to be educated about the harm to animals their donations are funding.
PETA is not misguided. It is dangerous. It is a threat to the lives of animals. And while USA Today and other newspapers express faux shock over trivialities, PETA continues operating as before, unapologetically killing thousands of defenseless animals every year without interest among those who should be reporting on these illicit activities in a manner consistent with the import of PETA’s cruel and contemptuous actions.
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