Cabbage Is Next To Godliness

Speaking to a vegan a few years ago, I asked flatly, why? She told me that she liked the way the shoes looked with the skirt. I asked again, but specified that I wanted to know why she chose to live a life absent of cheese and worcestershire sauce. She told me that, while health was certainly a component, the primary reason was that she was unwilling to support an industry that was cruel to animals, and impacted the planet in such a profoundly negative way.

The litany of complaints about the meat industry being touted by people in this group range from animal cruelty (eating them is cruel, right?) to the environmental impact on the vast areas of land required to grow the corn and grain that are needed to feed these animals, to the contamination of the earth where these animals are raised. They march and they protest, they cover themselves with red paint and stick “meat is murder” stickers on the backs of their mid-80’s Volvos and Subarus (all the while sneering at the “abortion is murder” on the family sedan in the next lane).

Lately, it would seem that the anti-meat industry has gotten pragmatic, if such a word can be applied to people that equate chicken yards to concentration camps. They seemed to realize a long time ago that trying to get people to stop eating meat “just because” wasn’t going to work. The goal now, is to hilight the evils of the industry that provides this meat, its cruelty and its souring effect on our oh-so-fragile ecology. It would seem, even, that the soy-dog-eating masses have all but left the “inhierent cruelty of meat” argument by the wayside for another argument they feel has a chance of “playing in Peoria.” One might even say, they may have put all their eggs in one basket.



What would happen if that basket was gone? Instead of harvesting meat from the corpse of an animal, what if we could grow meat, like broccoli? What if the environmental impact of meat production dropped to zero, animals were no longer “born just to die,” and a delicious rib-eye could be made to have all the nutritional value of a bunch of spinach, a bag of sweet potatoes and a watermelon all in one.

What if?

The obvious answer is that they wouldn’t care. When one part of their argument fell apart, they’d just fill it one with a new one. They would protest, in typical Luddite fashion, that this new meat was unnatural (even though they claim that eating meat itself is unnatural) and dangerous (like feeding starving Africans) and then they’d just descend into aimless ranting about all the wrongs and injustice they see in the world and blah blah blah George Bush blah blah blah organic blueberries blah blah blah healthcare for everyone blah blah blah oh sure I’ll give you a ride home, my BMW is parked over there, yeah it’s the one with the dancing bear sticker over the Tookie Williams for President sticker blah blah blah.

While I will always respect anyone’s right to eat whatever the hell they want, I find “eating as protest” about as is idiotic and vacuous as “back window of Subaru as protest.” People become vegetarian or, god help us, vegans for various reason. Some for health reasons, some commit to a life that doesn’t exploit animals for food, and some suffer from dangerous, brain eating viruses. In any case, what you put in your mouth is entirely your business, but things are never that simple.

Saying, “what you put into your mouth is your business,” is like saying, “what you like to do on Sunday mornings is your business.” While both statements are true, both betray a naïve delusion that all our lives are lived privately and what we do privately doesn’t bother anyone else.

The unavoidable equation: Food-Nazis = Jesus-Freaks.



August 2nd, 2005
Salt Lake City, Utah.
Demonstrators from organizations like PETA and the ALF (but they’re not related, not at all. Nope. Not one bit) performed “direct action” (read: chanted like crazed, meat-starved orangutans) to protest the treatment of chickens by fast-food giant KFC.

Net result: Busiest day that KFC location has seen in months.

Best line from the article: “I think there’s a place in this world for all God’s creatures, right next to the mashed potatoes.”

March 22, 2005
Washington, D.C.

Christians protest the film "Kinsey" as a "Hollywood whitewash of the man they hold largely responsible for the sexual revolution and a panoply of related ills, from high divorce rates to AIDS and child abuse."

Net Result: While I would love to say that the Christians protesting “Kinsey” made this film a hit, that would be far from the truth. The movie simply wasn’t that good. On the other hand, I guarantee about 6 of the 18 people that did see the film would not have if not for the mildly publicized discontent of some “believers.”

I’m not trying to say that everyone that protests or publicly and loudly complains about something is the same as a jesus vigilante fighting for some falsely perceived purity of culture, or some animal rights moonbat with no job. All I’m saying is that it’s high time the phalanx of morons on both sides realize that every time they speak out against something, all they’re doing is increasing awareness, and thereby increasing its sales.

There’s no such thing as bad publicity.

To be so committed to a utopian ideal that no one eats meat or no one talks about sex is idiotic, but these people will never realize it because they’re crazy, and they’re so committed and blinded by some bizarre ideal that they believe that anyone that doesn’t see things their way is simply not able to see the big picture.

Ladies and gentelman, the big picture is of a fat guy eating an eight piece bucket with extra skin and an extra large mashed potatoes while watching porn on his 52” plasma screen. Anyone that doesn’t see this is simply fooling themselves into thinking that they’re fighting war they can win. This is a cultural war, and the culture of porn and fried chicken will always win, because it's more fun than drum circles and prayer sessions.



It’s like the creationists. How can they think they’re going to win? While recently they’ve attempted to swathe their god-based creation idea in the blanket of pseudoscience, anyone with enough vitamin D can see that intelligent design (ID) is the same fucking thing. They have a pre-conceived notion, and are attempting to make the peg of all past scientific research fit into the limited confinces of ID’s poorly misshapen hole. The problem is that while ID freaks attempt to rewrite history to fit their thinly veiled ideas, science is still moving forward at an exponential rate, uncovering new evidence, and making new ideas, that are every day forming a more complete picture of the evolution of our species. Science is always moving forward, while ID has, since its inception, been backward looking. They can never possibly catch up, so what can they hope to accomplish?

Back on point, I'd merely like say, that you go ahead and eat whatever you wanna eat. Go ahead and do whatever you want with your Sunday morning. All I gotta say is that Schumacher Furs is doing better business than they have in 30 years, and I'm sure the weekly protests , and inevitable media blitz over those protests, have had nothing to do with it. Fucking morons.