g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

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Saturday, January 3, 2004
23:39 - The deck's stacked

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As I may have mentioned in passing, one of the sites that I spend most of my time administering is a fan-art archive for a particular animal-themed animated movie; the site has several thousand members, most of whom can be described without too much prevarication as "14-year-old girls".

The other day, I got the following e-mail:

Brian i need your help really bad. i know it's not really ____ related. but could you please post something asking the members to help me? it seems as though Canada wants to allow the hunting of harp seals. and there are just WAY too many animals being killed because of us. like horses and dogs and cats and pigs and everything. just because we say there isn't enough room for them. yet we have enough room for new shopping malls and houses for ourselves. i for one and so hurt by what i read on some of the sites i went to. there are lots of sites, i've been going to www.peta.org, www.hsus.org, andwww.theanimalrescuesite.com. i'm very sorry for sending this letter. but i'm so hurt by what we're doing to these animals. even TV programs are against saving the animals. please Brian i need all the help i can get, would you please please please help me help them? i'm gunna send an attachment with this e-mail. if you can resist such a cute face then i don't know who would help me. i'm begging you Brian, please can you help me!!!!!

Really, how does one respond to such a thing? How do you say something like "Well, little girl, it's very complicated..." and make it stick? I know it's never looked plausible in the least when someone tries that tactic in a kid's movie-- invariably it's some evil and stupid grownup too absorbed in his heartless grownup things to understand what makes life beautiful. If the silver screen has taught me anything, it's that adults are the primary reason why Ash and Pikachu must save the rain forest from Wario and Dr. Robotnik.

Now I find myself in the unenviable position of being one of those evil grownups. I have to figure out how to explain that PETA is a bunch of terrorists, and that animals are better protected today than they ever have been in human history. To buy time, I replied by simply saying that I didn't want to link to any such politically charged and off-topic causes from my site; and in reply she said:
but you posted about Sept. 11. should not the death of innocent animals be equily as important as that of humans? and you posted about lots of other stuff before, Brian, i know that it may not be that much of a big deal, but what if there were no more animals, there'd have never been a ____ for you to make your site on. if you won't help me than no one will, you know this is the first dream/wish i've had in a long time, and i didn't wanna give it up. but now that i see that your not even conserned about the animals i think i'll have to. but just remember that without the animals we as the artists on the site would have nothing to draw, and you'd have no website and wouldn't know any of us artists on the site. i would say thank you but i'm not sure what it'd be for. but just so you know, if you're with the other people that want to allow the hunting, etc. then i refuse to draw on your site again.

So clearly ambivalence is itself suspect, and I have to either wade into the discussion-- in appropriately softened language-- or take sides. Not fun.

And this is what I mean by the Left having the upper hand on kids' minds as they emerge from the scholastic systems of various Western countries. Who, I ask you, can resist such a cute little harp seal face? What kind of monster would be in favor of killing all the animals? And yet if you sit down and try patiently to explain that not only does not supporting PETA not imply wanting to kill all the animals, but supporting PETA is in fact tantamount to supporting domestic terrorism, congratulations-- you've just succeeded in filling with tears the eyes of a sweet young kid who just wanted to make the world a better place, and convinced her anew of the inescapable and incomprehensible evil of all adults.

It's long been held axiomatic that we all start out as unthinking jingoistic right-wingers, only to become compassionate and idealistic liberals later in life, after we've seen the beauty and wonder and joy there is in the world, and learned that life need not only be.... I dunno, cutting down forests and spilling oil all over virgin beaches to support our industry of endless unjust war. But as the above example illustrates, it's a lot goddamned harder to convince a kid that it is possible to be in favor of wildlife conservation without supporting organizations like PETA, than to explain to a kid in an American flag t-shirt why recycling is a good thing.

Dennis Kucinich must be snapping his fingers in frustration that these kids aren't yet of voting age, because that's all that separates them from his extant constituency.


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