Devine Right to Eat Animals

It's hard to express how confounded I became reading this article by Miranda Devine. I know it's from last week - I only stumbled across it today. I only read Devine when I feel like being irritated - and today I really got my wish. There are so many confusing aspects, things to be surprised at, shocked even. But the most unsurprising aspect of course, is that Miranda Devine is a dullard. There's no other conclusion to draw. 

Of course, I'm sure you all had concluded this some time ago, probably when she insinuated lesbian parents caused the London riots. It's just that sometimes, a person's level of idiocy defies even your low expectations of them as a functioning human being.

It's air. You need it to breathe Miranda. Suck it in and blow it out. There's a clever dear. 

If I were a meat eater, and passionate about my right to eat meat, I might choose to use less idiotic justifications than "well plants have feelings too!" (sticks out tongue and puts hands on hips). I mean, really. That's what you're going with?

The point of the article (if there is one) seems to be to rebut High Court Judge Michael Kirby's statements about animals as sentient beings. She seems a little put out by his suggestion that humans can empathise; "In other words, those of us who eat meat do not have sufficient empathy. Thanks, your worship."

Jumping on the defensive, jumping to conclusions, and being patronising - she really has earned her stripes as a News Limited columnist.

She goes on to say that most people feel sadness in relation to animal deaths. Quite true. - If that death is happening in front of you. But if it happened in a remote factory with high fences, and the delicious suckling pig on the plate in front of you bore no resemblance to the sweet little thing who had its throat slit so you could pay $120 to have it served to you in three different ways ... Probably not.

The idea that farmers "more than most" empathise with their animals is laughable. I grew up on a farm. Farmers are made of hard stuff - I suppose because they have to be. It would be a rare farmer who shed a tear at every head of cattle sent to slaughter - and one that would likely need to be institutionalised at suffering so very much empathy - considering the amount of animals killed in modern-day factory farming. But of course as a self-proclaimed product of the uber-urban lifestyle, Devine would probably know best about such matters. 

Let's see, what else does she have to say? Oh yes, she mentions Jonathan Safran Foer's "new" book, Eating Animals. That would be the book he released in 2009 - which she should have known seeing as she clearly checked the Wikipedia page (having nabbed a Natalie Portman quote from it). 

Then there's the old poor-people-don't-have-the-luxury-of-choosing-not-to-eat-meat argument. Some poor people don't have the luxury of choosing to use a toilet, or to change their clothes - so we fat, rich, elites in the developed world probably shouldn't do those things either. Devine seems a little jealous of their 'get out of jail free' inability to source sustainable food that is not meat. Perhaps she should move to a Sudanese village where she can enjoy all the goat stew her heart desires without that nagging 'empathy' she feels so very deeply. 

"Moral vanity"! "sentimental meat phobia"! Strong made-up language there, but hold on to your hats people - us dirty hippy vegos are trying to destroy the ready availability of protein!!! Is nothing SACRED? Will no one think of the CHILDREN? We have a tax on carbon and now THIS?! 

Devine uses professor of agriculture, Dr Greg Hertzler, to bang out the everything-you-eat-harms-a-living-creature argument. Okay, so instead of endeavouring to be aware of where our food comes from and to not harm living creatures in sustaining ourselves, we should just kill all of them because some of them are going to die anyway! I mean, if the mice are being killed in the bread factory - we might as well kill ALL mice! And if we're going to kill all mice, we might as well kill ALL animals! And if we're going to go that far, we might as well kill ALL LIVING THINGS!! Including EACH OTHER!! Mwahahahahah!

Wow, sorry, I got carried away there - but as Good Christians love to say; it's a slippery slope. 

Then there's the poem. The poem that Devine seems to be using to prove her point, but that actually disproves at least one of them; That farmers feel empathy and acknowledge the suffering of their animals. In fact, the premise of the poem is that after a while, when animals are murdered on the farm, the narrator 'just shrugs' - such has he become desensitised to the act.

Proof that Devine hasn't understood the poem, or the topic, or anything really, is in her final line; "The point is, we all feel bad about killing animals. But in the end we have to eat." Well, no actually, that is not the point at all. In fact, that statement is completely wrong, (a) because no, not all people feel bad about killing animals, and (b) the need to eat does not relate to animals being killed. At least, not for us privileged folk in the first world - in fact, it is our privilege that should make us want to at least try to eat sustainably and to avoid inflicting pain on other creatures as much as we can.

Indeed Miranda, "living replaces false sentiments". - If we're only talking about your living, and the false sentiments are those that you feign in relation to having your food die for you. The fact is, I don't eat animals, or use animal products, or even eat factory-made bread for that matter - because I figure if I can live without having another animal feel pain because of me, why wouldn't I do that? Why wouldn't anyone do that?

The whole article is just a selfish, spoiled columnist justifying her selfish, spoiled food choices. And it bothers me. Can you tell?

You eat meat because you can, because you like the taste of it, because it's easy. Just say so. Don't write a whole fucking column of crap to make yourself feel better about it. You answer to no one but yourself ... oh yeah ... and me ... because of this interwebs thingy. Cool, ain't it? 

Let the study results show ...

So many things bothered me yesterday - to kick off a generally shitty day there was this tweet;

It struck me as a bit odd. I'm no mathematician, but one in three Australians saying they won't pay more to fight global warming means that two out of three would or were at least thinking about it - as in (and I'm sure this is already quite clear to you) the majority of Australians probably are willing to pay. 

Which means that the headline in the paper, rather than stating "We won't pay" should more accurately have said "We will pay for climate change".

In fact, the news.com.au article only gives the stats on the won't side of things. So we don't know how many respondents were willing to cough up some cash or even the metrics of the study (i.e. if there was an "undecided" option). 

Here's the Sydney Morning Herald's article on the study and here is where you can find the actual results of the study from the Institute of Public Affairs website. 

In fact, besides the 35% of respondents that said they wouldn't pay anything, it was only 3% of respondents that were undecided - leaving a massive 62% of respondents willing to pay between $100 and over $1000 in extra taxes to combat global warming.

I know, I shouldn't expect much from news ltd. 

I'm just saying, it annoyed me. But I'm not done yet.

THEN to finish my busy, stressful, almost insufferable day, I see this tweet;

I'm sure I don't need to say too much about why this one bothered me. 

Here's the two main reasons;

(1) Way to perpetuate stereotypes boys (and you know it was a man that did this study*). As if it needs to be reiterated that in popular culture large, mostly fake breasts draw more attention. I hope the follow-up study is about young women and plastic surgery, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, promiscuity and suicide.

(2) Could you waste time on a more useless topic? I'm pretty sure there's more important studies that could be done ... what about a study on why stupid American professors with no prospect of sex develop fixations on the mammary glands of the waitresses at their local Hooters so create a research project based on them in an attempt to initiate conversation and/or intercourse?

Take a breath. 

Right, so Twitter really got me riled up yesterday. I think I might do my own study on the number of times I slap myself in the forehead wondering how people so stupid manage to live and/or prosper.

Rant End.

* For the record, it was this guy. Professor in Food and Beverage Management eh?, nice title. I wonder if McDonald's has that doctorate in their education program.   

The Punch Line 3 Months Later

Fairfax media will next week launch an opinion/analysis/commentary website based on it's National Times masthead (published weekly from 1971 to 1986). It's called, you guessed it, National Times.

It follows the launch of News Ltd.'s opinion site The Punch three months ago.

Anything's a welcome change from Bronwyn Bishop one week insinuating that $150,000 is an average income and the next week talking about those elites and how they endlessly presume they know better!

Tosh!

News Ltd Pulling the Hartigan Strings

JOHN Hartigan, chairman and chief executive of News Limited, today addressed the National Press Club on the future of journalism.
Besides giving a pat on the back to News Ltd's own opinion website The Punch, (which he stated as being something completely new - but which is basically a blog) he tore bloggers apart;

(on Blogging) "We pretty much get what we’ve paid for - something of such limited intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance".

I'm not saying that all blogging is intellectual or well researched or even readable, but he interestingly chose to single out one particular site (which I assume is Crikey) with the following attack;

"As Robert Thomsen of The Wall Street Journal says: 'The blogs and comment sites are basically editorial echo chambers rather than centres of creation. And their cynicism about so-called traditional media is only matched by their opportunism in exploiting it.'
One of the best known comment sites in Australia matches this identikit.
It started as a moralising soapbox; boasting about its lack of standards. Positioned as an underdog, it lectures mainstream media every day."

In my opinion, the greatest potential in citizen media is its ability to hold the mainstream media accountable. Where the media has traditionally been the 'voice of the people' (whether we like it or not) the growth in citizen media has shown the institutions of the world that we can speak for ourselves - thank you very much.

The majority of citizen media might not be worth any attention - but how much mainstream media is worthwhile? Sifting through the "Man Gets Penis Stuck in Vacuum Cleaner" and "Why Men want to Marry Women with Large Breasts" articles is a task I no longer have to undertake thanks to personalised news pages and twitter feeds.

Citizen media is mostly crap - but so are long speeches by people wanting to flog their wares and give hope to their distressed minions.

- But what would I know? I'm just a blogger.