Pick Your Battles
The fine freaks at PETA are shooting themselves in their natural-fiber clad foot again by taking president Obama to task for swatting a fly. Yeah, way to pick your battles there, naked people. It's not like you need him on your side for important legislature regarding endangered species, lobbying for an end to whale killing, seal clubbing, and wolves being shot from helicopters. No you go right ahead and piss him off from the start about a fucking fly. You know, the kind that you kill by the dozens driving your eco-friendly car through a summer evening gnat storm. So what's the procedure? You've got naked supermodels painted with cuts of beef on their bodies and they're going to lay down in front of the NY Stock Exchange to protest the fact that McDonalds makes more money that the cereal company "Grist Mill". But as you turn the corner...oh no! A bug has just kamakazeed itself against your winshield. So, do you cite yourself for cruelty? Does one of the models have to cut off a limb in atonement, you know, to balance our karma with natureworldgoddess?

You come home from a hard day of standing in a bikini and a stuffed harp seal to find your apartment has been infested with cockroaches. Of course you don't reach for the RAID. You reprimand them for not asking permission to eat all your arugula nut balls and suggest they might be happier outside. You will leave the windows open for them to leave and they repay your kindness by inviting in all their rat friends. Eventually you will have to accept such coexistence is not working as you've now got a rat bite right next to your Brazilian wax. I suppose you can buy them all bus tickets to a nice farm upstate where there will be toys and other rats and roaches to play with and lots of land to roam. Or you can stop being a total shitfuck and kill the damned things.

Now anyone who knows me knows that I love animals. I support WWF, Defenders of WIldlife, local rescue centers, international organizations devoted to the ecology and vanishing species. But I eat meat, because it's tasty. I don't wear fur, because that's just dumb. But I do not put a high value on the life of a fly. It comes onto my turf, it's mine. And since I don't think they're in danger of extinction, I feel safe in knocking one silly with a rolled up National Geographic. So why in the name of all that has a brain, doest PETA insist on doing galactically stupid things like alienating the President over a fly. Do they really think the next time "a hey your fishing nets are killing turtles" debate crops up and they arrive naked, (Why do they always have to be naked?) but for turtle suits, that Washington will say "Oh yes, we must listen to them for they have changed the world view on killing flies." You see, people kill the fly because it's an annoying buzz. PETA is its own annoying buzz. They need to graduate up to something that more of a voice and less of a "hey, we interrupted our AP English class discussion of Animal Farm by running naked into the classroom with signs that read "Meat is Fear" so that should also work with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

PETA, behave yourselves! If you want animal rights, stop pissing off the ones that can help you get those rights. Stop the grandstading we-were-on-Entertainment Tonight tactics that just make you look like a bunch of illogical lunatics. If you want to make a change, then work toward it, don't just throw temper tantrums. Meet with Obama and say here's what we want. Ask for protection for the arctic wilderness and the Amazon rainforest. Tell him we need stricter codes on puppy and kitten mills. We need more funding for shelters to care for the animals that fill organizations all over the country. We need strong spay and neutering programs for cats and dog. Stop worrying about flies and try moving up the food chain a bit. Because I have a sneaking feeling that approaching reasonable individuals as reasonable individuals and not some hemp-clad shock mob you'll find them more willing to talk to you. And you'll get a hell of a lot more support if you talk dogs, cats, wolves, turtles, whales, that kind of thing than if you insist on demonstrating humane lice traps and kind ways to convince fleas to flee.