pets, NPR, and divided consciousness
26 October 2005

Over on our forums there’s an interesting thread that Gary (who runs the excellent animalwritings.com site) started that talks about how most Western meat eaters are a combination of schizophrenic and ignorant when it comes to the impacts of their diet on animals. Gary’s post finishes up with some pretty ace advice for getting meat eaters to think about their meat eating in non-confrontational ways, but just the other day, I found myself in this strange land of divided-consciousness about animals, and I thought I’d share my experience and frustration.

Our local NPR affiliate was doing their annual fundraising drive, and every year, they have people call in and donate on behalf of their pets. So instead of hearing something like “thanks for that generous donation of $40 from Ima Liberal in Liberalville, NY” you hear “Ima Liberal called in to donate on behalf of her dog Hillary, who loves to run and jump in the woods, and who goes completely bonkers every time our theme song runs.” This is an amazing tactic for our NPR affiliate, since during the hour or two that they run this, tons of people call in on behalf of Fluffy, Spot, and the other companion animals in their lives. In sum, this is definitely in the category of “cute,” or “completely fucking cheezy” if you’re a bit more cynical.

I only listen to NPR when I waking up, so I was half asleep when I heard this massive pet-driven fundraiser. I rolled over and mumbled something to Pleather about these people probably being meat eaters but loving their pets so much. And just as I’m saying that, the station mentions that one of the premiums is some massive quantity of cheese from a huge dairy co-op in VT and NY.

At that, I briefly contemplate calling the station and offering to pledge $100, but only if they say that I’m calling on behalf of the dairy cows who suffered to produce the cheese, and their now-dead veal calves. I mean, hey, why the fuck not? First, I have the sense that NPR will do almost anything for a pledge, including aligning themselves with particularly nasty corporate interests Second, if you can call in on behalf of a pet, why not call in on behalf of a dairy slave that’s living probably a tenth of its natural lifespan unnecessarily producing milk for humans?

Ultimately, I decided that I didn’t really have $100 to blow on this, and that it’d probably only alienate people further, even if the weak-kneed NPR types who fear offending anyone caved in enough to go through with my demand.

The point here isn’t to detail my half-awake insanity, but rather to wonder how it is that we punch through this veil of half-awareness about animal compassion. This weekend when we spoke to more than 150 people about veganism, I had the sense that we were making some leeway in getting people to think about these issues. Hell, a few people even told us so. But that’s at a veg food fair, which really is a stacked audience in most ways. So the question is, how do we break through to people like Ima Liberal who love their pets but who also go right ahead and cook a chicken or fry up beef? How do we puncture this idea of companion animal royalty?

If we can effectively think about ways of talking about this, I think we can make a lot of progress in getting the average person to think seriously about other animals. The problem is, how?

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under:
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