PETA: Animal Rights Activists Or Shakedown Artists?
For years now political observers have watched as Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement was perverted into a series of shakedowns perpetrated by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. These supposed civil rights leaders have been know to target big business with profit and reputation damaging protests against alleged racial injustices, but then call them off in exchange for some favorable action from the business they’re targeting (read: profits). This sort of extortion has been happening for decades now, and made the likes of Jackson and Sharpton very rich.
And it appears as though the model has made its way into the animal civil rights arena. PETA, the unapologetically militant animal rights group, seems willing to overlook the animal rights sins of some big businesses in exchange for some corporate sponsorship.
Its websites are full of invitations to corporate America to form partnerships, and in the process, cut PETA in on some of the profits. How else has the Washington-based group grown to a $34 million budget and displayed help-wanted ads for more employees in the time of a deep recession?
In one case, PETA castigates a credit card company for backing a circus; yet PETA promotes its competitor who sponsors horse racing and beef eating—two PETA no-nos it is trying to abolish. ...
on the list is VISA, the giant credit card company. The two boast a special relationship. There is the PETA VISA card, featuring a photo of a pig. Purchases on this card result in a 1 percent royalty to PETA. It urges customers to shop at its own mall, where vendors return even more profits to PETA on each sale.
The VISA-PETA alliance makes odd bedfellows. For one, VISA is a prime sponsor of the Kentucky Derby, the world’s most famous horse race.
Yet PETA wants to end thoroughbred racing. A PETA “fact sheet” states: “Help phase out this exploitative ‘sport’: Refuse to patronize existing tracks, work to ensure that racing regulations are reformed and enforced, lobby against the construction of new tracks, and educate your friends and family members about the tragic lives that racehorses lead.”
After the filly Eight Belles collapse and died in finishing the 2008 Kentucky Derby, PETA launched a series of press statements and blogs complaining about the derby and horse racing in general. But there was no criticism of VISA.
I guess money speaks louder than ideology for the folks at PETA.
It’s like carbon credits. Want to sin? Just pay for your forgiveness.
