On Protesting Against the Wienermobile
Such is my case in the matter of PETA's* (*People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) protests over the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile a few years back. Where in the heck was I?
This came about as a weird result of a weird coincidence. One day, while waiting for my train to leave, I began contemplating about an appropriately odd background picture for the Weird Willys page. Suddenly, there it was before my virtual eyeballs: the Wienermobile (1958 Jeep version thereof)! Hot dog! Problem solved.
Forty-five minutes later, my train was down the tracks aways, when what should turn onto a street paralleling the right-of-way? Yep, the Wienermobile!! Yikes!!! I hadn't seen one since 1959. Is there a Zodiac sign of the wiener?
Later at home and still full of inspiration, I began a Net search for said photo. Spare pickings. What I found instead, in quantity, were references to aforementioned PETA activities. I bit on that topic...hard.
A Tale of a Changing Society
Oscar Mayer's Wienermobile has remained as a pop icon in America's consciousness for the last half century. I "toured" it as a kid (then, it was a hollow fiberglass shell) as have thousands of others at all manner of Middle America special events. It maintains a place in our hearts midway between Ronald McDonald and plastic pink flamingos.
But not for some. To the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, Oscar Mayer's publicity tool is, rather, a propaganda agent sent out to desensitize our children upon the matter of cruelty to animals. As they put it, The Wienermobile was the meat industry's Joe Camel.
I hope that I'm getting this right, because I'd like to hold the impartial middle ground, here: I must admit that I swat flies, paintball deer rumps to keep 'em out of the vegetable garden (now there's an ethical conundrum for you PETA folks!), and consume a fair amount of hot dogs. Not Oscar Mayer's, mind you - I really don't care for them. Conversely, I abhor needless animal suffering. I don't kick dogs, and I feel sorry for cows crowded into feed lots. Like Bill Clinton would say, it all depends upon your definition of "needless". Animals need to be killed, because most humans consume them as food, but I think that most of us would prefer that this come as a total, painless surprise to our future tube steak. End of editorial.
Anyway, the PETA folks mounted a rather extensive campaign against the Wienermobile late in the last century (doesn't that sound like a long time ago; what have the PETA folks been doing about this matter lately?). From Racine to Raleigh, PETA picketed. As they put it: ...wherever Oscar Mayer’s “Wienermobile” went to recruit youngsters to sing, “I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener,” PETA was there to add, “Not if you could see what happens to the pigs.” (in fairness, I should note that their campaign also featured positive suggestions: "Pigs are friends, not food! Look for delicious, low-fat, cholesterol-free veggie hot dogs in your local supermarket or health food store.")
Average America, though disgusted over PETA's attacks against Ronald McDonald ("Ronald McDonald is a scary, scary clown" -PETA online), nevertheless might have struck up the vegetarian standard ("We do it for the children!"), but for one crucial PETA error: invoking the name of God. PETA launched an ad campaign entitled "Jesus Was a Vegetarian", that admonished, "Christians should extend the message that 'God is love' by not eating his creation."
H-o-l-y cow, did that cause a ruckus in good old, meat-eating Christendom! As one born-again wag pointed out, "We are not to eat meat (animals) because God created them? What about vegetables?
Gen 1:29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
Gen 9:3 Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.
What can I say? God has spoken."
So, everything is meat, eh? Vegetarians are actually carnivores? I wish that I'd known this in fourth grade. It sure would have simplified all of that learning-the-food-groups nonsense.
By the century's turn, the protests petered out, and Oscar Mayer came out with a new fleet of Wienermobiles. There was no way that PETA could win. As if the God thing wasn’t bad enough - have you ever eaten a tofu hot dog? Yuck!