Wheelchair-using chicken alert!
Why did the wheelchair-using chicken cross the road?
Er, well, it was part of a protest by campaigning group , apparently.
Yes, last Monday, PETA staged a protest outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken store in San Diego, to highlight what they say is the fast food company's abusive treatment of chickens kept in shocking factory farming conditions. At the centre of the protest was a giant "wheelchair-bound" chicken (presumably a person in a chicken suit rather than, um, an actual enormous chicken), which repeatedly crossed the road in front of the store.
Now, maybe because it's the end of a long week, and Crippled Monkey is feeling particularly sensitive, but I can't help finding it rather offensive that a supposedly 'right-on' organisation like PETA thinks that using someone (well, OK, a chicken rather than a someone) in a wheelchair is OK in such a context. Is it just me? Or am I simply feeling a bit too egg-citeable for a Friday afternoon? (Sorry, I couldn't resist at least one painfully bad chicken-related pun.)
Comments
It's not just you. PETA may care about animals--but they've never struck me as being right on with any OTHER social issues. They have an ugly history of demonizing fat people to promote vegetarianism ("Eating veggies is the best way to get less bounce for the ounce"; "Don't pay for two seats. Go vegetarian"; "Got fat?" with a disembodied fat stomach), as if there were no fat vegetarians (um, hello? We're right here!). Not to mention its long record of objectifying women in its ad campaigns and using specious and racist analogies between meat-eating and the Holocaust and slavery. That PETA has branched out to using disability as the new Shockingly Horrible Thing to be Avoided doesn't surprise me at ALL.