It’s easy to become indignant — even enraged — with greenie weenies. After all, “Eco-terrorists” have committed over 1,100 crimes with property damage at over $110 million in the past few years.
Property is one thing, innocent lives another. An Earth First! Journal boasts: “Life is sacred, but many of us doubt that multinational takeover artists who liquidate old growth forests to pay off junk bonds qualify as Life-forms. Such Robotoids, should be classed with damns, dozers and drillers. A ‘Hit List’ is available upon discreet inquiry.”
In April 1995 the president of The California Forestry Association, Gil Murray, a husband and a father of three, was blown apart by a nail bomb sent to his office by Unabomber Ted Kazcynski. The Unabomber had lifted Murray’s address from that very “Hit-List.” After his conviction as a serial murderer the Earth First Journal included Ted Kazcynski among “political prisoners who deserve our support,” because, “they are in there for us.”
Earth First founder Dave Foreman wrote, “The blood of timber executives is my natural drink, and the wail of dying forest supervisors is music to my ears.” A charming cartoon in the same Journal says: “Trees are for hanging. Kill a developer.”
Last year an executive of Forest Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company in Laurel NY, had his home and his family vehicles repeatedly spray-painted with “Puppy-Killer! and “Murderer!” by Animal Liberation Front “activists." These “activists” also posted the executives phone number, license plates and bank account on the ALF website. Finally on May 9, 2005 the “activists” followed the executive’s wife to her workplace, again vandalized her car and stole several credit cards. They used these to buy $20,000 in Travelers Checks that were sent to a number of “charities.”
A post on the ALF website stated “If we find out a dime of that money granted to those charities was taken back we will strip you bare and burn your (expletive)!”
The revelation that from July 1998 through 2003, PETA killed 12,473 dogs and cats at its Norfolk, Virginia headquarters was also worth a sour chuckle. People donated these pets to PETA thinking these tender hearted souls would find them homes. Instead they gassed them to death. PETA claimed it had no choice, for financial reasons. They just couldn’t house and feed the creatures indefinitely. Yet PETA reported $29 million in income last year. Where does it go? It goes towards media stunts and legal fees for animal rights terrorists and vandals, that’s where.
All in all, I prefer laughing at the less rabid among greenies, though the lines between the radical (ELF, ALF, Earth First) and the moderate (Sierra Club, GreenPeace, PETA) groups gets increasingly fuzzy. “Earthworms are far more valuable than people,” declares Sierra Club Board member and Greenpeace founder Paul Watson “The world will be a much nicer place without us humans.”
“Humans have grown like a cancer!” says PETA head, Ingrid Newkirk “We’re the biggest blight on the face of the earth! There is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. Would I rather the research lab that tests animals is reduced to a bunch of cinders?” she raves on. “Yes! I will be the last person to condemn ALF. Animal liberationists do not separate out the human animal. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all mammals.”
PETA vegetarian campaign coordinator Bruce Friedrich says “blowing stuff up and smashing windows — is something PETA doesn’t do — but I do advocate it.”
Besides marveling at their writings, utterings and media monkeyshines, I’ve dealt with these people face to face in some media monkeyshining of my own, mostly on Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect where I was a regular guest during the final year of the show, appearing four times. Maher isn’t just a PETA member — he’s on PETA’s board of directors. So he always invited a mob of his Hollywood greenie chums to lynch me.
“Tonight’s guests include the bloodthirsty assassin and fascist Humberto Fontova — ‘sic him!” It’s one thing to have a host — Chris Matthews or Tim Russert — as adversary. It’s another to have the entire panel snarling and lunging for your throat as on Crossfire or the McLaughlin Group. It’s even MORE fun to have the host, the entire panel and even the studio audience howling for your head, as I had on Politically Incorrect.
The illogic and absurdity of their rantings — even by Hollywood star and starlet standards — was something to behold. Ah yes, California: a place where you’re denounced for spearfishing — by the patrons of a sushi bar! Here were (the late) James Coburn, Tom Green, Florence Henderson, among others, gnawing on buffalo wings and salmon croquets in the greenroom, then going on stage to bash me for hunting ducks and spearing fish.
“The difference between you and me, James,” I chuckled at an enraged Coburn. “Is the difference between Don Barzini and Mikey Corleone.” Coburn sat back and glowered at me. “Others pulled the triggers, but Barzini put the hit on Don Corleone, remember? Just like you put a hit on a cuddly creature every time you buy meat. Now recall McCluskey’s and Sollazo’s fate in that restaurant. Mikey insisted on carrying out his own hits. That’s me. I do my own dirty work. Those mallards and grouper I hunt down, assassinate then eat, are no deader than the chicken and salmon I watched you eat fifteen minutes ago. And until I whacked them, they lived a much more enjoyable life than the chicken you’re still digesting. Me, I revel in the role nature handed me, predator — no guilty conscience about it whatsoever. You hand off the responsibility to a slaughterhouse worker. Fine, that’s your business. But don’t get all smug about it. You’re as culpable for that chicken’s death as I am for the duck’s. But unlike you — I look nature’s cruel mandates right in the face!”
Naturally Bill went right to a commercial break after my outburst.
“This is too damn easy,” I finally told Bill. “I’m a hunter for heaven’s sake. I like a challenge, some sport. Get me on here with some vegetarians next time. That’ll make my job harder.”
“‘A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy,’ says PETA” I raved on another show at Maher himself. “Fine, but rats, pigs and dogs all hunt and kill other animals. Yet you PETA people want to deny the boy the same role. You contradict your own doctrine.”
“My dog doesn’t hunt!” shouted former Talk Soup host John Henson from beside me.
‘No John,” I laughed. “That’s because you pay someone to kill a wild horse, grind it up and put it in a can for him. You do this every time you buy dog food, amigo.”
“Yeah Right!” sneered Tom Green. “Pigs hunt?”
“Yes Tom,” I said rolling my eyes. “In fact wild pigs eat their prey — rabbits, snakes, birds — alive. Granted you wont learn this from a stool at Starbucks. Get out in the woods and you’d see it…..And you out there!” I said pointing at the booing, snarling studio audience.” What do you animal rightists feed your cats, hunh? Many of you love cats, right? Feed it vegetables and you can be locked up for animal cruelty. You’ll starve it to death. Feed it cat food and you’re paying for the murder of chickens, fish, pigs, cows, etc. So go ahead, feel all smug. — and another thing! You gals like those bee-stung lips and wrinkle free faces, right? Well, where the hell you think collagen comes from? I’ll tell ya: murdered cows! And that lipstick on your bee stung lips — the glycerine in them also comes from boiling the corpses of murdered cows! And the Lanolin in your hand cream and in the suntan lotion you wear on Venice Beach — murdered sheep this time! And that film in the cameras you use to photograph spotted owls and old growth redwoods — glycerine again, from murdered cows again! And the transmission and brake fluid in the Volvos you drove here in — murdered and boiled cows again!”
Then I turned back to the camera. “And Oprah — you out there? Your crack about never eating another hamburger made you the Animal Rights poster girl. Well, cows are murdered and boiled for the ingredients in hair straightener too!”
