Ingrid Newkirk was displeased enough with a column in the Spokesman Review (Spokane, Washington) that slammed People for the Ethical Treatment for the Animals’ Holocaust on Your Plate campaign that she penned a letter in response,
It’s hard to imagine a meaner, smaller-minded piece of writing than Mr. Clark’s “PETA stoops to new low with exhibit” (Aug. 7).
Well, Ingrid must not be thinking very hard. There’s that interview from Genre in which PETA’s Dan Mathews said he admired Andrew Cunanan “because he got Versace to stop doing fur.” Or who can forget Newkirk’s repeated defense and support of the Animal Liberation Front. I’m sure if she tries really, really hard, Newkirk can find plenty of more noxious stuff without even leaving her small-minded office.
Our Holocaust exhibit is funded and designed by caring Jewish people who wish human beings to widen their circle of compassion to those who are misunderstood and mistreated even today. To greet this exhibit, as Mr. Clark did, as a “clucking, oinking” shame shows deep disrespect for those who lost relatives in the Holocaust and could not stop it, but do not feel powerless now to stop the cries, the anguish and fear, cannot be dismissed simply because the victims are different species. To call caring souls “the lunatic fringe” is just cheap.
I think the word Newkirk was looking for there is “accurate.” PETA keeps claiming that the exhibit is funded by Jewish individuals (some of PETA’s best friends are Jews!) but until she’s willing to identify who is funding “Holocaust On Your Plate,” we only have Newkirk’s word for that. And, frankly, Newkirk doesn’t have a track record that makes her very credible.
I have stood on the floor of slaughterhouses in this country and overseas and even held the heads of animals whose throats were being slit. To laugh off their suffering as “chicken poop” is not something one expects to read in a respected newspaper. Shame, indeed. But not on the PETA exhibit or those trying to reduce the sum total of pain in the world.
In fact, Newkirk advocates creating fear and suffering. As she said after an animal rights extremist group sent razor blade-laced letters to medical researchers, “I hope it frightens them [the researchers] out of their careers. If experimenters feel afraid now, that’s nothing compared with the fear, harm and death they have inflicted on their victims.”
It’s hard to imagine a meaner, small mind person than Newkirk.
Source
PETA column cheap, disrespectful. The Spokesman Review, August 15, 2003.