Al Sharpton Joins PETA Campaign

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals announced a new anti-KFC campaign this month featuring Democratic politician Al Sharpton.

In a press release, Sharpton said,

If KFC wants to take our money and use it to pay for sloppy practices that hurt animals, I say we send them a message that this is not going to happen.

Sharpton is featured in an 8-minute PETA video in which he says, in part,

KFC is not black owned, but it sure knows to market heavily to African Americans … obviously hoping we won’t care about what they do the underdog, or in this case, the underchicken … So, if KFC wants to take our money and use it to pay for sloppy practices that hurt animals—I say we send them a message that this is not going to happen. I’m calling on people to boycott KFC until they adopt animal welfare systems recommended by PETA and until they stop the worst abuses of the birds they raise for their restaurants.

I just have one question about Sharpton’s newfound animal rights activism — how long before he starts accusing KFC of having raped Tawana Brawley? Perhaps they should deploy Sharpton to work on the “Holocaust On Your Plate” as Sharpton was prone to comparing New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams to Adolf Hitler and claimed that Gov. Mario Cuomo had ties to the KKK.

Certainly, Sharpton will fit in well with PETA’s culture of distortions and lies.

Sources:

Sharpton Joins Call for Boycott of KFC. Associated Press, February 5, 2005.

Sharpton joins with an animal rights group in calling for a boycott of KFC. Melanie Warner, New York Times, February 2, 2005.

Rev. Al Sharpton Preaches Compassion for Chickens. PETA, Undated.

Community Leader Backs PETAÂ’s Demands for Elimination of Live Scalding and Painful Debeaking of Chickens. Press Release, PETA, February 2, 2005.

Is Al Sharpton a More Credible Presidential Candidate Than Dennis Kucinich?

I happened to be flipping channels this evening when I landed on ABC News’ coverage of the debate between the 9 Democratic candidates for president. Obviously there wasn’t much time in the 60-90 seconds segment to focus much on individual candidates, but I noticed something interesting — if judged by how much time ABC devoted to each candidate, ABC News views Al Sharpton as more of a serious candidate than Dennis Kucinich. I’m not sure if that’s more a commentary on Kucinich’s irrelevance or the likelihood that Shartpon will amass enough delegates to emerage as a player in the Democratic Party even though he can’t win the nomination.