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Aug 29 2007 12:05PM EDT

PETA Goes for the Jugular...and Misses

Why does PETA always seem content to provoke when it could persuade?

The group (full name: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is on a campaign to link meat-eating to global warming in the minds of Americans. That's not a bad idea, and PETA has plenty of allies in other animal-rights groups.

But achieving mass conversions to vegetarianism is unlikely, and it's made more unlikely still by PETA's self-defeating finger-pointing -- an art the group has perfected over the years through diligent practice.

Portraying Al Gore as a hypocrite for eating meat is, frankly, dumb. While he may not be perfect, Gore's a hero to practically anybody who cares about climate change. And since that's the target audience of the current campaign, why antagonize them? What does that accomplish?

It reminds me of the time PETA erected a billboard suggesting that Rudy Giuliani had brought on his own prostate cancer by drinking milk. It's hard to pick a fight with Giuliani and come out looking like the bully, but they managed it. Vegans ended up looking, once again, like wild-eyed radicals instead of sensible people with a point to make.

Likewise, while they may be right about meat-production creating more greenhouse gas than SUVs, scapegoating Al Gore isn't going to convert any carnivores. But you know who will love it? All the right-wingers who want to discredit Gore, and the global-warming movement, by making him look like a double-talker. They're probably in heaven right now.

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