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Your Mommy Kills Animals! A Documentary

            In many ways People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is its own worst enemy.  On the surface, this organization of 750,000 people across the world seems to have honorable intentions. They claim 1.6 million but offer no proof. Founded in 1980, they believe that "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment."  Who cannot be for puppies and kittens, especially if Paul McCartney, Pamela Anderson, Christy Turlington, Simon Cowell, Pink, Sarah Jessica Parker, Bill Maher, Tommy Lee, Alicia Silverstone, David Gallagher, Christina Applegate, and Charlize Theron are on-board?  Nobody is in favor of cruelty. It is why we have animal cruelty laws on the books and Michael Vick is in an orange jumpsuit. PETA believes in a world of total animal liberation.  Imagine a world without pets, not even a little goldfish in a bowl, no hamburgers on the grill, no secret herbs and spices on that delicious KFC chicken, no medical testing on animals which would led to a halt to 85 to 90 percent of our medical advances, no leather or suede, no zoos, circuses, rodeos, or horses to ride, no salmon or lobsters with a little butter and lemon on your plate, no service animals for the blind, and, we cannot forget, no honey for your tea.  Let’s not even get into what we would have to do with and how we would handle all these freed animals.  In a world where we are becoming increasingly detached from nature, it is easy to believe in a Walt Disney-fied world, where kittens and puppies play with bunnies and we all hold hands as we sing a moving ballad about universal togetherness as the credits roll.  On a rational level, PETA is easily defeated. All you have to do is walk up to a mother of a newborn baby and say that her child is of the same moral worth and value as that cockroach crawling up the wall. Nobody who is sane will do that.

            There are loons everywhere.  What I don’t like about PETA, is their tactics. I am all for their campaigns like the Lettuce Ladies, hot Playboy models who wore lettuce leafs as bikinis as they passed out pamphlets on the vegan lifestyle, the "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" ad campaign featuring hot actresses and models in their birthday suits, and even the Running of the Nudies, where hot girls run around naked to parody the Running of the Bulls in Spain. Hot naked 20-year-olds are always a good thing.  Heck, I even got a giggle or two when they tried to get Fishkill, New York to change its name, not realizing that “kill” in Dutch means “creek,” or when they tried to parody the “Got Milk” campaign on college campuses with “Got Beer” ads.  Nothing has you rolling on the ground faster than watching a bunch of mad mothers all upset because someone is promoting that their alcoholic child slam back another beer.  That right is reserved for Fortune 500 companies.  It is their shock tactics that bother me.  They morally equate the holocaust and slavery with animal liberation.  They often do this through photographs and signs. Imagines of Indians, black slaves, child laborers, and women, are juxtaposed with those of chained elephants and slaughtered cows.  Similarly, pictures of Jews in German concentration camps paired with cattle and other livestock in pens. This is morally offensive to anyone whose family suffered through any of these events.  They have dressed up in cuddly animal mascot suits, stood in front of schools at performances of The Nutcracker, and passed out a comic book to young children called “Your Mommy Kills Animals” and “Your Daddy Kills Animals.” These comics were filled with graphic photographs and drawings of skinned carcasses, animals in languishing in pain, and other bloody images.  Among the things that children are told is, "Since your daddy is teaching you the wrong lessons about right and wrong, you should teach him fishing is killing. Until your daddy learns it's not fun to kill, keep your doggies and kitties away from him. He's so hooked on killing defenseless animals, they could be next." Similarly, children are told that their mothers are heartless became of the coats they wear and these poor animals can never “play or swim or have fun. All they can do is cry-just so your greedy mommy can have that fur coat to show off when she walks the streets." Yet, it is the acceptance of violence and attacks on personal property that repel me the most.  Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s President and co-founder, summed up her opinion on the use of violence by stating, “Thinkers may prepare revolutions, but bandits must carry them out” and "no movement for social change has ever succeeded without 'the militarism component."  They have provided financing for the terrorist groups like The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF) which have torched several animal testing labs and other private buildings.  They also gave (which they claim was a loan, but was never paid back) over $100,000 to Rod Coronado who was convicted for arson of the Michigan State University research lab in 1992.  Over $1.3 million of PETA funds are wound up in ALF and ELF coffers or people connected to these organizations. PETA has interrupted fashion shows, thrown paint on the fur coats worn by models, thrown dead raccoons on the table and had bloody packages delivered to the offices of the editor of Vogue.

            Director Curt Johnson in his documentary Your Mommy Kills Animals tries to show that those concerned with the welfare of animals is wider than just PETA and that many of these groups have ideals that are more mainstream than Newkirk’s organization.  Johnson tries to distinguish between those who believe in “animal rights” and those concerned with “animal welfare.”  PETA, ALF, ELF, and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) are organizations that believe in the use of radical means, from picketing, to arson, to trespassing on farms to free animals in order to promote animal rights.  “Welfare” people, on the other hand, believe that animals can be used for almost anything, but want to make sure that animals, whenever it comes to testing, slaughter, or how they are being raised, are treated in the most humane manner possible.  Johnson weaves between the various organizations and individuals involved in this aspect of our culture.  He is critical of many aspects of the animal rights movement from ignorant celebrities who donate their name and image to these organizations without knowing what they stand for or do, to PETA’s euthanizing around 80 percent of the animals they claim to rescue and its history of murdering animals so that they can be dumped in shopping center dumpster to get publicity.  One of the strangest aspects of the documentary is that, in an era where the President and the talking heads whoop up fear of Al-Qaeda, the FBI ranks animal-rights activists as the #1 domestic terrorist threat in this nation. The Patriot Act has been used to go after these organizations and protect corporate interests.  While the film is often graphic, showing scenes of dogs beaten, animals skinned, slaughterhouse mistreatment, sickening scenes of animals in laboratories, whales being harpooned, it is must viewing for anyone who has ever made a financial contribution to PETA, volunteered time with the Humane Society, or is just interested in being knowledgeable about this movement. With all of the Molotov cocktails, murdered doctors involved in research projects, and rampant arson, until we learn to forsake violence; it is all a bad joke that is not really that funny.

Verdict: An Even Handed, Entertaining Documentary