A peeve of mine

So I was at the Dumbo Art Festival the other week, it was pretty interesting. But this isn’t really about the festival, there was just an incident that bugged me that I wanted to write about. Basically at the festival one of the “artists” had an elephant that painted. Like a live elephant that had a paint brush and swiped it on a canvas.

There was also a little bit of a protest in front of that. Some women who felt that it was inappropriate for the elephant to be used in this way. There’s more to it than that - and I’m inclined to be on their side, but this isn’t an animal rights protest post. What happened was that some people took strong offense to the protest. Which was reasonable, but their argument went something like this “How can you be protesting this when people are being tortured in Guantanamo??”

That really bothers the hell out of me. There’s probably all sorts of reasons one could come up with for being angry with the protesters. They were being loud, the elephant didn’t seem to be being mistreated, blah blah, whatever. But instead, they give the ol’ “How can you care about this minor thing when this massive thing exists?” saw. God I hate that.

Does that mean that anything less than Guantanamo is unworthy of notice or scrutiny? Because, you know, that’s quite a high bar to set. Almost everything we talk about and care about is probably less heavy than that. Do those angry folks live by their own words? Did they protest Guantanamo? Do they let any anger they have roll off their backs if it’s less than that? When someone cuts off their minivan on the turnpike do they turn the other cheek and not let their choler rise? I suspect not. They were screaming these things at the protestors - engaging in hypocrisy with their own words. How could they be getting so angry at these protestors when people are being tortured in Guantanamo?

Those people were just visitors screaming at the protesters, they were so angry that they actually came back two or three times to yell at them. Sadly, even the director of the festival gets in on this ridiculous argument, parroting those folks I saw “I would get more upset about Guantanamo Bay.” Sure you would, but that’s not an argument for getting upset about something less severe than that. And honestly, all animal activism aside, it seems more like a circus sideshow than art, to me.

People seem to just be offended or intimidated by people who try to live by different rules and they don’t know how to react to it. As a very non-proselytizing vegan - I don’t say anything, don’t impose it on anyone, hell I married a staunch omnivore - it happens again and again that I meet someone who finds out I’m vegan and they immediately start looking for slip-ups. “What you’re vegan? Shouldn’t you not be wearing leather, then? What you don’t? What about those shoes? That belt?” Why? I wasn’t doing or saying anything to them about it, but if they discover it they are immediately defensive as though I was somehow critiquing their lifestyle.

Anyhow, I see this argument over and over again. And no one ever bats an eye. It seems like many people just accept it. It’s literally one of the dumbest and I am sure, one of the most hypocritically used arguments known to man kind. I’m just saying.

Oct 23rd, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: rant