You Can’t Spell Slaughter Without Laughter
Way way downblog I hypothesized that in daily life vegetarians and vegans are more sinned against than sinning when it comes to food evangelism. I have to change the way I think about Sarah Palin now because she’s determined to prove me right, and I love being right. Apparently she’s got a new book of some kind coming out, and The Daily Beast offers some excerpts, including this one:
If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore: If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat? I love meat. I eat pork chops, thick bacon burgers, and the seared fatty edges of a medium-well-done steak. But I especially love moose and caribou. I always remind people from outside our state that there’s plenty of room for all Alaska’s animals—right next to the mashed potatoes.
I am literally chewing on a sandwich of leftover roast bison as I type this, but if you were a veg* in my house I would not harangue you on how awesome it is that I’m eating it, and how misguided you are for not doing likewise. The gracious hostess, after whipping you up the salad, let’s you eat it in peace. Asks you if it’s okay. Steers the conversation onto topics suitable for everybody. I don’t even entertain and I know this. But bragging about being an ungracious hostess in a book adds a whole extra layer of gauche to the meat pie. I suppose that somebody who cooks her steak medium-well will have other nasty tendencies, mind you.
On the other hand, she’s trying to make me look smart, which I appreciate! It’s not an easy job. Don’t tell her that anecdotes aren’t data, though. She’s clearly looking out for me, and it would be, well, ungracious to point out where she falls short.
Comment by Sean T. Collins —
November 16, 2009 @ 10:33 pm
God damn it, she is awful.
Comment by Ken Shultz —
November 16, 2009 @ 11:34 pm
I was dragged out to dinner one night with some prospective clients the boss wanted to schmooze. The boss wanted more people who could brighten up the place, make ‘em feel comfortable…and he couldn’t find anybody so he “asked” me.
So the client was in Los Angeles from
Bumfuck, Egyptthe mid-west, and when everybody ordered, the client noticed that although we were in a steakhouse (client’s choice), almost everybody only ordered a salad.That was because a bunch of the higher ups that were there? They were all animal rights people. In fact, all of them, except for the boss, were real live, donate money and volunteer in their spare time, animal rights people. Pretty hardcore actually.
I jumped in to try to put a soft edge on it and explained to the client that they’d ordered salads ’cause they were all vegetarians. The client looked at them all puzzled and said, “Really? Well have y’all tried bear? ’cause my husband shot one by the dump the other day and some people really like that!”
…as if they’d been trying various animals their whole lives, but just somehow hadn’t found one they liked yet.
I’d bet dollars to donuts that lady ‘ll vote for Palin.
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 17, 2009 @ 12:09 am
I believe that may be the single best story ever told on this blog, and I include my own.
Comment by Vance Maverick —
November 17, 2009 @ 1:07 am
The impulse to evangelize really does go together with evangelical religion. A fellow parent at the playground was telling me about how her in-laws are pressuring her to adopt another child — responding sympathetically, I used the word “evangelize”, and sure enough, they turn out to be God-botherers as well.
Comment by Spacewyrm —
November 17, 2009 @ 1:53 am
If God had not intended for us to eat human beings, how come He made them out of meat!?
Comment by Jennifer —
November 17, 2009 @ 2:34 am
Jesus! I clicked on the link expecting to find a satire. She seriously wrote that?
Comment by apk01004 —
November 17, 2009 @ 5:51 am
Medium-well? I think eating a medium-well done caribou or moose steak might have more in common with chewing on the wall-to-wall carpeting than it does with eating meat.
Comment by Kolohe —
November 17, 2009 @ 6:59 am
Uh, it’s a joke. Granted a joke that was already old when a Victrola was the ipod, but a joke.
Also
Unless she is obfuscating a belief in young earth creationism,* this is just another way a putting what most mainstream denominations and scientists with a theistic bent actually believe.
*which yes, would be stupid^2 in this context.
Comment by Iain Coleman —
November 17, 2009 @ 7:21 am
Medium-well? Jesus, the woman’s a menace. Thank Christ she never got her finger on the button.
Comment by derek —
November 17, 2009 @ 9:37 am
God also created Stirling’s approximation, so the second law of thermodynamics would work properly.
Comment by mac —
November 17, 2009 @ 10:28 am
I’m thinking she cooks her game medium well to kill the parasites. Believe me the last thing you want to bite into is a living blow-fly larvae.
Comment by Nancy Lebovitz —
November 17, 2009 @ 10:29 am
As far as I can tell, vegetarians and vegans get a lot of harassment.
I don’t do that, partly out of courtesy, and partly because I think teasing vegetarians would mean I was feeling guilty about eating meat.
Comment by mds —
November 17, 2009 @ 10:58 am
“Oh, you’re a vegetarian? Do you eat bear?”
And Kolohoe, I don’t suppose you know where to find replacement earbuds for my Victrola? I keep losing them when I stop to adjust my jogging harness.
I finally have a more visceral image for the idea of “President Sarah Palin.”
Though if she actually sticks to a belief in theistic evolution, then Huckabee Hound overpowers her easily. I presume that heading into 2012, she’ll become a young-earth creationist, and simply lie* about ever having been otherwise. Hey, it’s worked for everything else.
*To be fair, she may not have realized that her ghostwriter included such a passage.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
November 17, 2009 @ 11:13 am
I think digby’s basically right about this – it’s a savvy piece of political rhetoric that doesn’t look political; she gets to punch a hippy and then if they get offended, she can say “aw, can’t you take a joke?” And to 80% of the population, the offended person is going to look like a hypersensitive ninny. And no one who’s truly offended is going to ever vote for her anyway, so where’s the damage?
Comment by Tom Scudder —
November 17, 2009 @ 11:14 am
Oh yeah, off topic but I’ve been hoping to see a Henley position on the “Bill Belicheck: right or correct to go on 4th down” controversy.
Comment by mds —
November 17, 2009 @ 11:41 am
“Don’t be a complete asshole to your guests” is only a tenet of 20% of the population? I thought my family was more exceptional than that. She’s not talking about a humorous bumper sticker or PETA, here; she’s talking about inviting people into her home and then mocking their choice of entree. If there’s actually a large enough portion of the population that thinks this is admirable behavior, the Republic is doomed. Well, more doomed.
Anyway, Mr. Scudder, I have a simple technique to use while wading through the latest Belicheck “controversy.” If the Patriots had made the first down, would the interlocutor in question have been at all likely to say, “Punting would have been a better idea”? If not, their current opinion can be disregarded.
Comment by Jennifer —
November 17, 2009 @ 1:27 pm
Uh, it’s a joke. Granted a joke that was already old when a Victrola was the ipod, but a joke.
Obviously, but the fact that a politician thinks it’s acceptable to make such comments says quite a bit about her. It’s similar to the way I have no problem with people saying obscenities, and I think prostitution between consenting adults should be legal, but I still spent several months in permanent facepalm mode when Eric “Ich bin ein only REAL libertarian in America” Dondero was running for Congress in a conservative Texas district, and spent all his time bragging on Hit and fucking Run about all the fucking hookers he fucked in the fucking Philippines when he was in the fucking Navy.
Seriously: on what planet is that considered wise commentary for a would-be career politician?
Comment by mds —
November 17, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
Mamet III.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
November 17, 2009 @ 2:03 pm
“Don’t be ‘weird’.” is a tenet of all societies and often overrides the others.
That said…
…I’ve never actually seen either happen. I’ve seen racial confrontations, I once had a complete stranger walk up to my lunch table in high school and start berating me for being an atheist, and I’ve seen carnivores and vegans complain about the others’ attitudes and mock them (without the others being present)…but I’ve never actually seen a vegetarian or vegan being harassed or harassing others in person.
I suppose you have to be at the right front of the old culture war.
Comment by mac —
November 17, 2009 @ 2:15 pm
My brothers wife is a vegetarian and everybody within a 100 yards knows it. I was in charge of the grill at the beach a few summers ago and I “accidently” drizzled the drippings from some fine steaks on her portabella caps. Good times.
Comment by mds —
November 17, 2009 @ 4:24 pm
“Hey, you know the guy in our department who converted to Orthodox Judaism, and everybody within 100 yards knows it? When I was in charge of the annual holiday party, I secretly made him eat treif. Then we all gathered around to sing excerpts from Handel’s Messiah.”
It was still perfectly reasonable for the Pats to go for it, though.
Comment by Mark Z. —
November 17, 2009 @ 4:26 pm
mds–
You beat me to it, though I was going to draw a big swastika on his plate with mustard also.
Comment by Xopher —
November 17, 2009 @ 4:52 pm
Eric the Monty Python Reference, I’ve seen both. I’ve had people berate me for being a vegetarian when they think it’s perfectly all right to eat meat, and had my protests that I, too, think it’s perfectly all right for them to eat meat, just not for me, fall on deaf ears.
Part of the cause of this, I suspect, may be people like the PETAphile I once knew who, after begging onto a group dinner party, announced at the restaurant that “we” wanted a separate table for the vegetarians so “we won’t have to watch you people eating dead animals.” I heard about this from someone who was there; had I been there personally I’d've commented that I’d rather watch courteous people eat dead animals than eat veggie with a rude asshole like her, but that would have started a fight and whatnot, so perhaps it’s just as well.
That woman was really crazy. She actually insisted, two years into their marriage, that they should change their name to something else. Her husband’s name, which he’d had for ~55 years and which she’d happily taken on marriage, sounded too much like a meat animal. Trouble is, those of us who are NOT crazy are also relatively inconspicuous; would you really notice if I ordered the eggplant parmesan at the Italian restaurant? I’d decline to taste your veal Francesca, but I’ wouldn’t say why unless you asked.
mac, you obviously hate your brother’s wife with a passion. But if someone were similarly obnoxious in a different way, would you poison them? Not enough to kill, just enough to cause the food to dramatically bounce. I’m asking because that’s what would happen if you did that to me. I’ve been a vegetarian for over 30 years, and my body won’t process meat correctly anymore. Last time I got traces in something by mistake it was “Hey, wanna see the lining of my stomach? Here it is!”
Not just a harmless “haha” behind her back, in other words. Also, if she were an Orthodox Jew, would you sneak pork into her food even if she were really REALLY annoying?
Comment by Xopher —
November 17, 2009 @ 4:54 pm
Took too long typing that, clearly! Thank you, mds and Mark Z.
Comment by Thoreau —
November 17, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
I’ve known very, very few Veggievangelists, but the ones I’ve known stick out precisely because they are so unusual. One of them was when I was volunteering as a poll worker, and he was also volunteering as a poll worker, and he simply could not refrain from offering opinions on environmental issues in the middle of a polling station on election day. I had to call a supervisor to deal with him.
OTOH, I used to hang out with a vegetarian who was a total foodie, and although she wouldn’t eat meat she was always curious about whatever I had been cooking recently, even if meat was involved, just because she liked cooking. Totally cool. But she dropped out of grad school and we lost touch.
Comment by Mark Z. —
November 17, 2009 @ 6:23 pm
Part of the cause of this, I suspect, may be people like the PETAphile I once knew who, after begging onto a group dinner party, announced at the restaurant that “we” wanted a separate table for the vegetarians so “we won’t have to watch you people eating dead animals.”
There are responsibilities that come with being a dissenting minority. It’s important to learn enough of mainstream customs (yes, the ones you don’t practice) to avoid giving needless offense. For example, if you’re invited to dinner at someone’s home, and you’re a vegetarian, you should know that most Americans are in the habit of serving meat for dinner, and let them know in advance that you don’t eat meat so they can plan for it, rather than insult their hospitality by leaving an untouched rib eye on your plate. Likewise, if you’re an atheist and a friend gives you a decorated package some time toward the end of December, you don’t say “What’s this for?”
A wise dissenter will also know what she needs to share to be socially accommodated without hitting everyone with the full force of her opinions. And “we want a separate table” isn’t a request for accommodation, but exactly the opposite, to which a reasonable response is “and separate checks, too.”
Conversely, the majority has a responsibility to make space for the dissenters to do their thing. This requires understanding enough of their customs to know what not to mess with. For vegetarians this is not hard: usually only food is involved, and there are broad categories of allowed ingredients with concise labels, and vegetarian cookbooks and restaurants.
On the other hand, if you know the rules, and gratuitously piss in their pool anyway, you’re just an asshole.
Comment by von Laue —
November 17, 2009 @ 8:11 pm
I too have found evangelical vegetarianism rare (but real!), and while carnivorous evangelism doesn’t really exist, I think the archetypical jerkwad omnivore response upon learning of veg*ism is increasing in scarcity roughly proportionally to that of open homophobia. That is, it’s disappearing rapidly.
In Palin’s defense, that passage is just some kulturkampf bullshit written by some ghostwriter with a fucking sub-Don-Rickles jokebook; she wouldn’t actually do that to someone’s face.
Comment by von Laue —
November 17, 2009 @ 8:37 pm
Xopher, the closest I’ve gotten to something like the crazy vegetarian was when a vegetarian friend lost her shit because I almost gave her dog meat (at my own house). Flipped out because 2 ounces of beef would irrevocably fuck up the dog’s kidneys, which seems weird, considering the grey wolf’s natural diet.
Or, maybe I’m the jerk and domestic dogs are actually frugivores or ruminants.
Comment by mac —
November 18, 2009 @ 9:56 am
Touchy Touchy,
Xophe, mds and Mark Z.
She’s also a recovering alcoholic and allergic to antibiotics.
I can’t wait till next summer
Comment by Eric the .5b —
November 18, 2009 @ 1:08 pm
The problem is that, among the population at large, it’s hard to isolate the “you don’t eat meat?!” response from “you’re one of those veg*n assholes?!” response. Similarly, it’s hard to isolate the “I think I’m superior to you due to my diet” stance from the “I am rudely defensive because of anti-veg*n assholes” stance among veg*ns at large.
The only thing you can do is put the onus against being an asshole.
Comment by Kolohe —
November 18, 2009 @ 3:23 pm
Now, in the ‘wtf’ – Sarah Palin Edition this (h/t Taktix® ) beats anything in the Daily Beast Article by a country mile:
One acutally hopes it’s a dogwhistle to the evangelical end times crowd – because the altenative is worse – that’s she blythly unaware of the demographic trends of the *non* Jewish people in that particular piece of real estate.
And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if this is indeed the case.
Comment by mds —
November 18, 2009 @ 10:14 pm
Yup. “More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel” is straight outta the Rapture playbook. The US should be doing everything it can to help the process along, while simultaneously seeking to provoke a massive multilateral attack on Israel in order to get the Rapture ball rolling. Given the corrosive effect this sort of thing has already had on American foreign policy, I’m not actually sure the alternative is worse.
Comment by Bill Stewart —
November 20, 2009 @ 2:51 am
I was once at dinner with a customer and bunch of sales people at a Brazilian restaurant. The Indian guy from the customer and I sat across from each other having salad (from the really excellent salad bar) while waiters ran around with skewers full of various shapes of various dead animal parts which we periodically had to decline
von Laue @28, when I first read your comment I parsed it differently; it appeared that you had tried to feed dog meat to her, as opposed to feeding meat to her dog. My local Asian grocery store does have some soup mixes that can be made with beef, pork, or dog meat, and surprisingly they translate that into English as opposed to just leaving it in Chinese..