Her pet goat.

You Ohioans probably know, or remember when, the Ohio State Fair was a big honkin’ deal. Former Gov. Jim Rhodes, a country boy from down Jackson County way, purely loved it, and used it as a platform for publicity, every single year.

He would personally attend the livestock auction in the fair’s last days, not actually doing the patter but cheerleading the bidding, which set new sale price records every year. The papers ran photos of all the winners and their bids, which were astronomical. I think I’ve told this story, but here it goes again: After Rhodes left office, there was some pushback on the higher-every-year thing. Rhodes always framed it as “you’re helping send a farm kid to college,” or at least helping him or her with a down payment on their own spread, but one year the seller of the grand champion beef steer took his mid-five-figure sum and spent it on a new pickup truck with all the shit on it. This displeased the buyer (usually Wendy’s). Some time after that, another high-dollar steer went to slaughter and, when the hide was stripped off the animal, globs of silicone gel fell out, touching off a cheating scandal in the formerly all-good-news arena of the country’s biggest state fair.

(Yeah, I know, Texas blah blah. I don’t believe it.)

Prices dropped sharply thereafter. :::touches earpiece::: Wait, I have a correction to make. Prices seem to have risen again. This year’s grand champion steer — always the highest-priced animal in the sale — was sold for $225,000 and HOLY SHITBALLS that’s a lot of money for some hamburgers. It sold to a Volvo dealer, too. Huh. Well, that doesn’t contradict everything above, although clearly prices didn’t stay low forever.

All of this is getting to the story I was leading up to, about the year a girl brought her lamb into the ring and started to cry. The lamb bleated and nuzzled her hand, and every time it did, she cried harder. She knew what fate awaited her pretty, prize-winning lamby, and the governor stopped the auction and made a speech. “This lamb was raised by this girl from the minute it hit the ground, and she loves it like a pet,” he said, along with something else to the effect that he expected whoever won the bid to respect that. The gavel fell, and the buyer announced he was immediately giving the lamb back to the girl. There was lots of cheering and hugging. This touched off a cascade of charity, and at the end, everyone had spent a lot of money and every kid was taking their animal or animals back home. (Where, I have to think, almost every single one was immediately sold again, to a slaughterhouse.)

At the time I thought this was a sweet story, and told it to a 4-H official in Indiana, after I moved there. His brow furrowed. That was absolutely, positively the wrong thing for the governor to do, as well as everyone else, he said. Farm kids know what animals are raised for, even sweet fluffy lambs, and that’s what the competition is all about — not the cutest lamb, but the meatiest, the best conformation, the highest potential return on investment, which is, after all, what keeps a farm paying its bills. Click the link and take a look at that quarter-million-dollar steer, and you’ll see that is no typical farm-field specimen.

And now, more than 500 words into it, we get to the story of Cedar the goat, as told by the New York Times.

Cedar also had a sentimental owner, a California girl under the age of 10, perhaps not cut out for a farming career:

She fed him twice a day and walked him everywhere, often on a leash, like a puppy, (Jessica) Long said in an interview on Thursday. The goat was afraid at first, having been taken from his herd, but he warmed up to the girl and ran up to greet her, Ms. Long said.

So as the June 25 auction approached, the idea that Cedar would be sold — not as a creature but as 82 pounds of meat — began to horrify the girl, who was enrolled in a local 4-H program.

They tried to withdraw it from the auction. Not allowed. They moved Cedar to a farm 200 miles away. The fair sent the law after Cedar; two cops made a 500-mile round trip to fetch him back. And now Long is suing:

“They went and took Cedar without a warrant from this property and brought him back that evening,” Ryan R. Gordon, a lawyer for Ms. Long, said in an interview on Thursday. “All the sheriff’s deputy told me was, we turned him over to who we deemed was the owner. And that’s the problem. The sheriff’s deputies are not the judge. They don’t get to deem who the owner is.”

So much drama! Over a goat! And what happened to Cedar? It wasn’t a happy ending, we know that much:

Mr. Gordon, who is co-director of the nonprofit law firm Advancing Law for Animals, said he believed Cedar might have ended up at a barbecue organized by another young farmers’ group, the National FFA Organization, the next day, but he did not know for sure.

There’s more to the story: The winning bidder was a state senator making a gubernatorial bid, who probably wishes he was a million miles away now. There’s also this priceless line:

“It is noteworthy that Cedar’s successful bidder was not entitled to, and did not purchase, Cedar,” the lawsuit stated. “Rather, the successful bidder was entitled only the cuts of meat that were Cedar.”

It sounds like the girl didn’t take this well, as you might expect. Poor Cedar. He looked like a very nice goat.

And now state fair season is over. Cedar is dead, summer is dying, and today it barely rose above 70 degrees. (It felt GREAT.) Happy labor day, all.

Posted at 7:00 pm in Current events |
 

45 responses to “Her pet goat.”

  1. FDChief said on September 4, 2022 at 7:52 pm

    So, my goat story.

    Back in 1980 I was a young private enrolled in the “subsistence” part of Phase 1 of the Army Special Forces qualification course (or “Q Course” and the Army is now smart enough not to enroll young privates in the course – I had nowhere near the experience and discipline needed to succeed, and didn’t)

    We called this part “starvation”, because we were cut back to one C-ration meal per day as our instructors taught us how to make snares and build fish traps.

    And butcher our own meat. Chickens and rabbits to begin with, but the culmination was a full-grown goat, a big billy, of which each squad in my platoon got a quarter.

    Now I can tell you that old billy goat kinda tastes like old billy goat smells, but we were “starving”, remember, so we were hungrily devising how we wanted to prepare our bounty when the camp commander strolled up.

    “So you got a piece of ol’ Lucky, eh?” he observed.

    We just looked back.

    Then he began regaling us with our dinner’s history. Starting as an adorable kid, camp mascot, taught all sorts of tricks by the cadre. Recounted a couple of Lucky’s most adorable pranks. Reminisced about his playful nature, and what a popular pet he’d been. And now, here was old Lucky, about to be goat frittata.

    He was still pretty rank.

    But filling.

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  2. apocalipstick said on September 4, 2022 at 7:52 pm

    “Yeah, I know, Texas blah blah. I don’t believe it.”

    Minnesota would like a word.

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  3. Jason T. said on September 4, 2022 at 8:03 pm

    According to the Sacramento Bee (I can’t read the NY Times because of the paywall) the goat sold for $902, of which the county fair board was entitled to $63.14.

    The family would have gotten the remaining money and the state senator with the winning bid said he didn’t want to defy the family’s wishes and wanted them to keep the goat.

    But the county fair board apparently got a court order and sent two sheriff’s deputies 500 miles round-trip so the county fair board could have the satisfaction of slaughtering a little girl’s pet goat, worth $63.

    They also threatened the child with criminal charges.

    Well, they proved their point and I sure hope they’re proud of themselves.

    Sometimes I think climate change isn’t making humans extinct fast enough.

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  4. Jeff Gill said on September 4, 2022 at 8:17 pm

    Attend the fair? For a very long time, the schtick was for the sitting Governor to spend the night in a stall (with a cot and a fan, natch) as many of the families showing livestock did.

    As the Columbus Dispatch tells it, Jim Rhodes started the sleepover tradition, but . . . well, from 2019: “The tradition of spending a night at the fair started with Governor James Rhodes, who slept on hay in the barn with the 4-H exhibitors in 1982. For nearly 30 years after that, whoever was governor would spend a night at the fair (though not always in the barn).

    Then in 2011, Gov. John Kasich decided to start a new tradition: He would visit the fair, but sleep at home. For eight years, he avoided the sleepover.

    “I’m not sleeping in the barn; let’s get that straight right now,” he told The Dispatch in 2011. “And I’m not wearing that silly hat that (former Gov. George V.) Voinovich wore, either.””

    The DeWines returned to sleeping a night at the fair, but in a yurt on the grounds, not in one of the show barns, over in the Natural Resources Park (and it’s a nice yurt). “DeWine and his wife were joined by other family members, including five of their grandchildren. The group sat in lawn chairs around a low burning fire, taking turns roasting marshmallows to get the perfect s’more and relaxing after a day at the fair.”

    According to Twitter, they did so again this July: https://twitter.com/GovMikeDeWine/status/1552496569034780673

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  5. David C said on September 4, 2022 at 8:49 pm

    When my dad and his sibs were in 4H my grandfather had a rule that none of the animals they raised for show could have a name. “They are raised for a reason and I’m not feeding a half-ton pet steer.” I don’t know what he would have done if one of them had fallen for their animal but in the end the steer would have ended up in the locker plant and dad or the sib would have ended up in therapy.

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  6. Julie Robinson said on September 4, 2022 at 9:52 pm

    My parents both grew up on farms, where only dairy cows were named. They weren’t sold until they stopped producing milk at a relatively old age. No 4-H auctions. Mom produced the county’s top heifer but the powers that be would not allow her to show at the state fair. They finally decided to give her a savings bond instead. Guess what? It got overlooked and she never received it.

    Jones County, Iowa. 1949-50.

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  7. Dexter Friend said on September 5, 2022 at 1:10 am

    I thought this was going to be about the shooting at the Ohio State Fair but really, only one man was shot in the leg among the chaos. There were several more shootings all around the country, and fires destroyed the Black district of Weed, California, and temperatures are baking like 40 % of the nation, soaring to +25F over normal for early September.
    I had to try goat at least once, and so I chose Bev’s Caribbean Kitchen on Packard in Ann Arbor. They had like 3 stools for in-diner eating. It seemed tasty. Of course I also had horse meat in the US Army BCT mess hall, even after the warning Cookie gave us: “…don’t eat here tonight, go get some stuff at the PX snack bar, ‘cuz we’re serving old canned horse meat they discovered in a warehouse.” We thought he was a-fuckin’ with us trainees, so we went, and the meat was a salty slab of grey firm flesh. We ate a little and left, and on the exit way, we saw weathered crates: “USDA Horsemeat for human consumption”.

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  8. Jim said on September 5, 2022 at 5:17 am

    *Officials* HAVE to have their commissions $$$$$$$$$ .

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  9. Suzanne said on September 5, 2022 at 7:47 am

    My kids tried 4-H but neither one lasted very long. In our rural area, it becomes obvious very quickly that the outcomes of the judging are pretty much decided by your last name and that there are the rules as written and then the secret rules as enacted. One 4-H leader really wanted our son to get a goat or sheep to keep at his, the leader’s farm and our son could go over after school and care for it. The guy was pretty creepy and the plan got a big no from us. The livestock winners here are almost always the same people who have their own breeding stock.
    I was very disappointed because I thought 4-H would be good for the kids, but we joined the numerous other families I know who dropped out after a few years because not being in the 4-H inner circle meant you were never going to be rewarded for your efforts, no matter how hard you tried. A good lesson in modern day capitalism, I guess.

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  10. Jeff Gill said on September 5, 2022 at 7:53 am

    If you want to try goat and enjoy the experience, I recommend “Taste of India” between downtown Bloomington, Indiana and the IU campus. Great goat curry.

    https://www.tasteofindiabtown.com/

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  11. David C said on September 5, 2022 at 9:25 am

    For someone to pay a quarter mil for the 750 or 800 lbs of beef they’d get out of a steer is so insane there has to be some sort of scam involved. Even if it graded out to prime, a prime ribeye roast is $35-40 a pound retail. It doesn’t work as promotion. I’m stupid and bought a few pounds of good meat and a lot of hamburger for $300 a pound, buy a Volvo from me. No thanks. My Hyundai dealer is probably just as stupid but not as overtly stupid so you can keep your overpriced Geely and I’ll keep my Hyundai. I can’t for the life of me figure out what the scam might be but it’s there somewhere.

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  12. Robert said on September 5, 2022 at 9:54 am

    Amen on all counts, Jason.

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  13. Sherri said on September 5, 2022 at 12:03 pm

    I’m sure Ross Douthat considers himself a conservative of good will, a group I call imaginary. He tweeted the following, in part of a tweet thread critical of Biden and the Dems:

    “ namely the sense that voters to the right of center are being asked to sacrifice various commitments or interests to defeat Trumpism, even as their would-be leaders or partners to the left give up none of their partisanship and indeed become ever-more ideologically purist.”

    This is why I call the group imaginary. They’re really fine with most of Trumpism, they just find it uncouth. No insurrections for them, thank you, but go ahead and gerrymander and gut the VRA and stack the court and make sure that everything they want is in place. They’re smart enough to understand that once the pitchforks come out, those pitchforks might be turned on them, so they prefer the slow erosion of democracy that McConnell and John Roberts were engaged in to the revolutionary brands of Trump and Thomas.

    But when faced with the obvious threat to democracy of Trumpism, they’re unwilling to face that they had any role in it, so they don’t think they should have to put any other priorities on hold to fight the threat, but instead think that everyone else should be willing to accommodate their priorities at the expense of their own to bring them into the fold. Temporarily. Unreliably. Only when they feel like it.

    That’s not how I would define “good will.”

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  14. Jeff Gill said on September 5, 2022 at 12:13 pm

    David C., you can read here at least the baseline expectations around sale prices & how various bidders handle the actual livestock.

    https://www.hartfordfair.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/2021-Livestock-Sale-Brochure_final.pdf

    The answer to your main question is simply “publicity.” It’s an ad taken out to target a segment of the population which is interested in their support, like our local bank sponsoring our homelessness program’s annual meeting. Some years they don’t even send anyone to sit at their table (we try to avoid that), but they want to be seen as supporting what we do. Purchasing a grand champion gets some ongoing PR for a restaurant or dealership or store since the winning bid placard stays up at the fair, and they get one to put up at their business. But quite a few don’t “claim” their winning bid.

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  15. Deborah said on September 5, 2022 at 12:49 pm

    My husband recently was invited to the home of a family farmer for dinner. They got to talking about 4H and my husband asked the question about kids getting attached to their animals. The farmer said that the kids learn at a very early age (around 4) that it’s all about the $$$ they can bring in not about having a pet. My husband was horrified to hear that, when he told me about the conversation he called it “Nature as a capitalistic commodity”. I had been reading the twitter of Dr. Sarah Taber (she used to have a podcast too) she talks a lot about the myths of family farms.

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  16. FDChief said on September 5, 2022 at 12:57 pm

    Sherri, so far as I can guess Ross Cardinal Douthat seems have adopted “conservatism” largely because it serves his religious prejudices. So he’s okay with fascism so long as the fascists are anti-abortion and want to hang Teh Gays.

    His hatred of anyone left of Reinhard Heydrich seems to spring from the same well; the libs are going to let the sluts and homos and atheists run wild in the streets. Oh, and the taxes! The fash might be tacky and rude, but they’ll ensure that the taxes the grubby poor pay will go to pay the soldiers and run the camps where the smelly homeless are concentrated, as the Lord intended.

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  17. Icarus said on September 5, 2022 at 1:00 pm

    I thought when someone severely, ridiculously but willingly overpays for something, it was a form of money laundering or an interest-free, no payback loan.

    I still feel like I’m missing something in the pet goat story. First I don’t understand why you are not allowed to change your mind once you submit your animal for auction. But in this case, if the party offered to pay any lost money, who cares if a goat doesn’t get slaughtered?

    I hope that the sheriff’s deputies and all involved parties get sued for a lot more than the $900 involved.

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  18. Jeff Gill said on September 5, 2022 at 1:21 pm

    I’m chuckling, sadly, at the idea of sheriff’s deputies getting sued in a largely rural county, even in California. Try serving on a grand jury. Just suggesting the officer might not be telling the whole story accurately gets you a panelful of strange looks from your confreres, and very little buy-in.

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  19. David C said on September 5, 2022 at 1:26 pm

    A $500 premium for publicity seems pretty reasonable. I see the pay $500 and I don’t want the steer offramp. That makes me believe the the bid of $225,000 is part of the publicity stunt and never really changes hands. There can’t be that much publicity value in buying a doomed cow.

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  20. Jeff Borden said on September 5, 2022 at 1:57 pm

    I’ve always thought of Ross Douthat as a weenie. . .a George Will without the bow tie. . .whose opinions are run straight through his conservative Catholic philosophy. Who can forget lo those many years ago, when he talked about “making out” with a “chubby Reese Witherspoon lookalike” who appalled him when she whispered that she was “on the pill?” Jeepers, Wally, it really creeped him out! Gak!

    Conservatives have long painted liberals as whiny white wine, brie eating yoga nuts who can’t handle criticism, but the howls from the right when they are called out are far louder and more sustained. And the worst. . .the very worst. . .are the tRumpanzees. My gosh! They are just constantly being attacked, doncha know? Why, it’s just impossible for a straight white cisgendered christian to find a place in this world.

    Fucking nauseating.

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  21. Sherri said on September 5, 2022 at 2:27 pm

    Shasta County, where the goat in question was raised, has been going through interesting political upheaval the last few years, with the radical right wing trying to take over from the merely right wing. The podcast Bedrock looks at the situation there and in Sequim, WA, where a QAnon mayor pushed out a longtime city manager.

    As to the goat and whether it should have been slaughtered or spared, I’m wondering where the mom was earlier in this process. Did she not know how things work? Why didn’t she explain to the kid what entering the goat into the fair would mean?

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  22. Deborah said on September 5, 2022 at 3:22 pm

    I can see a kid going along with the parent’s but when push comes to shove and it’s really happening the kid could change their mind, easily.

    Meanwhile, 5 days left in NM. Saturday we leave super early, our ride picks us up at 5am and our flight is 7:30ish in the morning. So if all goes well we get back to Chicago still in the morning. This time we’re taking a ride service that is private, only picks us up and at our place instead of being on a shuttle that we have to get to the pick up spot first. Also the train wouldn’t get us there in time, there is a 5am train but it takes a couple of hours+ because of stops along the way.

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  23. LAMary said on September 5, 2022 at 5:15 pm

    One of my neighbors had pet pygmy goats in front yard. Her gardener warned her that they would be stolen for food. He was right. Before gentrification there were at least three places in my part of town that specialized in goat birria.

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  24. Julie Robinson said on September 5, 2022 at 7:59 pm

    Oh Lordy. We had a party today so I’ve just gotten to the paper, and this is one scary story: https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-voting-presidential-biden-cabinet-b4a3422d188fdd921d8e6f38f53ea0d0.

    It’s not about Biden’s cabinet, it’s about peddlers of election conspiracies.

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  25. Dexter Friend said on September 6, 2022 at 3:15 am

    Fascist Trump and his Fascist MAGA troops are off the rails again, or really just re-kindling the hate fires. Trump called DOJ and the FBI “vicious monsters” for the Mar a Lago file removals. He promised again to pardon all the 1-6 terrorists once he regains 1600 Penna Avenue.
    We can’t be slowly duped like we were in 2016 when we really believed HRC was going to win and win big.
    This time we have to yell and scream how Trump and his Fascist goons can just go to hell.
    I thought Joe Biden did well in his Milwaukee Labor Day speech, but for the fact he thinks MAGA creeps and more mainstream repuggs are totally different. They ain’t. All repuggs are against any form of socialism that helps anyone but them. They are like, in spirit, the old people of Wyoming who liked Liz Cheney, then voted for that bat-shit crazy Trumper instead. There is a good example of a mainstream repugg.

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  26. alex said on September 6, 2022 at 7:24 am

    I’m surprised Biden didn’t kiss off MAGA World a long time ago, although if he hadn’t saved it for the midterms it probably wouldn’t have had the same energizing effect on the Dem base and wouldn’t be making Republicans go even more apeshit than they already are.

    The reaction from the right reminds me of the behavior of GOP trolls whenever they see a good smackdown here and they whine about how we have no right to take the low road as if we’ve usurped their privilege.

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  27. Jeff Borden said on September 6, 2022 at 9:55 am

    Reading reactions to the move by the tRump-appointed federal judge who allowed a “special master” to go through the seized documents and slow the pace of the Justice Department probe reminded me yet again of just how fucked up our justice system is today. One of more than 300 Federalist Society built judges installed by the orange tumor, the judge who wrote the opinion is only 41 and will be bungling American federal court cases for a good 30-plus years. Numerous legal scholars are scratching their heads over her reasoning with one declaring his first year law students would write a better opinion than hers but that really doesn’t matter. She’s in. . .forever.

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  28. JodiP said on September 6, 2022 at 12:15 pm

    I grew up on a farm, and my dad butchered pigs every once in a while. I was in 4-H but usually for food stuff. One year I trained one of our dogs. We didn’t place, but I had fun. He got all distracted and jumped up on me.

    Jeff’s last comment at 27…highlights something a lot of people aren’t tuned into.

    I am very worried that Trump won’t get charged/tried with anything for taking the documents, much less get the other crimes he’s committed. Lots of investigating, but no charges yet….

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  29. brian stouder said on September 6, 2022 at 2:31 pm

    Lemme just say (yet again!) how much I love and value this website. I don’t do much of any other internet stuff (besides MSNBC, et al, for news of the day). Regarding 4H and meat and all of that, I’ve always been a steak/pork chop/hamburger/sausage guy….and then I married a wonderful farm girl whose dad raised cattle and was a self-employed live stock hauler (cattle or hogs, mostly), so the PETA crowd strikes me as more ‘nuisance’ than serious

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  30. jcburns said on September 6, 2022 at 3:58 pm

    “the PETA crowd“, Brian? Kinda casual contempt there for people who, whether you agree with them or not, have something to say.

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  31. Scout said on September 6, 2022 at 4:13 pm

    Thank you, jcburns.

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  32. nancy said on September 6, 2022 at 4:44 pm

    I respect vegetarians and vegans, but got no love for PETA.

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  33. Joe Kobiela said on September 6, 2022 at 4:56 pm

    People
    Eating
    Tasty
    Animals

    Pilot Joe

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  34. jcburns said on September 6, 2022 at 4:58 pm

    I think the PETA people have and should have a voice in the conversation about how corporations use animals in testing.

    It’s kinda nuts, when you look at the choices corporations have made. Sometimes it’s just a “well, this is easy” sort of decision on their part.

    So Nancy, just saying you “got no love” for them seems to negate what they’re saying…in that area, if not in “what do we eat?”

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  35. Sherri said on September 6, 2022 at 5:11 pm

    The new owner of Politico, who thinks he’s a contrarian and wants Politico to be non-partisan.

    Just another MAGA, even if he’s German.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/09/06/mathias-dopfner-trump-email-axel-springer-politico/

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  36. basset said on September 6, 2022 at 5:45 pm

    Meanwhile, rather than take the usual classic rock route and tour with one or two original members and a few guys they hired… how about one original member and some electronics:

    WELCOME BACK MY FRIENDS:

    THE RETURN OF EMERSON LAKE & PALMER
    On Tour!

    Sole surviving member Carl Palmer, in association with the Estates of his bandmates Keith Emerson & Greg Lake, has announced the much anticipated WELCOME BACK MY FRIENDS- THE RETURN OF EMERSON LAKE & PALMER TOUR.

    Launching on Friday November 18th, 2022 at the 2300 ARENA in Philadelphia, PA, the tour will actually reunite ELP LIVE ON STAGE through modern technology.

    After exploring the idea of a Hologram tour in detail, Palmer with the Estates of Emerson and Lake opted for what they felt was a more honest approach using live footage of Keith and Greg on massive video walls alongside Carl (and his band) playing LIVE on stage. The voice and instrumentation of Greg Lake and the unmistakable keyboard mastery of Keith Emerson will be mixed with Palmer’s onstage live drumming to magically reunite ELP once again. Paul McCartney’s duet with John Lennon at the end of his recent Got Back tour is a good idea of what ELP fans can expect from this show.

    There’s more, but you get the idea…

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  37. David C said on September 6, 2022 at 5:46 pm

    There are plenty of organizations who say the same things about animal welfare as PETA without the counterproductive publicity stunts. When you’re known more for your tactics than your message you’re probably doing it wrong.

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  38. Peter said on September 6, 2022 at 6:48 pm

    Julie at #24 – I am having real deja vu about that article. I swear Nancy referred to it in a recent post, but I checked, and she didn’t. I know I read that article, and I know that the only reason I read it was because it was linked somewhere, but for the life of me, I don’t know where. Talking Points Memo? Daily Kos? I think I’m starting to lose it….

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  39. alex said on September 6, 2022 at 7:00 pm

    I remember Nancy covering a PETA story in the Fort some years ago and that’s probably what put them on her shit list. They showed up in cow costumes protesting in front of a Pizza Hut, and as I recall their adversarial attitude was a bit much, although at least they weren’t assaulting customers with red paint.

    So Fort Wayne’s Humane Society just adopted out a shitload of beagles confiscated from some lab in Virginia.

    And I just got shaken down by two neighborhood girls fund-raising for the school choir and bought some way overpriced honey-roasted peanuts and a gumbo mix.

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  40. Jeff Borden said on September 6, 2022 at 7:01 pm

    I have tried to greatly reduce the amount of meat eaten. Chicken and turkey are my primary proteins along with salmon, cod and pollock. I’ve written stories about corporate “protein farms” as a freelancer and once for Crain’s Chicago Business did a piece on the half dozen or so live butcher shops in the city, where I witnessed the 4-minute process from live chicken to dressed bird in brown paper. We have several vegetarian friends and I worked with a real vegan who wouldn’t even use Half&Half in her coffee. I respect those choices and admire the motivation behind them.

    That said, I will never understand devoting your life to the protection of animals when there is so much human suffering in the world. It kills me to see stories about an abused dog or cat attracting the attention of hundreds or thousands of would-be adopters while hundreds of thousands of children in foster homes hunger for the same kind of attention and never receive it.

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  41. David C said on September 6, 2022 at 7:48 pm

    Can’t you do the same thing for any problem people care about and try to address, Jeff. I understand where you’re coming from especially where children are concerned. We’ve been through the adoption ringer and came out pretty scarred. When you’re adopting a pet, there’s nobody telling you you’re too gay to adopt, not Christian enough to adopt, not healthy enough to adopt (that was mine, in the deep dive physical they found a heart murmur that nobody has heard since and said we weren’t eligible). There is a whole panoply of problems and with most there’s someone working on them. If they were afraid to take it on because maybe there’s a more important problem nothing would get done. Anyway, that’s how I see it.

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  42. nancy said on September 6, 2022 at 8:04 pm

    I eat less meat, too, and will shell out for so-called humanely raised, etc. (Note to non-Midwesterners: “Amish” chicken is raised no differently than any other large poultry operation. We’re not talking the barnyard flock pecking at bugs here.) But with PETA, it’s always about their tactics. They will opt for the cheap visual/flashy photo op over serious discussion every. Single. Time.

    Some day I’ll tell you about the time Alan got called on the carpet over a syndicated gardening column he let through. But not today.

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  43. jcburns said on September 6, 2022 at 9:16 pm

    But it’s…OK that they do devote their lives to protection of animals, right?

    It’s not my thing either. But it can be theirs, right?

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  44. jerry said on September 7, 2022 at 2:16 am

    Just been reading obituaries for Tim Page , Vietnam War photographer. Probably the only person I’ve actually known who will have an obit in national press.

    We were contemporaries at school. We knew each other to say hello but weren’t friends. And his life was so astonishingly different from my own.

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  45. brian stouder said on September 7, 2022 at 10:32 am

    jcBurns – agreed, absolutely. And as always, Nancy encapsulates the issue effectively and succinctly, in her response above.

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