A Great Week for Poorly Argued, Judgemental Entertainment Columns

There are few occasions on which I have a very strong reaction to posts on entertainment blogs, but I was seething with counter arguments after I read the mess that is Gavin Polone's recent Vulture column, "It's Been A Shameful Month for Animal Cruelty in Entertainment."

First of all, I love animals just as much as the next person. My dad is a vet; I grew up around animals and wanted to be a vet myself until I was old enough to understand what a veterinary degree actually entailed. When I see fat dogs, I want to go up to their owners and tell them to put their dog on a diet for the animal's own good. I know from previous columns that Polone is a vegetarian. That is cool with me. I have a vegan colleague for whom I often bake vegan desserts. We don't judge each other for our divergent viewpoints on eating meat, just as I don't judge people on their religion or sexual orientation.

The whole PETA anti-fur, anti-meat scene has always struck me as highly bigoted, and highly hypocritical -- I don't understand how people who see themselves as liberal and focused on good can be so judgmental of others who don't happen to share their beliefs. Across today's political landscape, many people believe that same-sex couples should have the right and the choice to marry and that women should have the right and the choice of an abortion. Yet people who support freedom in both of these issues lash out at someone wearing fur in the next breath. Call me crazy, but if we live in a country of free choice, then what I choose to wear or eat shouldn't be judged by others.

Polone writes

I also want to request that someone at E! take that horrible Joan Rivers off the fucking air: Just last week I saw her wearing fur on her stupid Fashion Police show. So many celebrities, like Oprah Winfrey, have come out against wearing fur ... One rarely sees anyone wearing fur on television anymore, unless it is a period drama, because most of society has come to see it as an immoral display of uncaring and cruelty. Rivers’s glorification of fur is as outdated as her lame jokes, worship of decadence, and addiction to cosmetic surgery. Sure, a stupid coat worn by an old woman on a gossip show may not seem that important, but it is all part of a whole, and we as an influential industry should be more caring rather than less, and should want whatever we present to the public to lessen instead of increase cruelty and destruction of the other creatures with whom we share the planet. We’re better than this, and we can and should do better than this.

Does this mean we also shouldn't show people eating meat on TV? Many cows and chickens are also raised and killed in inhumane ways, and if we are going to assume that members of the general public are incapable of deciding what they feel is right and wrong regarding animals and their own health, then the entertainment industry probably shouldn't be giving people the idea that eating meat is a normal, okay thing to do. The same goes for wearing leather. And smoking. And war. And murder. The list goes on. All TV and films should apparently be set in hippie communes, just to be sure that we don't give anybody the wrong idea about anything, because there is clearly only one right way to live and Hollywood should be a propaganda machine for that.

Last time I checked, when walking around New York on a cold winter day, I am far from the only person wearing fur to keep out the chill, so "most of society" must not yet have reached the backwater of Manhattan (nor the Real Housewives of New York and Beverly Hills). If one wishes to make a case against fur, please at least use some sound reasoning, and don't personally attack beloved treasures of the entertainment industry.