By now, I'm sure you've all have heard the fly swat heard 'round the world. Late night talk show hosts had a field day making fun of President Obama's artful swat of a persistent fly that bugged him during an interview.
Enter PETA to the fray: the animal rights group decried Obama's display of unchecked executive power and suggested that next time he used a humane fly catcher instead:
“We support compassion for the even the smallest animals," says Bruce Friedrich, VP for Policy at PETA. “We support giving insects the benefit of the doubt."
Friedrich says PETA supports "brushing flies away rather than killing them" and was disappointed that the President had gone ahead and squashed the pesky fly.
This afternoon PETA sent a Katcha Bug, a device which traps bugs and allows their safe release back into nature to the White House.
Good thing it didn't happen to Cheney - he'd have used his shotgun fo' sho': Link
hypocrites...
I was very surprised to see the fly story catch on in the mainstream media in the first place. But what's happening here is really a case of the media sensationalizing a story, asking PETA for a response and then sensationalizing the response.
"We don't condemn President Obama for acting on instinct. When the media began contacting us in droves for a statement, we obliged, simply by saying that the president isn't the Buddha and shouldn't be expected to do everything right—if not for that, we would not have brought it up. It's the media who are making a big deal about the fly swat—not PETA. However, we took the opportunity, when asked, to point out that we do offer lots of ways in which to control insects of all kinds without harming them, including the humane bug catcher we sent President Obama."
(Source: http://ow.ly/eP1N)
So make sure to read the FULL article and not just the headlines. PETA's not crying foul; they're just saying, "Dude, he swatted a fly. The media asked us what we thought. We said nobody's perfect and, if you want to get nitty gritty about it, yes, there are bug catchers out there. But it's really not that big a deal."
And this story REALLY shouldn't be that big a deal either.
I'm kinda disappointed in neatorama jumping the blow-things-out-of-proportion and jump-on-PETA's-ridiculousness bandwagon. I hate PETA myself, but this is just low
I personally always carry at least 10-15 devices wherever I go not to harm the innocent critters that bug me. 1 for big houseflies, 1 for small houseflies, 1 for muskitos, another for wasps, yet another for big spiders and yet another for small poisonous spiders. Then I always carry all the equipment to catch snakes of different kinds that could perhaps cross my path and finally I carry a device to harmlessly neutralize dangerous dogs ánd I tote a tazer for the occasional niusant human.... - Oh, and I have them all invisible in my breastpocket of my suit...
I think PETA should apologize for overstepping their boundries and should have let PETI step in and issue a statement.
I wish PETA was so easy to get rid of as flies.
Nice!
Or that NBC News devoted almost 2 full minutes of their nationwide news broadcast to a story/video of nothing more than the President of the United States swatting a fly?
What did anyone expect would come of this? The words "must have been a slow news day" don't even come close to justifying the overwhelming stupidity of this whole thing. . .
And, as mentioned by other posters, almost all the animals turned over to PETA end up euthanized. They simply do not devote the money or effort to the care of animals that they expect of others.
I swear... PETA is like those preachy religious people you wish you could just lob a can of peas at.
(+10 point movie reference.)
this is just so garsh darn dumb.
Why not promote repect and honor for all life, regardless, and when we eat what ever we like to eat give thanks for the life they give in order to sustain ours, including plants.
or better, if PETA ppl had their way we humans would no longer exsist because, according to their thinking, we should not eat anything that is alive, so we would all die. Hey, PETA ppl why not save us the trouble and just off yourselves???? (I say with tongue in cheek)
a fly is NOT an animal it is an insect.
again, so garsh darn dumb.
From Websters definition of insect: "1 a: any of numerous small invertebrate animals (as spiders or centipedes) that are more or less obviously segmented —not used technically b: any of a class (Insecta) of arthropods (as bugs or bees) with well-defined head, thorax, and abdomen, only three pairs of legs, and typically one or two pairs of wings
Yeah right. Watch out for those poor termites eating you out of house and home too.