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| Martin Clunes joins the growing list of celebrities that thought Animal Rights would not touch them so long as they helped their cause. |
Soft Animal-Rights is all around us. In most cases, it is a cynical form of virtue signalling. Celebrities and people in the animal world are lured by it. The idea is that if you give some ground to ideologists (as opposed to just sticking with progressive science-based animal welfare) they will either leave you alone or help bolster your public image. The problem is that AR ideology is an unavoidably extremist cause and once you step into it you will find that is very hard to justify half-measures. Furthermore, you will find yourself in a crazy reality that you helped foster.
Piers Morgan: During his time as editor of the UK's Mirror newspaper he led animal rights backed a campaign against animals in the circus. He has since made a shameless argument to emotion against the hunting community, despite their proven conservation record. Now he finds himself exasperated by the wave of trendy veganism being pushed by his show guests and fellow celebrities.
Chris Packham: Pretty much grew his career working on TV programmes that used animals trained by circus trainers. From these days (and until the present) he worked alongside TV presenters who happily worked with trainers from the same roots. His partner's father was amongst these trainers and close friends with Mary Chipperfield. Packham decided to boost his career with a reputation for being something of an animal activist.
Going into a bit like your dad at a disco, Packham went after all the trendy targets.
This year he capped it all by going all in with the trendy vegan fad during "Veganuary". It was a cringe making move with Packham saying he has farming friends and he hoped it would move more farms to improve their welfare standards. No, Chris, I don't think the farmers are going to be thanking you much for popularising veganism. However, as soon as he declared himself vegan he reported he was contacted by "ultra-vegans" who called him a "cow rapist", criticised his pet-ownership, criticised the fact that he ate honey (a classic sin in vegan circles) and criticised the fact that he wore leather.
Going into a bit like your dad at a disco, Packham went after all the trendy targets.
This year he capped it all by going all in with the trendy vegan fad during "Veganuary". It was a cringe making move with Packham saying he has farming friends and he hoped it would move more farms to improve their welfare standards. No, Chris, I don't think the farmers are going to be thanking you much for popularising veganism. However, as soon as he declared himself vegan he reported he was contacted by "ultra-vegans" who called him a "cow rapist", criticised his pet-ownership, criticised the fact that he ate honey (a classic sin in vegan circles) and criticised the fact that he wore leather.
Jamie Oliver: This TV chef was a classic bandwagon jumper. He naively embraced the vegan trend like any other virtue signalling cause he had done in the past. He was in it earlier than Packham by five years, which is quite embarrassing to dear old Christopher who has made soft AR ideology part of his public identity. Oliver embraced "World Vegan Month" before there was a Veganuary. He has since dedicated an entire episode of his TV show to veganism and makes a point of catering to them.
The trouble is Jamie Oliver isn't a vegan. He is a chef who owns a lot of restaurants and hosts mainstream cooking shows which have an overwhelmingly large non-vegetarian (let alone non-vegan) customer base. Providing vegan options is not enough for AR mentality. Result: just recently Jamie Oliver's Italian Restaurant was targeted and stormed by Animal Rights protestors. They don't care if you offer vegan options, Jamie. How is the restaurant business currently going anyway?
The result is that the AR group shamelessly portray Sea World as their bitch, explaining that this is just the beginning of what will end in Sea World owning no animals whatsoever. If this wasn't enough, PeTA and other AR groups didn't get their share of the pie when HSUS made their deal, so they could happily attack away as before.
The end result was that Joe Manby stepped down as CEO of SeaWorld on the 27th of February 2018 after the company appears to not have improve its profits despite it's appeasement to the AR industry.
Steve-O: The former Jackass star who made the AL top 10 anti-circus celebrity hypocrites found that even he could not contend with the madness he aligned himself with and is now officially no longer a vegan.
Despite doing a number of questionable things with animals that would anger any self-respecting animal welfare supporter, Steve-O decided to make videos for PeTA attacking Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus and once that bandwagon was cooling off, happily jumped on the anti-Sea World bandwagon - where he got arrested for staging a rather silly protest stunt.
He also enthusiastically got on board with the whole celebrity vegan trend with vigour. However, he wasn't ready for vegans questioning his vegan status and verbally attacking him for not feeding his cats a vegan diet as well as clearly lapsing on his own diet. Steve-O protested on social media saying they were "combative" and hurting their cause.
Unsurprisingly he got little sympathy:
Despite doing a number of questionable things with animals that would anger any self-respecting animal welfare supporter, Steve-O decided to make videos for PeTA attacking Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus and once that bandwagon was cooling off, happily jumped on the anti-Sea World bandwagon - where he got arrested for staging a rather silly protest stunt.
He also enthusiastically got on board with the whole celebrity vegan trend with vigour. However, he wasn't ready for vegans questioning his vegan status and verbally attacking him for not feeding his cats a vegan diet as well as clearly lapsing on his own diet. Steve-O protested on social media saying they were "combative" and hurting their cause.
Unsurprisingly he got little sympathy:
One said:
"You protested SeaWorld bro. You know fish are sentient and feel pain just like us. They want to live just like us. As a vegan animal rights activist I will not back down. That doesn't make me or anyone else combative but it shows we have compassion which you have been seeming to lack"..."Where did your compassion go? It seems in your post calling out vegans and messages between you and one of my friends makes you the combative one Steve."..."It's about ANIMALS, not people and their self-centred, egotistical ways,"
Another wrote.
"Let's remember the ACTUAL victims here, the ones who are senselessly killed for no good reason."
"You protested SeaWorld bro. You know fish are sentient and feel pain just like us. They want to live just like us. As a vegan animal rights activist I will not back down. That doesn't make me or anyone else combative but it shows we have compassion which you have been seeming to lack"..."Where did your compassion go? It seems in your post calling out vegans and messages between you and one of my friends makes you the combative one Steve."..."It's about ANIMALS, not people and their self-centred, egotistical ways,"
Another wrote.
"Let's remember the ACTUAL victims here, the ones who are senselessly killed for no good reason."
With a further stating:
"You should take a step back and think about the fact that you are currently arguing on the side of animal abuse...It is genuinely disgusting how desperate you are to deflect from the fact that you are completely unwilling to stop abusing animals for the sake of your taste experiences and conveniences."
PetSmart
Giant American pet supplies retailer PetSmart really thought they were ahead of the curve when they joined in with the AR movement in attacking pet breeders. PetSmart, despite its name, promoted adoption over buying dogs and cats. It advocated the "adopt don't shop" mantra that has seen many respectable and reputable animal breeders unfairly lumped in with their nefarious distant relatives. The company apparently even sat down with the likes of both HSUS and PeTA to help define the swear word for animal breeder. However, such appeasement strategies held no water with PeTA who have resolutely attacked the chain since the early 2000s and until the present day. They have targeted just about everything PetSmart does, but their recent campaigns have been focused on their retailing of various animals. PetSmart are currently suing PeTA for their underhand undercover tactics that resemble tactics we have seen before in the circus world.
The charity chose to ignore Clunes's various public appearances with trained animals. Many of the various dramas he has worked in since moving on from "Men Behaving Badly" have required he work close with trained animals, supplied by well-known British animal trainers. He had little problem with being a part of agricultural fairs in his native Dorset, which he enthusiastically attended and regularly featured a host of animal displays. These were mainly domestic animals and therefore not in BFF's crosshairs but nevertheless this is clearly against the AR ideology that is part of the charity's philosophy.
Clunes narrated and appeared in a 2000 documentary called "Born to be Wild", which is a cringe-worthy advert for the Born Free Foundation. The film shows the charity's clumsy and badly managed attempts at animal husbandry as they attempt to relocate a 26 year old elephant in the wild. After several embarrassingly bad attempts to move the elephant the army of staff resort to drugging the elephant and stand around hitting the poor creature with sticks in order to make it fall over. Clunes goes in for an early rebuttal tactic in the voice over "It looks cruel doesn't it?" before explaining that this is the best way the animal can be safely moved. The irony here is that good animal trainers would have known how to move the animal with minimum if any stress and without having to fall back on the risk of a general anaesthetic. Indeed, this is part of the Animal Welfare argument for the hands on training of animals in captivity, but I digress.
By 2019 it would appear that Clunes was an untouchable soft AR hypocrite. He was the highest profile celebrity of one the most established and socially accepted AR groups, a charity that had been created off the back of a movie involving trained wild animals. Yet he happily worked with trained animals in live events, TV or films. However, he was about to take matters one step too far. In May he appeared in an episode of the ITV series "My Travels and Other Animals" taking part in tourist elephant rides. Elephant rides, if Clunes had been paying attention, are a regular target of AR groups. This was not something BFF could readily ignore even if Clunes thought he could try the old rebuttal trick that had worked on the BFF documentary 19 years previously, "I am not sure it’s a fitting occupation for the largest land animal on the planet.” They cared little for the actor's reasonable justification for elephant rides and that it was "a kinder life than hauling heavy logs". They dropped their patron like a hot coal with their chief executive officer issuing the statement: "We can confirm that, with much regret, Martin Clunes is no longer a patron. Born Free has always been opposed to the exploitation of captive wild animals for entertainment and human interactions, including riding elephants."
As Clunes retreats into the shadows, conspicuous by his lack of comment after years of usually being so vocal in his attacks on BFF targets, online media have ensured his name is regularly connected to this incident. Looking at the swarm of venomous comments against him on social media perhaps he will realise the sort of unreasonable nastiness he helped stir up in the past.
Who's Next?
Movie director James Cameron decided to act like a stereotypical vegan advocate and tell the world about his dietary choice. Cameron supposedly converted to veganism about seven years ago. Since last year he has been discussing a new documentary called "The Game Changers" that looks at athletes who have converted to the vegan way of life. A teaser has been released and heading the surprising list of new vegans was noneother than Cameron's old buddy and star of his Terminator films, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger was once the world's biggest and highest paid movie star. He was seven times Mr Olympia champion in the 1970s and has since gone on to run as a successful politician. During his time as the 38th Governor of California Schwarzenegger played an interesting balancing act. He was the Republican party's environmentalist. Since leaving professional politics he has understandably been critical of current Republican president, Donald Trump's environmental policies (and just about everything else). In 2014 Schwarzenegger appeared on the Epic Meal Time Cooking Show to create an 80,000 calorie Steak and Egger sandwich.
Fast forward a few years and Arnie has been seen sporting tee-shirts with the word "Vegan" emblazoned across them and clips show him telling viewers that it is a lie they need to eat meat to grow muscles. This is despite the fact that during Arnold's entire career as a body-builder, power lifter and movie icon that was built largely upon his muscular physique he was packing away a lot of meat along with the expected artificial help. When the sceptics came in, Arnie immediatley back-tracked. It turns out that not only is not a vegan isn't even a vegetarian or even a pescatarian. He probably fits into a title that should have been the saviour of all soft ARs: The Flexitarian (or Reductionarian). That one is still having a few launch programmes because - surprise, surprise - those pushing the vegan agenda with all their might won't settle for any sort of compromise.
Astley's Legacy was formed to counter the misinformation and propaganda spread by animal rights activists. As well as fighting the corner for circus animals and their trainers, we are here to promote and celebrate the cultural heritage of circus in general, and especially in the country of its birth - Great Britain. For more information please see our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/223570581049199
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