Sipping a frothy IPA at a dog-friendly pub in Berkeley, I overhear a couple of locals bantering around the large coffee table near the crackling fire. A guy in a flak jacket is accompanied by a sizeable hound who clearly has a mind of his own.
While the dog’s owner talks to his pal in the hoodie, the dog soundlessly slips up into one of the chairs and takes root. After a few minutes, Flak jacket notices.
“Clunker! Get down from there.” Clunker isn’t listening. When Flak jacket begins to tug at his collar, Clunker goes limp in classic passive resistance technique, effectively doubling his body weight.
The man gets out of his chair and manages to pull the dog’s front legs onto the floor — and Clunker seems fine with keeping just his big behind in the chair.
“Can’t make this dog do anything!” Flak puffs, finally getting him onto the rug.
“Where’s the Dog Whisperer when you need him?” Hoodie chortles.
Flak laughs, too. “That guy’s a fake. I’ve tried his techniques. They don’t work.”
“They seem to work on TV.”
“Yeah, well, I have a theory. I think he uses show dogs… Clunker sit!” The dog is now straining towards the door, the man firmly gripping his collar.
“Maybe Clunker needs acting lessons,” smirks Hoodie.
Flak, still laughing: “He needs a frickin’ lobotomy!”
(The Dog Whisperer has noted that owners often need just as much training as dogs. One wonders if a spin-off called “The Owner Whisperer” is coming soon.)
Since this is the political issue of Bay Woof, a word about the ways in which websites are used to confuse, distract, and stupefy people is in order. It’s no laughing matter, but I’ll do my best.
In the murky world of Orwellian double-speak inhabited by corporate PR hatchet men like Rick Berman (recently featured on The Rachel Maddow Show), you’re paid to convince the masses that anything that serves the good of the few (those who employ you) is a godsend to all humanity, while the common good is a socialist swindle hated by all freedom lovers.
In Berman’s world, facts are dangerous to the Republic. His motto: Just say no to know. The antidote to dreaded “information” is, of course, misinformation. That’s why I wouldn’t put it past one of his many astroturf websites, www.fishscam.com, to one day claim: “Recent studies prove that mercury strengthens the immune system!” Then there’s his www.sunlightscam.com, which insists that when it comes to skin cancer, those poor sparkly little UV rays have clearly been mischaracterized by the forces of darkness. Berman falls just short of blaming melanomas on the unrestricted transmission of Green 960 into the atmosphere.
So it’s little wonder that his website www.animalscam.com treats Michael Vick as the victim and The Humane Society as the arrogant perp when it cites a column from The Baltimore Sun: “Mr. Vick is now on a leash held by the Humane Society’s Wayne Pacelle… Mr. Vick’s head is on a pike at the city gate as a warning to any who would dare fight dogs, while the Humane Society gets untold millions in free publicity…” .
Oh, the injustice of it all. Berman probably doesn’t care one way or another about dogs, but if their champion organization inconveniences Berman’s bosses – largely the corporate giants of food manufacturing – by defending the rights of farm animals, he has no qualms about shooting down the Humane Society on “site.”
The modern PR hitman has become adept at the game of “Pin-the-Hitler-Moustache-on-the-Reformer.” That’s why at www.animalscam.com, PETA and The Humane Society are depicted as fuhrers of a “perverted” effort to “put animals ahead of human beings” through a “by any means necessary philosophy.”
Of course, if you want to get to the real source of any problem, follow the money, not the moustache. It’s the first rule of credibility: The people getting the fattest paychecks are usually the most suspect.
Don’t be surprised if Rick Berman launches a new site soon called www.compassionscam.com — his well-paid effort to convince you that the best way to improve the lot of animals is to give money directly to the livestock industry, not animal welfare organizations.
After all, those wacky bunny-huggers just want to turn us all into vegetarians. And if that happens, where’s the profit motive in raising hundreds of thousands of hogs and Holsteins? I can just imagine Berman’s tortured logic on the subject: “Have a heart! The quickest way to put poor defenseless animals on the endangered species list is to stop eating them…”.
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