Hysteria And Consensus: Manufactured While U Wait!
By Mitch Berg
Last night after work, I went to the “No Primate Pets” rally at the XCel Energy Center. Of course, the X only holds around 20,000 people with the floors entirely opened to an SRO crowd; as I walked up to the press box, I saw crowds standing eight abreast all the way up Fifth Street, circling around the Travellers building, and over to the Saint Hotel, waiting patiently as the doors closed on a full house. Some waved signs – “Keep oar Monkeez in the White Haus”, “Primates Make Bad Mates” and so on – as they trudged over to Kellogg Boulevard to watch the proceedings on the Jumbotron.
Inside, a tripartisan coalition of Ellen Anderson, Brian Sullivan and Dean Barkley (wearing a “Will Advise Your Administration For Food” T-shirt) led the crowd in a mass “chant-in” on behalf of apes around the world; former Genesis singer Peter Gabriel provided interstitial music, keynoting his set with a newly-rewritten “Don’t Shock The Monkey”.
And when former Governor Jesse Ventura – perhaps the most respected man in Minnestoa politics today – took the stand and bellowed “No primates for…um…pets”, the building shook, as the 20,000 voices inside, and at least as many outside, joined their voices as one to demand that Congress ban monkeys as pets.
No, really! Andy Birkey at the Minnesoros Monitor Independent says that Minnesotans are really, really fired up about this issue!
“Michele Bachmann is out of step with Minnesota citizens who want common-sense animal welfare policies and want their communities protected from dangerous attacks and diseases,” Michael Markarian, president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund said in a press release Thursday.
Ah. Well, if the Humane Society – AKA “the voice of Minnesota” – says it’s so…
Bachmann – Minnesota’s Sixth District congresswoman, who excites more unthinking hysteria than any other politician in Minnesota (indeed, some have called her “The Katherine Kersten of Politics”) voted against the bill, doncha see. And if Rep. Bachmann – who won her office in 2006, a famously bad year for Republicans, by the biggest margin of victory in any seriously-contested race with her rigorously conservative message – votes against something, well, most Minnesotans just have to be for it.
Right?
Of course, we don’t know why Bachmann voted against the bill – not from Birkey’s story, certainly.
Perhaps monkeys as pets are not rightfully a federal issue, and that Rep. Bachmann was correct in voting against it? Perhaps?
The Minnesoros Monitor Independent’s spiral into self-parody continues.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:17 am
When I think “common-sense” I don’t think of the Humane Society. Or of Andy Birkey for that matter. :-/
June 24th, 2008 at 11:29 am
We’re talking Agitated And Aggrieved Andy here — the thought that he could agree with Bachmann that the sun came up this morning causes him physical pain.
I wonder what Liberals view as the proper role of the Federal government? Is there any intervention they would oppose as being not the purview of the Federal government?
June 24th, 2008 at 11:45 am
The HSLF is the HSUS PAC. And the HSUS is not _the_ Humane Society.
There are a large number of organizations that call themselves “Humane Societies”, and that operate animal shelters all over the country. The Animal Humane Society operates shelters in Buffalo, Coon Rapids, Golden Valley,
St. Paul and Woodbury. The Minnesota Valley Humane Society operates a shelter in Burnsville. The Northwoods Humane Society operates a shelter in Forest Lake. The Minnesota Humane Society operates a shelter in St. Paul.
And the Humane Society of the United States raises more money than all of the various local humane societies combined, and doesn’t operate – or help fund – a single animal shelter. It is, in fact, a fund-raising scam, playing off the confusion in its name so as to raise money for the same bunch of far-left environmentalist whackos that run ALF and PETA.
June 24th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
You should see how miffed Birkey gets when gerbils are at issue.