Examining PETA’s Prez

Her response seems harsh until the replacement investigator presents the footage he's gathered, which displays animal cruelty so gratuitous and severe, it's guaranteed to shock any conscientious person, not just kooky animal crusaders. The turkeys are hung upside-down in harnesses used to secure them before their throats are slit. In one scene, a worker hangs a turkey in a harness, then inexplicably punches it. In another, a turkey is hurled against a cement wall, maiming it, then a worker sits on the still-live turkey as if it's a throw pillow. As the saying goes, you don't want to know how the sausage is made.

Newkirk's unyielding passion cuts both ways. PETA's influence has been invaluable in bringing the issue of animal rights into the national spotlight, but their brash and offensive stunts have dominated the media in a way that falsely suggests they are representative of the mainstream animal-rights community. The film features interviews with Wayne Pacelle, the president of the Humane Society, who excoriates Newkirk for her support of the terroristic Animal Liberation Front, and Friends of Animals president Priscilla Feral, who says Newkirk has "trivialized animal rights."

The irony of Newkirk's story is that she is as much a symbol of human rights as she is a symbol of animal rights. In the film's opening scene, Newkirk reads hate mail. One letter reads, "With all of the innocent children being exploited, aborted and abused, with all of the people starving in this world, why don't you pull your head out of your a-- and fight for a real cause rather than if a cat gets caught in a fan belt." The letter summarizes the problematic attitude of PETA's opposition, the attitude that people don't have the right to care about whatever they want to. DeGeneres has the right to cry when a dog gets taken away from children who came to love him. Panettiere has the right to protest the slaughter of dolphins. "Meerkat Manor" fans have the right to care as much about the death of real meerkats as "Sopranos" fans have to care about the deaths of fake mobsters.

There are bound to be dissenting views on animal rights—if such a concept even exists, given humans' de facto sovereignty over the natural world. But no one has the right to impose his or her opinion of what's important on others. When people start trying to force their will on other creatures, whether man, fish or fowl, Newkirk's philosophy of humanity is affirmed anew.

© 2007