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PETA Pipa picked a peck of pickled herring

PETA has launched a stunning new add featuring a large white shark with a human leg dangling out of its ferocious maw. Its caption reads “Payback is Hell.” It’s pretty effective.

Except that the ad is intended to send anglers the message that fish feel pain. (Say wha?) So we are to assume that if one catches a fish, then getting eaten by a great white for that crime is “payback.” This is very weird, even for PETA, an organization known for going off the deep end to protect feathered and furry friends.

But fish? According to Ashely Byrne, a PETA spokesperson, the ad is “an unusual way to get the message across, but it will cause people to be more sensitive to fish.” God knows we don’t want to be insensitive to our Darwinian ancestors, but in truth, a fish’s pain awareness is closer to that of a barnacle than it is to its more advanced humanoid. Perhaps that’s why the human species evolved and the fish, well…didn’t.

The real problem with the PETA ad is that it came as a response to a recent incident, during which 21 year-old C.J. Wickersham was spearfishing in the Gulf of Mexico, just as few miles from Anna Maria Island. Apparently the blood from a speared fish attracted some unwanted attention and Wickersham spent weeks recovering from shark attack.

PETA, known for favoring the animal world over human species, thought the Wickersham incident would “make a great ad for” eliciting some icthyological sympathy, never mind the fact that a living human almost died. “Live by the spear, die by a great white” was their message.

PETA has some very weird and disturbing tendencies.  It would seem that they love animals a little too much, and humans probably not enough. Freud didn’t cover this one in any of his learned studies. It’s a shame. I’m sure he could have come up with a great name for such neurotic/obsessive-compulsive behavior. Perhaps“ humanophathic” would come close to the PETA model.

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