Last week we told you about Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon, the PETA-promoted “vegetarian” celebrity who told a daytime talk-show audience that “everything’s better with bacon.” Now the animal rights group is promoting hip-hop stars Phonte and Big Pooh as vegetarian ambassadors, using a video diary they shot two years ago during a brief experiment with meatless eating. Speaking on behalf of his group Little Brother, rapper Phonte told fans on Monday that he doesn’t endorse PETA “[i]n any way, shape, or form … Meat ain’t murder, its what’s for dinner! … [W]hen I see a chicken, I don’t think ‘oh, poor little helpless creature of God.’ I’m thinkin’ ‘Fo’ piece waing dinner…’” [Warning: this essay contains fowl language.]
Reader responses to the Little Brother essay provide an interesting look into how some in the hip-hop community view PETA’s efforts to use their culture as a hunting ground for new animal-rights converts. One reader writes:
I love how almost everyone on their homepage is Black … like they’ve bought into the whole hip hop/Black culture = automatic cool points mindset and are using that to promote their extremely biased, and extremely slanted point of view … They come off as really condescending and obnoxious in my opinion, like vegetarianism is the only way we should live, and if you do anything to the contrary, you’re a heathen and a discredit to the human race.
Referencing PETA’s highly offensive “Animal Liberation” project (a traveling exhibit comparing African-American slaves to farm animals), another reader writes:
Hopefully now people will realize what type of organization or cult PETA is. Comparing my ancestors to a slaughtered cow is [expletive deleted] insulting.
The prize for best hip-hop retort to PETA, though, goes to this comment from a Little Brother fan:
I am for the ethical treatment of animals and all, but you cannot compare a system of oppression to a system of lunch … they aren’t the same.
