JOAQUIN PHOENIX CODE WORDS
I appreciate the many comments regarding my post regarding the lead actor Joaquin Phoenix acceptance speech at the Oscars. Some of you ripped me for rewording into it more than he said--equating humans with scallops--and pointing out that he never said the word "vegan." I appreciate all the comments and have watched the entire speech.
I can absolutely appreciate the perspective that I unfairly judged more harshly than the speech deserved. And like so many things, I could surely find many things with which to agree. I find it fascinating when people who make millions selling violence suddenly use the platform gained by selling violence to castigate humanity for being violent.
It's similar to John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods, taking the position (remember my debate with him in Las Vegas last year?) that eating meat is "unethical and unhealthy" when he's made (and continues to make) millions of dollars selling meat. Either he's a liar, hypocrite, or moronic.
Further, if I put a few drops of cyanide in an otherwise clean glass of water, would you drink it? Is this too high a standard? I don't know. I know at Polyface we can be accused of inconsistencies, but I've tried to publicly acknowledge those inconsistencies. Like my love of bananas. Or buying grain to feed chickens.
Where I'm headed is what jumped at me during this speech. When you've been accused of being a murderer for providing chicken legs to kids, or a rapist for providing eggs (stealing eggs from laying hens) to children, you develop an incredibly sensitive radar for the code words in the accusatory movement. It's the ability to spot the two drops of cyanide in the glass of water.
During my life, I've learned a lot from highly perceptive people. I've learned about my blind spots. Something that sounds good can be horrible when analyzed by someone's keen wisdom gained through experience. Like the notion that we need to mandate other stakeholders on corporate boards--a current darling of the socialist-communists. It sounds charitable and sweet to some, when actually it holds the risk of being taken hostage by agenda-driven extortionists.
This is the kind of discernment it takes a lifetime of experience and wisdom to accumulate. So when drinking milk is equated in Phoenix's speech to abuse and thievery, this is the code terminology for the most radical animal rights folks who do indeed believe the human is worth no more than a scallop. The responsibility of anyone heading down this path is to clearly separate their ideology from that most radical fringe IF they're going to use radical code phrases in a speech. In other words if you want to say "I believe this much but not that" you have to delineate it; otherwise people like me will assume you've cast your whole persona into the net with the people who invented the phraseology.
This is why broad brushing must be done carefully. Teasing out this and not that is an art form, and anyone who makes their living with words should know the quagmire created when you bumble through with imprecise terminology. If he didn't want to align with the most radical human equivalency groups, he shouldn't have used their phrases and pictures. And if he really wanted to promote pastured livestock as opposed to factory farms, he should have shown some contrasted pictures.
Instead, the cow-calf pictures he chose were NOT from factory farms; they were from PASTURED livestock, the pinnacle of respectful animal husbandry. No, folks, this was a tirade carefully orchestrated to promote the most radical elements of anti-animal fringes, whose body of incriminating verbiage is well known. It's vegan, anti-human, anti-speciation, and militantly anti-livestock in all its forms.
I ask again, are you worth more than a scallop?