Today's Evil Beet Gossip

Samantha Ronson Points Out How Odd It Is That We Care More About Chickens Than Humans

Okay, so, my friend Trish keeps talking about this book called Skinny Bitch, basically about how you have to be all vegan and shit to truly be healthy, and she’s like, “Listen, Beet, I don’t think you should read it unless you’re ready to be vegan. It’s the kind of thing you can’t unread.” And I went a few months without reading it, but then last night I gave in and bought it and I’m about halfway through, and I think I have to be vegan now. The poor animals! It’s SO AWFUL how they’re treated — I just can’t be part of anything that encourages that industry. I just think of anyone doing that to Leo or the kitties and it makes me so angry! And Californians seem to understand those horrors — they passed an animal-rights initiative on Tuesday, while revoking the rights of gay couples to marry.

Samantha Ronson sums it up nicely on her latest MySpace blog:

2 steps forward….. 2 steps back

i guess people care more about farm animals than they do their fellow man, that’s really sad to me.

yes, i am glad that the chickens will have more room and better conditions as they wait to die, but i just think it’s frightening that people show more compassion for tomorrow’s dinner than for the chef.

yup, miss piggy and chicken little may rest easy, but gay people in florida and california can no longer get married and gay couples in arkansas can’t adopt children. g-d forbid a loving family (regardless of sexual orientation) give a needy child a home! there aren’t children out there in dire need of love and shelter, no this country is thriving and no child is in need.

oh well, i guess one out of four ain’t bad!

You tell ’em, Sam!

67 CommentsLeave a comment

  • I don’t care if gay chickens marry each other as long as they don’t have sex when I am eating my McNuggets.

  • while I TOTALLY agree with Sam about Prop.8 vs. Prop. 2, I can’t say I agree with you about Skinny Bitch. I too was encouraged to read it by my health-nutty friends. But I took it with a grain of salt. The book definitely made me more conscious about what foods I eat (diet cans of sugar, processed cardboard crackers, etc.). However, I am a Darwinist — survival of the fittest baby. Animals are here for us to eat. Just like snakes are here for birds to eat and worms are here for birds to eat…

  • i support gay marriage and better conditions for animals but i’m not sure this analogy makes sense.

    and beet, if you want to be vegan, great. but if you don’t, see if you have a natural foods store where you can buy meat from producers who let their animals roam around like they did in olden times.

  • Yeah the chickens get a better deal. They wait to die in comfy stalls. While you die waiting for your rights on a comfy couch. What a trade off. No one said you can’t be a chicken, just that you can’t marry. Maybe just maybe people care about the ethical treatment of animals more then they care about the ethical treatment of other humans because A/ they have no other choice but that stall and two B/ they have no voice of their own. No one cares about a chef who doesn’t care about the chickens he serves.

  • i am weirdly attractacted to her im not sure why but i totally understand why lindsay is going out with her

  • I don’t agree. The torturous treatment of animals is not an equal case to people not being allowed to get married. Sorry. I am a strong supporter of equal rights for all people, but this analogy is ridiculous.

  • omg i didnt even think of it that way! so Chickens and pigs get nice comfy homes now (good, im glad) but HUMAN children cant get a good home cuz the only couple willing to take them HAPPENS to be gay? omg that is sooo disgusting!

  • Why does it have to be an us or them mentality?? Why can’t it be both? Let’s treat animals AND people humanely! Gee what a concept, duh.
    Stop listening to mental midgets like Samantha Ronson people.

  • I think someone stole my name…weird.

    Anyway, exactly why can’t it we have both?

    I read Skinny Bitch …and well I’m not vegan but I can’t eat meat. I haven’t eaten meat in over 2 months and I’m loving it… I hardly miss it at all and feel much better about my contribution to the animals. Not to mention I feel better in general…meat contains: pesticides, antibiotics, harmones and steriods. Last time I check that can’t be good for you…if you haven’t read the book – do it.

    GAY RIGHTS AND ANIMALS RIGHTS – FOR LIFE PEEPS!

  • You can’t believe everything you read Beet. I’ve read the book, and I’ve also worked in animal agriculture. EVERYTHING is that book was either completely wrong, or severely exaggerated. The book takes the worst case situations (i.e. farmers who break the law with respect to animal welfare) and present it as the norm.

    I would have thought a journalist would be more objective.

  • That book is crazy… we as humans have been eating meat for hundreds or thousands of years and we are still here so it can’t be that bad! They tell us not to drink milk while milks benefits have been proven over and over again! Those skinny “bitches” just have too much time on their hands and don’t have a modeling career any more so needed a ploy to make money!

  • Well, I guess animals didn’t have the whole “moral” battle that gay marriage does. In that case, SamRo fails.

    And it pains me to say so because I 110% support gay marriage and SamRo & LiLo’s relationship. She just is missing a logical step.

  • In response to some peoples comments, even the animals that are treated fairly are not treated well. It’s horrible to realize how much factories hide from us. And although the analogy is not a good one, I do understand it.

    The horrible and unfair treatment of animals is deemed socially unacceptable…but the love between two human beings is not, simply because they are of the same gender.

    It’s ridiculous. Society is ridiculous.

  • beet, any doctor will tell you that being a vegan is crazy unhealthy as its very hard to get the protein and as yeast is a living thing, no bread for you which basically means no carbs which is what your brain needs to survive. good luck with that

  • I personally liked the book. I was a vegetarian who ate dairy before reading the book and decided to try veganism after reading it. I felt better than I had in months by going vegan. I have slacked off a little and eat dairy on the odd occasion. Being w/o power for 12 days (due to Hurricane Ike) in the midst of trying to go vegan was hard. But I am slowly getting back to it.

    My suggestion to you EB is to try eliminating things slowly. Don’t go strict right off. Take it a week at a time.

    Good Luck

  • @ censor llmao

    I was raised around farms, I’ve worked dairy, corn, tobacco, baled hay, and helped slaughter pigs — all before I was 10. (remember, the cheapest labor is friends/family’s children) I’ve been in turkey factories since I was an adult. To truelly form an opinion on the treatment of animals you need to do the labor and work the farms. A true farmer can’t stand the people who mistreat their animals and will be the first to have them shut down. Everyone hears the horror stories, no one actually goes to the clean farms

  • i love her.. i love her.. and i’m totally pissed that civil rights of tax paying people are even something that are up for a vote?!?… someday we will look back at this time and it will be like looking back at the hate that actually made it illegal for interracial couples to marry…( i also wish she was on facebook)

  • As much as I think people who are gay should be able to get married, I don’t think animals should be brought into this! I am an animal lover and I don’t find that funny one bit. Screw you Sam. Animals are important and it is not saying that one bit, you never saw a human, well maybe you have, but not legally this day and age, waiting to die in a cage so small they could barely breathe and then butchered to death! Stfu!

  • @ copa…. vegans can eat bread. Yeast doesn’t come from an animal. Vegans can obtain protein from tofu and rice and beans (which together make a complete protein). Carbs are in vegetables. I just thought you might need an informational update. I’m not even vegan but I happen to love the food. I’m a weirdo. I also think drinking milk is weird. We drink another species BREAST MILK, people!!! But ice-cream.. what would I do without it!?!!? Fuck. So torn. Ice cream wins.

  • You guys don’t see her analogy? Well… she was describing 4 very note-worthy and well-publicized propositions that have just been voted on. Three had to do with rights for gay people, and one had to do with animals rights. The animals one was the only thing people wanted to help on. The other three led to less rights for gay people.

    Yes, it is somewhat apples and oranges, but I think the comparison is also somewhat obvious. She, I believe, is not trying to say that animals have more rights than gay people per say…. I think it is more of ‘look, people are more concerned with how animals are treated than some of their own fellow mankind.’

    I mean…… yeah.

    And yes, I voted to help the poor little animals of course. But I cared a million times more about prop 8.

  • i had been vegetarian for 5 years before i turned vegan, which lasted for a year and a half.
    so, i was 13/14 years old when i started and had been “brainwashing” myself into it. the difference between me and most of vegetarians/vegans is that i never hid the fact that i missed some stuffs. though the desire to eat some types of meat and other animal products were not enough to make me go eat any of them.
    animal ethics were a great matter to me, so i wasn’t unhappy for being vegan.
    on the other hand, i wasn’t a militant, i would never discourage or diminish my friends for being omnivores, neither would i speak about it — it was my choice. also, i’ve never been a big animal lover.

    so there was a day i caught myself feeling like eating animal products again and i realize i didn’t care much about animals, everything had just been a way for me to feel less guilt for one’s pain. then i came to terms that my pleasure should come first — i admitted to myself i was selfish enough to stop that.
    and it took me three months to actually go back to being an omnivore. it wasn’t easy at all on the first week, everything i ate went back to the toilet. my body and my mind were not used to that. still, i went through that all.
    it’s been 1 year and a half now, and i’m happy with my choice. at least, apart from most of people, i know what i’m eating.

  • Reading a book similar to that, The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter, is what encouraged me to be a vegetarian for the past year. I’ve lost both weight and inches on my waist. I also no longer support the factory farming system that puts animals in great, unnecessary discomfort and abuses its workers with low pay and dangerous conditions while putting small farms out of business.

  • I’m reading Skinny Bitch right now too! I just finished the part about what they do to the animals in the slaughterhouses. Now, I am not normally a squeamish person, but I literally had to set the book down at one point because I started to feel the vomit rising in my throat. Probably one of the more graphic descriptions I’ve ever read. That being said, I love meat and never intend on becoming a vegetarian. Nothing like a good steak with a cold beer! But it really is a good book and besides the “going vegetarian” part I’ve been following the advice in the book and I’ve lost 5 pounds. Woot!

  • @ huh thank you for the update, just got my info from an actual vegan who refused to eat bread because it was a living thing also, as he was very odd in other ways guess I should just assume he’s crazy. Only other info I’ve had on it was from my doctor thanking the gods that I wasnt going vegan when i went vegetarian for about a year awhile back as it turns out she had treated alot of kids whos parents raised them vegan who had serious health issues from it and the malnutrition it gave them

  • You read the book!?! =) OH MY! Weird how so many people are quick to criticize a decision that you believe in your heart to be the right thing to do. People get really defensive about it and like to judge. I don’t get that at all. It’s certainly not unhealthy (anybody who says that has done no research on the lifestyle). I can’t wait to give you some recipes!!!!! xoxoxo.

  • P.S. Get ready to lose some weight! I’m not 100% vegan yet, but I’m slowly inching in that direction. I haven’t had meat since July though and I’ve dropped over 10 lbs without changing a single other thing in my lifestyle. Save some animals and lose some weight. Where is the harm in any of this?

  • I would take this girl’s opinion a lot more seriously if someone could produce a single picture of her where she isn’t sneering or posturing like some 14-year-old boy trying to look like a tough guy and failing miserably.

    Grown-up opinion, fairly coherent argument, but it lacks punch when above it she looks like my jr. high boyfriend when he was trying to make everyone think he was the toughest thing they ever saw and instead looked like an idiot.

  • I dont see how gay marriage and saving chickens are the same. I could see it if it was we care more for saving chickens then babies ,but gay marriage? that really does not connect.

  • Animals can’t express their feelings and do a march for their rights, but people can.

    I don’t wanna sound mean, but thats the truth, its sad but you can’t compare the homosexuals with animals.

  • So you know…people fighting for a cause will say anything to sway one’s opinion…especially vegans I feel like. I dated one in college, and though he wasn’t pushy at all, I was curious and read more about how inhumane farm animal housing can be. It is very very sad, yes, but humans are the superior species for a reason…keep that in mind.

  • @ copa

    your actual vegan friend may be slightly retarded. Tell him he can eat yeast. Anyway, I’m sure lack of protein can affect the brain, but many vegans and vegetarians don’t really know how to do it, so they load up and carbs and don’t get essential vitamins. So basically, I agree with doctors for the most part.

  • @ copa… your actual vegan friend may be slightly retarded. Tell him he can eat yeast. Anyway, I’m sure lack of protein can affect the brain, but many vegans and vegetarians don’t really know how to do it, so they load up and carbs and don’t get essential vitamins. So basically, I agree with doctors for the most part.

  • is sam ronson so stupid that she cannot care about more than one casue at a time?! it’s gay marriage or factory farming! it’s save the whales or save the humans! save the forests or save the babies! because obviously, you can;t do all of them. here’s a newsflash, dipshits: compassion is not a finite concept, and humans have an enormous capacity for doing good in the world if we would just break out of that “us or them” mentality. it’s called multi-tasking..look into it.

  • @quirky–I think Sam is sort of saying that it’s California voters who seem not to be able to care about more than one issue at once. But while I’m all for gay rights (and animal rights) her analogy isn’t great. Not being able to get married and living in your own filth until you are slaughtered…not exactly the same in my book. I haven’t read Skinny Bitches but I’ve read plenty of other books on the subject. If you’re going to eat meat, just try to get it from a smaller, family farm, not a factory farm/processing place. Those are horrible for animals, workers, the environment–just bad all around.

  • Oh, and eating meat is the survival of the fittest (Sassysabby)? Go out in a field and kill a cow with your bare hands, then butcher it yourself and eat it–THAT would be survival of the fittest.

  • Regarding veganism -I think the problem is that many vegans don’t make sure to get complete proteins in their daily diets. So Beet, just make sure that You do!

  • beet: it isn’t that hard for vegans/vegetarians to get all their nutrients, as there are many great books that will help you understand how to get optimum nutrition from non animal sources. i have been veg for over half my life and i am very healthy and not over or underweight. most meat eaters aren’t really very healthy themselves so to see them playing the nutrient card at vegans is hilarious. after all,we aren’t the ones who are eating at mc donalds and wendy’s 3 times a week.

  • i don’t think eating animals is wrong, but i do think the way we mass produce animals without regard to them as having feelings is very wrong, they are tortured. not to mention the harm that msg and all the other crap they cram into them hurts us. i wish everyone could just raise our own!

  • @ quirkygirlkitten

    I totally agree. I’ve been a vegetarian for 18 minutes and I’m finding it easier than I thought.

    Viva la Vegan!

  • @ censorthis

    well,at least they were a step up from the chicks you usually get: morbidly obese KFC inhaling right wing inbred republican fucktards. Did you check that box on eharmony?

  • I’m a vegan . I’m a construction worker. I can lift double my weight . If my washing machine breaks down I have a washboard to spare . Before I was vegan I weighed 182lbs , had 28% body fat and was on disability . (I have had Lupus for 20 years) BTW Chick Peas have more Iron (there are a littany of other vegan options that do as well) than ANY meat . Anything in excess of 12% of your daily calories from protein damages your kidneys and it is impossible unless you eat crap to get less than the 8% you actually need. But this isn’t about that.

    Samantha was attempting to make a point about inequality morons . She actually blogged in favour of animal welfare standards the previous day. I don’t even know why I am dignifying this with a response.

  • It’s not really an analogy. She’s saying she’s shocked that people seem to care more about the comfort of food animals (which she cares a lot about), than they do about civil rights for a group of people. She’s not saying one is “like” the other. It’s a contrast to highlight what people seem to care about, and it’s a good one. Much better than simply saying, “I wish more people voted for gay civil rights.”

  • i read the book too, went vegan for a while, then decided it was impossible to do while in mexico, so i’m waiting to go back to the states where there is more option, and in the mean time just trying to be as healthy and cruelty free as possible.

  • >Regarding veganism -I think the problem is that many vegans
    >don’t make sure to get complete proteins in their daily diets.

    This is an odd comment that comes up regularly. The best counter is to suggest the person asks their doctor how often protein deficient vegans or vegetarians are seen in their practice. And then ask what the food related problems they do see often are.