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| Rob's Soapbox | ||
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Congratulations!
You have finally landed on the one page on this entire site (and on the entire internet for that matter) that is purely without bullshit... my soapbox page. There are a lot of times during our show that, whether it's because of time constraints and other obligations, I don't always get to address some issues that I feel don't get the attention they deserve. There are even more times when I just don't feel like waiting until the show the next day to get some things off my chest. Thus, I have started the "Rob's Soapbox" page. If you have clicked on this page looking for someone to coddle your fragile sense of self-esteem, or tell you what you want to hear or to reinforce your outdated world view, then exit this page right now and go somewhere else. If you are in search of the last forum for reason and common sense left in the world, then sit back, relax, and enjoy. I make only one promise with this soapbox page... if you read long enough and often enough, you will eventually be offended. So here's my latest soapbox. Listen up, 'cause you just might learn something... |
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October 29th, 2007 THE REAL HORROR OF HALLOWEEN There are very few things that I am so passionate and so angered by that I literally can’t discuss with someone who has an opposing view. Oh sure, I can get agitated and angry and “fired up,” and maybe even a little insulting about topics ranging from America’s asinine dependence on anti-depressant drugs (and giving those drugs to children), to topics like political correctness ruining our culture. While those and many other topics may get my juices flowing, and sometimes even my blood boiling, I can still maintain an ability to discuss them. Anytime on the show that we discuss what I believe to be the most innocent of victims in our society, however, I freely admit that I am, at any moment, one stupid caller’s comment away from a complete and total meltdown of epic proportions. Lest you think I am speaking of children, allow me to dispel your misconceptions. Children are our society’s second most innocent victims. Unfortunately, children grow up to become adults, most of them thus becoming adults that suck. Additionally, because children are supposed to someday assimilate into our culture, they must, by definition and necessity, experience their share of pain and disappointment throughout their young lives to prepare them for the hellfire that will be the rest of their pathetic lives. Don’t get me wrong, I cringe and my skin crawls at a myriad of things I see American parents doing, or not doing, to their children, ranging from drugging them to coddling them to dressing them up for Halloween at the age of 6 months solely for the parents’ amusement. All of these and countless other examples are reprehensible behaviors that do nothing but damage the child involved, sometimes forever. However, I am a firm believer that no human soul will spend its time on Earth untainted. Therefore, short of blatant child abuse, I can rationalize various forms of idiotic parenting behavior as basic karmic payback for some past or future atrocity the child in question has or will commit. The true innocent victims in America are our pets. I have long repeated a famous quote from Gandhi which was adopted as a national motto by the country of Italy, “you can judge a society by the way it treats its animals.” Gandhi said it for the same reason I embrace it; pets are our most innocent and precious creatures and if we, as a society, are incapable of treating these conduits of nature in the way they deserve, we are a failed people. Whoever created this universe had the sense to give us the power to rule it, thus assigning us the responsibility to behave properly. Just because we can treat pets cruelly doesn’t mean that we should. That’s why we strive to treat even our non-pet animals in the most humane way possible, even when killing them. If we can take pains to as humanely as possible put a cow, pig and chicken to death, we certainly can go above and beyond when it comes to providing a wonderful life for the animals that actually live with us. I am not, when referring to the topic I find nearly impossible to discuss, referring to animal abuse in the abstract. Within all great societies, scumbags exist and I accept, acknowledge and even embrace that fact. Michael Vick and his ilk should and will be punished on this Earth and beyond and I can sleep at night knowing that and understanding that dogs were tortured at his hands. It sickens me, but I accept it. Random, occasional cretins of society do not shake my belief in a culture. I am talking here about a practice that has grown in popularity, acceptance and credibility despite the fact that it is cruel, damaging, and breaks the bond of trust between a human and his or her pet. To draw a comparison imagine, if you will, for just a moment, if our society, our media, our business world and our culture as a whole embraced or at the very least looked the other way when it came to pedophilia. Child rape doesn’t, on its’ own, kill a boy or girl but it does break a bond of trust between a youngster and an adult, and it does mentally, more than physically, torture the victim. You have to be thinking by now something like, “my god, what on earth is he going to compare to child rape?” well, settle down, Alice. I am not comparing the two directly, I am using the most vile and reprehensible act I can think of to illustrate the horror that the behavior causes the victim. Nothing compares, on the level of reprehensibility, to raping a child and that is why we, as a society, are making the punishments for such atrocities more and more harsh. Thus, my analogy; imagine if we not only weren’t punishing people who did such horrible things but rather, embraced and encouraged them? When it comes to our pets, specifically the dogs of America, they have been domesticated by us to the level that their very existence is motivated by one thing; pleasing us. If you are blessed to have an extremely intelligent dog, experts agree that his I.Q. tops out somewhere around 25-30, half that of a mentally retarded human being (and again, just a reminder, those with 25-30 I.Q. are the smartest dogs…as much as we try to humanize our pets and we’re all amazed that Fido can shake, we’re not dealing with rocket scientists here). Our dogs wake up every morning wanting to know how to please us. In exchange, they get excited and their version of happy when they are rewarded with human interaction, food and play. That’s it. Those three things and pooping is why dogs exist. Some of us have found a way to squeeze a little “work” into what dogs define as “play,” but we are simply outsmarting them. Play, eat, poop. If you have ever been fortunate enough to raise a dog properly then you have been able to see the stages of their mood rather easily. When you come home from work, they give you the “Dino” treatment of rushing to you, saying “hi,” and being excited. Their tails wag, their ears are up and nothing in the world matters to them more than you acknowledging that they were and are good dogs. They are happy you are home and will now play with them, feed them, and poop them. On the opposite end of the spectrum is when they have done badly and they know it. Their ears flop, their head hangs, their tail is tucked, they walk slowly, they slouch away from you and they basically just become pathetic. In the case where they have broken a rule, this is acceptable because it shows that they know they disappointed us, and this is their version of saying “I’m sorry.” It’s cute in a pathetic way. If ever you see a dog behave that way just by a person walking towards it, you know that dog has been abused. Not necessarily by the exact person walking towards it at that moment, but certainly by a human. This is where the transformation occurs between pathetic and cute to just plain sad. Nothing makes my heart ache more than seeing a dog that has clearly been mistreated. Actually, that’s not true. There is one thing that makes me more angry and sad all at once and causes me to be unable to speak of it and that is when I see a human doing something to their dog that causes that same level of just plain sad reaction on the part of the dog. When my wife and I rescued our one year old German shepherd, Nellie, she would slink away from me at first. That was sad, and showed clearly that a man, at some point, had done something awful to the dog, but I could feel better knowing that she was now in a good home where she wouldn’t ever feel that way again. When someone who owns a dog makes their own pet feel that way, there is no escape for that poor animal. This brings us to the sick epidemic of using Halloween as an excuse to torture our pets by dressing them up in costumes. Only recently has this trend caught on and I can only explain its acceptance through the complete and total ignorance of the American people, who seem to feel that anything they think is “cute” is therefore acceptable. Alas, you can’t throw a dead cat out of a window right now without hitting a store that sells Halloween costumes for your dog. Advertisers market the idea, photographers encourage family portraits with dressed-up dogs, and newspaper articles endorse, and in some cases, encourage the behavior. Dogs view the practice, in their tiny little minds, as demeaning and punishment of some sort. Dogs don’t want things on them. That’s why when they’re puppies, dogs don’t initially embrace collars or leashes until they learn that good things come (walks, play, rides, etc) when those items are placed on them. Nothing good happens to a dog when he wears a sweater or a batman costume. One of the reasons I stopped having this conversation with the people that defend is that invariably, they would say the most asinine things to defend it:
I would like to credit one person in the media who recently wrote an article in the USA today hoping to reverse this horrific trend. You can read his much more light-hearted attempt at curbing this sick behavior here: http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/finalword/2007-10-23-final-word_N.htm
In the end, I can only hope that those of you who find it cute to torture your dogs mentally will some day, some how, feel the emotional pain that your animal feels every time you come towards them with a cape to wear. Saying stupid things that aren’t true like “look, he likes it,” are just juvenile attempts by you to justify your stupidity. Perhaps if, someday, you feel the total betrayal that your dog feels when you dress him up you may stop the practice. Perhaps someday, if we’re all lucky, you’ll realize that the reason the dog doesn’t bite your hand off when you put the ornament on his ear is what makes the dog such an amazing creature; even in the moment of you making the dog feel horrible, all he wants to do is please you. He puts on a happy face, wags his tail and thinks “god I hope I’m doing what my owner wants now so he’ll take this stupid outfit off of me.” That’s why dogs are better than people, and certainly better than me. When I see you dressing up your dog, I want to shoot you square between the eyes. Society is failing, Gandhi is crying and our dogs are the victims. Way to go, America.
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