Five Reasons to Be a Vegetarian: Jane Velez-Mitchell….. The wrong way to send a message.

Five Reasons to Be a Vegetarian: Jane Velez-Mitchell….. The wrong way to send a message.

Jane Velez-Mitchell is the host of "ISSUES with Jane Velez-Mitchell on CNN,"  and her anti-meat-attitude is the reason why most Omnivores look at the Veggie heads like they are all whack Jobs, with their MEAT IS BAD song of sorrow..  Well, probably not the only reason but go with me here… 

If the Vegan crew took a bit of advice from a historical Rabbi, Hillel the Elder, they’d get more done. Hillel said “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbors.”, so if the PETA\Vegan team took a more introspective approach to their cause, they would find people more apt to listen to them.    

The Vegan\PETA folk certainly don’t like it when the Meaters call them Whack Jobs, Fuzzy Bunny Lovers (really though, who doesn’t love a cute fuzzy bunny?) among other names,   Meaters don’t like it when you attack their food!  What they love.  Case in point,   Jane Velez-Mitchell said on a CNN interview today (10/01/10): "I would much rather devour a piece of well-seasoned squash than a slice of an animal’s rotting carcass.”  Really  ???, I know that I don’t eat rotting meat, but when you tell me I do, because you don’t eat meat, then your well articulated, well meaning words to save the world turn in to Blaa Blaa Blaa with a more irritating tone than Charlie Brown’s teacher..  Period, no argument.  You became a whack job.  You insulted me.

A Non-Meatie  telling a Meater  not to eat meat because it’s bad is akin to a preacher telling me sex involving non-missionary position is evil and I am a Hell bound sinner getting ready to take a endless molten sulfur bath as soon as I “arrive” .    Not that I am invalidating anyone’s religious beliefs and moral constructs,( veggie or religious)  but if you want me to fall in line with your line of thinking, you got to sell it to me, not force it with gross comparisons and hyperbole!

“Well FlexitarianDad, we don’t like it when they call us names and trash our life style.”   Well kind soul, they aren’t trying to convert you, they could care less if you started grazing in the front yard and wearing dried fungus textiles with hemp suspenders.  You’re the sales person, the representative, you have to bend to your target audience, you have to schmooze, not beat up.

What’s a shame is she makes some points that should be considered, even if you don’t wholly agree.

We are fat, as Americans we head the parade of jiggles and dimples, reducing our consumption of meats and dairy would not be a bad thing at all, some would even benefit greater by going pure all out Veggie, but Ms. Mitchell seems to put the whole fat issue down to meat.  We are also lazy, sedentary  couch slugs,  more interested in the TV or Xbox than our health, all the while eating our mega processed foods  and high fructose corn syrup ( Corn chips fried in veg oil with a can of coke for a drink are just as unhealthy as Mitchell’s rotting beef carcass, yet no meat in those) .

She loses the Non Veggie again in this little conversation….

3. Tim Love says: "Imagine a restaurant full of preachy vegetarians. Enough said. I’m kidding, of course. Some of my best friends are vegetarians, but even they have a tendency to be a little on the holier-than-thou side. If I want to eat meat, let me eat it in peace. Nobody is forcing you to be a vegetarian, so why are you trying to force us?"

Jane Velez-Mitchell says: "I challenge the idea that anyone can eat meat 'in peace.' It’s a contradiction in terms. How can you talk about peace if your plate is swimming in blood? 

Author's Note: (I like my steak this way actually! And I eat tar tar once in a while.)

Like I have stated in earlier posts, I have no moral dilemma eating a pig, a cow, and “GASP” veal. I truly believe all animals were putt on this earth to be eaten by something or someone, .. So trying to make me feel guilty is far from genius.  And I am very pro Veggie, a real sympathizer for the cause and her argument turns in to the Charlie Brown “Waaa waaaa waaaa  waa wa waa waa”  for me

 Restated, her augment looks like this to the meaties.    "I challenge the idea that anyone can eat meat 'in peace.' It’s a contrablab blab in terms. How bla  blab la bla b la   blabb blab la.. bla  Blood?

Her very good points become lost on the ears of the very people she is trying to convince, at this point she is preaching only to the choir.  A useless Endeavour if you ask me. 

Keeping to the facts, and tossing the drama, shock and hyperbole is the only way to actually educate people.  Stay away from claims of its unnatural, and other such improvable tidbits, Case in point ……she states that humans make their kids like meat after they force the kids to eat it even when they “Naturally” reject it..  Well I don’t know about you, but I raised 4 kids and if I did not make my kids eat everything they”naturally rejected”   they would be eating only potato chips and chicken nuggets.  So according to that logic, eating greens and fruits would be un-natural to eat too. 

So to my Vegan and Vegetarian brothers and sisters, evangelize with facts and peaceful demeanor and not with aggressive and over the top “Facts” and “examples”.  You just end up yapping to yourselves rather than advancing your cause.

I plan to lead and teach through example.  Enlighten through the palette and encourage with demonstration.  Conversion will come naturally if the person so desires at that point.  

Sudden change will not happen, . 

 “Put the frog in cold water and turn up the heat really really slow..”

If you were wondering , yes, Ms. Mitchell is a Vegan and has been for the last decade.
I will tell you this, I will do more to enlighten people to the vegetarian way that she will with all her celebrity and her TV show, as I sit amongst the heathens and break bread with the sinners.

To read the story at CNN go to  http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2010/09/30/55-tv-host-jane-velez-mitchell/?hpt=Mid