Many of you have already heard the news: we are all setting our DVRs because on Tuesday, February 1, Oprah and 378 of her staffers are taking a one-week vegan challenge. Guests on the show will include the terrific vegan advocate Kathy Freston and anti factory farming author Michael Pollan. Reporter Lisa Ling will give us an inside view of a “beef processing plant” i.e. slaughterhouse.

You can watch a trailer for the upcoming show at tinyurl.com/6fa4azh

You can leave comments on that page in advance or after you have seen it.

The more enthusiastic support Oprah gets the better, so please join the discussion.

And please send the Oprah show a separate note of support where the show take comments (some of which are read on air) at www.oprah.com/ownshow/plug_form.html?plug_id=220

Go to www.oprah.com/tows_listings.html to see when Oprah airs on your local station:

I send thanks to Kathy Freston and about a dozen other wonderful subscribers for making sure we all knew about tomorrow’s show.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

———————-

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts only if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line.)

Please go to tinyurl.com/254ulkx to check out Karen Dawn’s book, “Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals,” which in 2008 was chosen by the Washington Post as one of the “Best Books of The Year!”

To discontinue DawnWatch alerts go to www.DawnWatch.com/nothanks.php

Case in point: back in September, Stephen brought in some “pretty beer girls” to serve the troops during a special, week-long military appreciation edition of The Colbert Report, culminating in a guest appearance by Vice President Joe Biden as a hot dog vendor:

This was followed the next day by a sexy dude dressed in a hot dog suit, “for the lady troops”:

Naturally, PETA was not pleased:

[Neither was I - that is, when I watched the show many a month later (it aired when I was on vacation in NY) - but I didn't see fit to write a press release about it. It doesn't take a marketing genius to know that the general public will view this as so much opportunistic bandwagon-jumping and/or an "attack" on the troops. YOU MUST SUPPORT THE TROOPS AT ALL COSTS! BY WHICH I MEAN NEVER EVER NEVER QUESTION A MOVE MADE BY THE U.S. MILITARY! Like duh.]

Anyhow, I promise to be better in keeping up with this stuff in the New Year. In this vein, I come bearing two more recent clips:

On Monday’s show, Stephen did an “exposé” of Caboodle Ranch, “The Enemy Within.” Located in Lee, Florida, the 30-acre feline rescue group provides sanctuary to 650 cats – and counting. Founder Craig Grant hopes to expand the rescue to over 1,000 cats before the end of 2011; as Stephen points out, “that’s three cats for every throat in the town of Lee.”

SCARY!

Also on Monday, The Daily Show featured a piece on San Francisco’s Happy Meal “ban” (scare quotes because it’s not a ban per se; toys in kid’s meals are still allowed, just as long as the meal in question meets certain nutritional requirements). Libertarians especially will enjoy Aasif Mandvi’s interview with San Francisco Councilman Eric Mar, which includes a rather sizable nailing (starting at 3:02).

Regardless of your opinion on this specific piece of legislation, it’s largely symbolic; a band-aid where a tourniquet is needed. While advertising targeted at children is problematic, the so-called “Happy Meal Ban” still fails to tackle much larger issues, many of which are structural in nature: artificially cheap meat, dairy and egg products due to taxpayer-funded subsidies, both overt (farm aid) and hidden (lax environmental regulations and enforcement); the concentration of cheap, fast food joints in low-income urban areas, coupled with the dearth of grocers in the same; inadequate school funding – again, particularly in low-income areas, which lack the tax bases of wealthier districts – that in turn negatively impacts the school lunch menu; cultural attitudes which hold that children inherently dislike healthy foods, particularly fruits and vegetables, thus acting as self-fulfilling prophecies; etc., etc., etc.

That said, this nerd would love a Crappy Meal, preferably with a Hillary Clinton action figure. The recording should play nothing but her shrill, castrating, cackle of a laugh, which in its bitchy abandon is music to this man-hating feminist’s ears. It can even double as a rape defense device, seeing as how the mere sound of Hill’s voice has the power to make a man’s junk shrivel up and fall off. Better than a rape whistle, yo.

That’s my take, anyhow. What say you?

—————–

Videos in this post:

The Colbert Report, Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Been There, Won That – Joe Biden & Yogi Berra
Joe Biden serves hot dogs to the returning troops, Stephen introduces the greatest toilet on Earth, and Yogi Berra determines when the Iraq war will be over. (09:07)

The Colbert Report, Thursday, September 9, 2010
Been There, Won That – Jim Webb
Stephen thanks the veterans with a sexy hot dog man and tries to get them jobs, with Jim Webb’s help. (07:16)

The Colbert Report, Tuesday, September 14, 2010
PETA Criticizes Joe Biden
Vice President Joe Biden handed out hot dogs to America’s returning troops, not meat. (02:34)

The Colbert Report, Monday, January 3, 2011
The Enemy Within – Caboodle Ranch
In Lee, Florida, Craig Grant trains his 650 cats to take over America’s government, law enforcement and failing schools. (05:32)

The Daily Show, Monday January 3, 2011
Daily Show: Mandvi – San Francisco’s Happy Meal Ban
After San Francisco bans toys from Happy Meals, Aasif Mandvi introduces kids to the brand new Crappy Meal.

A pile of 3-2-1 Contact magazines that I found in my filled-to-overflowing library.
Have a problem, who me?
——————————

In Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An inside look at the modern poultry industry (1996; revised 2009) animal advocate Karen Davis offers an exhaustive and heart-wrenching examination of the “poultry” industry, which is responsible for the exploitation and slaughter of an astounding 10 billion chickens annually (in the U.S. alone; worldwide, 40 billion chickens are raised and killed for their meat and eggs ever year). During her journey from the wild to the farm – and from conception to death – Davis touches upon some of the social and psychological mechanisms that pave the way for these atrocities.

Humans are taught from an early age that the earth’s resources – including other sentient beings – were “put here for our use.” We create a false divide between “us” and “them” by denying our own animal nature: there are “humans” and there are “animals.” We deny our similarities – the ability to feel pain, experience emotions such as love and joy (and sadness and fear), form and nurture fulfilling relationships – while simultaneously looking to our relatively minor but wonderfully diverse differences as an excuse to objectify, enslave and exploit the “other.” Nonhuman animals are largely considered property – “its” – more akin to a tree or tomato plant than a human being. Simply put, we exist in a supremely speciesist and anthropocentric culture – and we indoctrinate each successive generation into accepting this skewed and oppressive worldview.

Pop culture, including books, television, and movies, are central to this indoctrination. For example, Davis singles out two children’s shows for criticism – both of which were staples in my own childhood: Reading Rainbow (1983-2005?) and 3-2-1 Contact (1980–1992) – to demonstrate this process:

Chick hatching projects teach children and teachers that bringing a life into the world is not a grave responsibility with ultimate consequences for the life created. Children’s public television has contributed to this desensitization and to the fallacy that chickens have no natural origin or need for a family life. The Reading Rainbow public television program “Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones,” based on a book by Ruth Heller, shows that other kinds of animals besides chickens lay eggs. However, chickens are the only ones represented in barren surroundings. One heartless scene shows a baby chick struggling out of its egg alone on a bare table, while ugly, insensitive music blares, “I’m breaking out.”

The 3-2-1 Contact show “Pignews: Chickens and Pigs” has aired frequently on children’s public television. Promoting the agribusiness theme of “changing nature to get the food we eat,” it shows hatchery footage of newborn chicks being hurled down stainless steel conveyors, tumbling in revolving sexing carousels, flung down dark holes, and brutally handled by chicken sexers who grab them, toss them, and hold them by one wing while asserting that none of this hurts them at all. These scenes alternate with rapid sequence images of mass-produced fruits and vegetables. Children are brightly told that “farmers are changing how we grow 100 million baby chicks a week, 3 million pounds of tomatoes, 36 billion pounds of potatoes.” Chickens are described against a background of upbeat music as a “monocrop” suited to the “conveyor belt and assembly line, as in a factory.”

Is it any wonder that many people regard chickens as some sort of weird chimerical concoction comprising a vegetable and a machine? (p. 21)

[A full discussion of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs is well beyond the scope of this blog, but you can read a rather lengthy review I published on V for Vegan.

If the psychology of animal exploitation is a topic that piques your interest, check out Melanie Joy's Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism (2009), which I reviewed here.

Finally, parents in search of animal-friendly entertainment to enjoy with their children will find a friend in VegBooks.]

Kay eyes Patrick’s burger from over the top of her book, Meat Is Not Green.
Image from “Meat is Murder.” Original air date April 19, 2010. Copyright ABC Family.
——————————

Sorry for my absence, folks. I’ve been otherwise preoccupied in the “real world,” and – while I wish I could say that I’ll soon return to regular blogging – this may or may not be the case. In the meantime, check out the following alert from DawnWatch, wherein Karen provides an overview of a recent veg-friendly episode of ABC Family’s 10 Things I Hate About You (“Meat Is Murder,” Season 1, Episode 14). Sadly, last week it was announced that the show will not be picked up for a second season; however, I still urge you to send some feedback ABC’s way, whether positive or negative (or a little bit of both!), in order to encourage similar (or new and improved!) plot lines in the future.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch – news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 8:46 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Meatless Mondays on ABC’s 10 Things I Hate About You 4/19/10

Last Monday’s episode, April 19, of the hit primetime ABC series “10 Things I Hate About You” was titled “Meat is Murder.” It centered on Kat’s efforts to get Meatless Monday’s introduced at her school.

You can watch the episode on line [here].

I urge you to check it out, at least for a minute — stations take note of what shows and episodes get the most online hits.

I will give you some highlights:

It opens with Kat sitting at lunch, reading a book titled, “Meat is Not Green.” When her boyfriend sits down with a burger and asks about the book in a teasing manner, Kat says: “Did you know that 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from animal agriculture?”

He admits that it’s fascinating and she says, “If everybody at this school ate vegetables instead of processed animal flesh just one day a week it would make a huge environmental impact.”

He asks if he could do a walkathon instead, and she says, “If you don’t want to do it for the earth, do it for you colon.”

Then she gets up and says, “Enjoy your carbon footprint. I am going to go do something about this.”

While it’s hard to tell just from reading the words, what’s great about the scene is the fun and warm way in which Kat delivers the information, with she and her boyfriend agreeing to hang out after school that day. There was a time when animal and environmental activists were portrayed on TV as unbearable. This episode shows how far we have come. The animal advocate on this show is super smart and also warm and pretty and charming — characteristics the animals could use on their side.

Kat goes to the student council meeting and says: “Every day the earth is getting closer and closer to cataclysmic climate change, yet every year we are burning more and more fossil fuels. It is time for our generation to say ‘Enough.’ We didn’t cause this mess, but we can clean it up, and that starts right here, right now, with your approval of Meatless Mondays.”

When the item goes up for a vote, it passes! Then we see an appropriate bit of realism when Kat’s previous ally decides to sabotage the win and run a student president election campaign based on the promise of pepperoni pizza on Mondays. But the ending of the episode is positive, with Kat’s boyfriend trying his first soy dog and deciding it isn’t bad. He asks why, if “you guys” hate meat so much, the soy dog tastes like meat. She says: “Well it’s not that I hate the taste, it’s just that whenever I see meat all I see is this little face saying ‘Don’t eat me.”

Nice.

“10 Things About You” takes feedback at: community.abcfamily.go.com/feedback
Choose that show’s title from the pull down menu.

Please take just a moment to thank the producers for the Meatless Monday episode. Positive feedback will encourage similar themes in the future. The Meatless Monday website, www.MeatlessMonday.com tells us that 751,000 people watched last Monday’s episode of “10 Things I Hate About You.” Those numbers mean power to get a message out. Please express your appreciation and give the producers some encouragement so that they’ll keep up the good work.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line.)

Please go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com to learn about Karen Dawn’s book, “Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals,” which was chosen last year by the Washington Post as one of the “Best Books of The Year!”

To discontinue DawnWatch alerts go to www.DawnWatch.com/nothanks.php

9. Law and Order SVU used ideas from The Sexual Politics of Meat (and its slide show) in a recent episode on “Beef.” Of course! Because as the fictional me says on their show, “Meat eating and patriarchy go hand in hand.”

I think I’m now legally required to watch that particular episode (and report back to y’all, natch!), which is currently languishing away on my DVR, where it patiently waited out the end of May sweeps. Possibly I’ll need a few more weeks to recover from the loss of Lost, though. Fair warning.

—————-

Just a reminder: tonight’s episode of Law & Order: SVU will include a subplot of animal rights activism inside a slaughterhouse. The show airs at 10 Eastern / 9 Central; you can find additional details on the show’s website.

Karen Dawn recently sent out an action alert about the episode, featuring opportunities for you to provide NBC with feedback. Please thank them for addressing “meat” production, and also let them know how you think they handled the subject matter after you’ve seen the episode in question!

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch – news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 2:55 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Meat expose on Law and Order SVU this Wednesday, 4/21/10

Many of you have been asking what has happened to DawnWatch. After ten years of regular coverage DawnWatch alerts were indeed sparse during the second half of last year, when I was losing Buster Dawn and focused on little else. Then the excitement around The Cove, culminating in the Oscar going to that extraordinary film about the horrors behind dolphin abusement parks (to coin Ric O’Barry’s perfect phrase) took all of my attention for a while early this year. Now I am writing a new book, and am also working on rearranging Dawnwatch to make the site more interactive, so that other people can post. But I have missed working on it, and have appreciated hearing from those of you who have missed getting it, so I am going to get back to it on a more regular basis.

And boy to have a great excuse to come back: This week a hit prime time dram, Law & Order SVU, will be airing an episode that focuses on the meat industry. There is no newspaper that has as many readers, or news show that has as many viewers, as this drama, so its power to educate the public is terrific. I happened to catch a preview last week, and went to the show’s site to learn more. You can see the preview of the episode [here].

According to the promo blurb, Detective Olivia Benson goes undercover at a meat plant to solve the murder of a woman who “was filming an unflinching expose of meat.” We hear, on the promo clip:

“She was going to call her film, inside the slaughterhouse… Except she’s the one who got slaughtered.”

The show will air on NBC this Wednesday, April 21, at 10pm (9 central) so set your DVRs and TIVOs and tell your friends!

You can post a comment about the show, before or after it, on the page that I linked to above. Just click on “comments” and help get a lively discussion going. Please! You have to register to join in there, but that takes just a few seconds — seconds well spent to help give the animals a voice.

Then most importantly, please take just a moment to contact the producers and let them know how much you appreciate their attention to this subject. Shows take their feedback seriously. Go to www.nbc.com/contact/general/
Then scroll down to the feedback form and choose Law & Order SVU from the pull-down menu.

While you are setting those DVRs, make sure to add the one hour special of highlights from The Genesis Awards, our movements Oscars, which will air on Animal Planet this coming Saturday, April 24th at 12:00 noon ET/PT and repeat on Sunday, April 25th at 1:00pm ET/PT. The ceremony this year was just terrific. You can learn more about The Genesis Awards and see a brief video of a few highlights on line at: www.humanesociety.org/genesis

Thanks for caring, and for acting on behalf of the animals.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line.)

Please go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com to learn about Karen Dawn’s book, “Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals,” which was chosen last year by the Washington Post as one of the “Best Books of The Year!”

To discontinue DawnWatch alerts go to www.DawnWatch.com/nothanks.php

In honor of Earth Day, Biz Markie and the Climate Protection Action Fund want you to rap (or lip sync) along to a “clean energy” version of his ’80s classic “Just a Friend.” Repower America will provide the lyrics and instructions; you just need a web cam and an internet connection. Here are the details:

What do Earth Day, YouTube’s home page and a rap classic have in common?

You.

On April 22, we’ll be releasing a remix of the top-ten-hit song “Just a Friend” performed by Biz Markie and Repower America supporters from across the country. It’s going to be featured all day on YouTube’s home page — and you can be part of the fun!

You don’t need a perfect singing voice to get involved — and for that matter, you don’t even need to know the song. In fact, the chorus to Biz Markie’s song is famous for being beautifully off-key. If you’re still not convinced that you’re ready to bust out rapping on tape, just lip-sync or dance in your video. (Or get your kids to.) The only thing that matters is that you participate — in whatever way works for you.

We’ve got everything else you need to sing along — lyrics, music and a video showing you how to record your own version.

Check it out and add your voice to the Biz Markie Earth Day remix right now: cpaf.RepowerAmerica.org/Remix

Naturally, the “eco-friendly” lyrics ignore the role of meat, egg and dairy production in climate change – which is well in keeping with environmental organizations’ unwillingness to address human privilege and its many attendant ills. That said, perhaps some of you more creative types can work a reference or two to veganism into your own video? If you’re interested, you have to move fast – the deadline for submissions is midnight tomorrow night, April 18th. Eastern time, I presume?

Did I miss something? Promote your local event, tell us all about your favorite new release, and share other animal-friendly pop culture goodies in the comments!

One of the reasons I started POP! is because I felt a little odd discussing every little mention of vegetarianism, veganism and animal advocacy issues over at my main place. There are just so many examples that to address each one would quickly overwhelm a space with pop culture minutiae.

Seriously, once you get into the habit of actively engaging in media – viewing it with a critical eye, rather than passively taking it in – you start to notice animal-friendly (and, on the downside, animal-unfriendly) themes everywhere: vegetarianism is discussed in passing; characters talk about their “pets”; animal “evidence” is discovered at a crime scene; monsters and aliens act as stand-ins for free-living predators and conventionally intelligent nonhuman species; cyborgs and AI challenge our notions of what it means to be “human”; etc., etc., etc.

Anyhow, while watching a rerun of CSI on Spike this morning, I caught an unexpected – and insightful – example of the former: a short-lived character who just so happened to be a vegetarian. His vegetarianism – which seemed to extend beyond his diet, to his ethical beliefs – was incidental to the plot line; he could have just as easily been an omnivore. But his rejection of “meat” (as well as cheese – perhaps he might have better been described as a vegan?) provided the writers an excellent opportunity to slip in a sly piece of commentary on the intersectionality of oppressions.

Season 6, Episode 19, “Spellbound” – here’s the setup. A psychic was found murdered in her storefront. The fingerprints of one Reese Bringham – the self-described vegetarian – were discovered on her cash register, suggesting a murder committed during the course of a robbery. Warrick Brown and Captain Brass have brought Reese in for questioning:

[INT. POLICE DEPARTMENT - INTERVIEW ROOM - DAY]

(Warrick and Brass interview Reese Bingham.)

BRASS: The state has a law that murder committed during the commission of a felony buys you the death penalty. Do you understand that?

REESE BRINGHAM: This has to be a mistake. I don’t even eat meat. Or cheese. I won’t even hire an exterminator.

WARRICK: Your prints were found at the crime scene.

REESE BRINGHAM: I haven’t been to any crime scenes.

BRASS: You been to any occult shops lately?

REESE BRINGHAM: Yeah, I work next door to one.

WARRICK: You want to explain to me why your prints were found on the cash register?

REESE BRINGHAM: The owner’s my friend. Did something happen to her?

BRASS: You don’t know that she’s dead?

(He sighs, saddened.)

REESE BRINGHAM: No.

WARRICK: She was killed and then robbed, and your prints are on her cash register.

REESE BRINGHAM: Okay, yeah, wait … I can explain that.

BRASS: Start explaining.

REESE BRINGHAM: I work at a vegetarian restaurant. We make these soy burgers. Sedona was hooked on them. So, you know, she’d order, I’d deliver.

BRASS: So you’re a soy-burger-making, vegetarian delivery boy, hmm?

REESE BRINGHAM: Look, she’s always busy doing a reading or whipping up some kind of potion. She told me to take the money out of the drawer.

BRASS: Give yourself a tip?

REESE BRINGHAM: Soy burger and fries was $6.95 plus tax. I’d take a ten.

WARRICK: You delivered to her last night?

REESE BRINGHAM: (shakes his head) No.

BRASS: Was it your day off?

REESE BRINGHAM: Like most nights, I work until six and then I like … to go to the Stripperama.

BRASS: I thought you didn’t like meat?

(He chuckles unsure.)

WARRICK: Is there anyone who can confirm that?

REESE BRINGHAM: Well, yeah.

WARRICK: She got a name?

REESE BRINGHAM: Girls aren’t allowed to tell you their real names, but I call her Star ’cause she has these … blue stars tattooed on her hips. And it kind of looks like a meteor shower when she dances.

WARRICK: Would you stand up, please.

(Reese stands up slowly, unsure.)

REESE BRINGHAM: I can go?

WARRICK: No. You can strip down to your skivvies.

REESE BRINGHAM: Excuse me?

BRASS: You want some music?

The Sexual Politics of Meat, anyone?

Later on, when Sanders and Warrick visit with ‘Star’ at the Stripperama in order to confirm Reese’s alibi (spoiler: he’s innocent), the dancer dismisses him as “harmless” – even though he appears to be ever-so-politely stalking her. Also: she describes Reese as smelling like “nasty pickles.” I’m not sure whether this is supposed to be a jab at vegetarians (bean curd stinks!) or deli workers (bread and butter pickles stink!), but it seems to play into the stereotype of vegetarians as smelly hippies. Indeed, Reese himself – a young, white male, in his early-to-mid twenties, of average height and build, somewhat quiet and nondescript (“harmless”) – is perhaps the image many people hold of vegetarians.

So it’s an interesting juxtaposition of the expected (Reese’s appearance) with the unexpected (Reese’s behavior, as well as Brass’s reaction to it).

Thoughts?

(Transcript via TWIZ TV.)

Though it’s taken me far too long, here’s the promised writeup of Claire Danes’s February 10th appearance on The Colbert Report.

Seeing as Danes was making the rounds in support of her new biopic, Temple Grandin, I expected to come away from this interview with a knot of frustration and anger in my stomach. In fact, I actually put off watching it for this very reason. (Which is no small feat for a fangirl of my caliber, I tell you what!) Happily, as with the Foer interview, I was pleasantly surprised by Stephen’s treatment of the subject matter.

As you can see in the video (and partial transcript) below, Stephen plays the devil’s (animals’, really) advocate, maintaining a healthy dose of skepticism in the face of claims about Grandin’s “affinity” for and “love” of nonhuman animals. He equates killing and eating cows with killing and eating dogs, to horrifically comical effect. And, best of all, the phrase “animal rights” is not uttered once, in contrast to reports of previous appearances in which Danes praised Grandin as an “animal rights advocate” – and, likewise, described herself as a supporter of animal rights (their right not to be killed and eaten seemingly aside).

[On a side note - Dear fluffyfun "green" and/or vegetarian celebrity gossip sites: can y'all please stop referring to Grandin as an "animal rights activist"? She is no such thing, and to refer to her brand of "advocacy" as rights-based is to shift the entire debate towards the exploitative. And your thoughts on welfare reform? Totally irrelevant. This is a factual dispute, not a matter of opinion. Thanks much!]

While I hadn’t intended to write such a lengthy transcript, once I started typing, I couldn’t stop. Stephen’s quips – and Danes’s reactions – are just that good. If you can, you really need to watch the video to fully appreciate Danes’s flailing responses to Stephen’s gentle-yet-snarky nudging.

It’s all after the jump, yo.

Danes: “[S]he’s also really interested in animals and animal science and designed a system in which cows would walk calmly to their deaths – so they wouldn’t be mistreated and prodded and it was also really economically efficient for the cattle industry.” [...]

Colbert: “So I have her to thank for my constant intake of beef.”

“Yes, you do! You do!”

“So it’s really kind of a pro-business story, isn’t it?”

“Exactly, yeah. It is, is it.”

“Does she – does she – does she…empathize with the cow?”

“Yeah, I think to a certain extent…[in response to audience laughter]…well, yes, she wants very much for them to have a good experience while they’re alive. She doesn’t want them to suffer.”

“Yes, ‘a good experience’ until it becomes ‘the worst possible experience.’” [Here, Danes laughs along with the audience, seemingly at the absurdity of her own - and/or Grandin's - logic.] “Because I empathize with my dog, and I’m not sure whether my idea of expressing my affection would be to open a puppy slaughter house.”

“Yeah, I know. I mean, I know it seems kind of paradoxical, but, but, yeah, she believes that while they’re here, we have a responsibility to make sure that they have…a good time.”

Videos in this post

The Colbert Report – Wednesday, February 10, 2010 – Claire Danes
Claire Danes describes her role as an autistic woman who designed a system where cows can walk easily to their death. (05:51)
 

Even before the flakes settled, right-wing pundits were pointing to the snowstorms that have slammed the East Coast this year as evidence that “global warming”

[CLIMATE CHANGE! Temperatures may or may not rise depending on one's geographic location, air and ocean currents, etc. In fact, some scientists worry that melting polar ice caps might actually plunge the northeastern U.S. and northwestern European coasts into a mini-ice age. Global warming does not mean that every location on earth will resemble a sauna! End: rant.]

is a hoax and/or has been definitely discredited. Naturally, these gleeful squeals of triumph are usually accompanied by multiple smug, self-serving jabs at Al Gore. (Because the man IS global warming itself, dontchaknow! And I say this as a vegan with her own complex, ambivalent feelings towards the meat-guzzling Gore.)

Anyhow, both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had a little fun at the expense of these climate change deniers – and in back-to-back shows, at that. While I don’t have time to type up transcripts, I have embedded the videos below, after the jump. (Too many videos on the main page makes Firefox crash. I blame Comedy Central and its clunky video formats. IBCC!)

In an upset, I think The Daily Show staff did a better job lampooning this story than did The Colbert Report. Although, they were short one Snoopy sketch….

 
Videos in this post

The Daily Show – Wednesday February 10, 2010 – Unusually Large Snowstorm
Aasif Mandvi freezes in New York, Sam Bee feels the heat in Australia, and Jason Jones reports on the darkness everywhere.

The Colbert Report – Wednesday, February 10, 2010 – We’re Off to See the Blizzard
Based on the latest data from the Dopplest 9000 radar, Stephen can only assume that the sun has been destroyed. (04:09)