pet connection

Yes! It’s true! People love their pets, according to the Associated Press, which dispatched a reporter to reveal that not only do people love their pets, but celebrities do, too! I know, I know: I was stunned, too. From the piece:

“Oh, I understand the intense emotions,” said Merrill Markoe, owner of four dogs, author, humorist and original head writer for David Letterman’s show.

[...]

For Markoe, her dogs are, in essence, “life at its core element.”

“They’re all naive good intentions,” she says. “They’re totally non-judgmental. I’m so popular amongst them! They love me with no stipulations,” she says. “It’s really very touching.”

[...]

Carol Leifer, a writer and comedian who co-created DeGeneres’ second sitcom, “The Ellen Show,” [...] speaks passionately of her metamorphosis from a “complete non-animal person” to the owner of six rescued dogs, and counting.

“My love of animals has transformed me,” says Leifer. “I’m a better person. It’s cleared the brush from my heart.”

There’s more, of course. This, from the same organization that only grudgingly covered the pet-food recall, steadfastly refused to consider any genuine estimates of the losses and backed the truck up so quickly they nearly ran over their own computers to re-write the only piece that even suggested the real death toll, leaving the facts buried in a version that needed math skills to figure out.

But by gosh, we’re all over IggyGate! It’s 24/7, from all of the Fourth Estate!

And now, we go to Salon, which did almost nothing at all to cover the pet food recall (and what they did do, weeks late, so missed the point that they’d have been better off not doing anything at all).

But what have we here? Oh yes! IggyGate, the lead story! “Ellen, the dog bullies and me,” it’s titled, and I’m already in tears! Celebrities and Salon writers love their pets! And they, too, have had their competence as dog-lovers questioned by rescue groups! Oh, the humanity!

Heckuva job, all of you. Let’s blow the roof off celebrity dog-angst! Pulitzers for all!

Now, ranting aside … the AP piece is crap. A click on the link is time in your life better spent scooping the litter box. But Heather Havrilesky’s piece in Salon isn’t crap at all, despite its ridiculous headline. She’s a good writer I’ve long enjoyed reading, and her piece does help to raise legitimate issues regarding — as we’ve been saying here all along, especially in regards to no-kill movement and shelter reform — the placement of pets into good homes.

Yes, we need to be having these discussions. But just as it would be really wonderful if we could look at how to fight the scourge of dog-fighting without Michael Vick to bring attention to it, I would prefer intelligent discussions of how to help homeless pets that don’t include sobbing talk-show hosts.

And I would also like it when thousands of pets are made sick or killed by tainted imported ingredients that we have our media to understand the context and report on the implications, so we can make intelligent personal choices and influence responsible, public-serving public policy decisions.

Oh, I know, when pigs fly. Back to IggyGate.