The politics of dogs and the dogs of politics
By Gina Spadafori
February 13, 2008
Nope, not going to go on anymore about the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, my annual giddy, girly pleasure. Although I do have to say my enjoyment was heightened this year because the show’s continued popularity makes PETA boss Ingrid Newkirk go utterly apoplectic and spend big money on clueless, tasteless, pointless TV ads that try to blame reputable, ethical breeders for what puppy mills, clueless, careless quick-buck backyard breeders, accidental oops litters and unmanaged feral cat colonies put in the shelters. (And of course, it’s Westminster’s fault for all this in PETA’s book, while PETA itself kills 97 percent of the animals in their slaughterhouseshelter and bashes the workable, proven no-kill solutions offered by Maddie’s Fund and the No Kill Advocacy Center. Why is anyone still listening to PETA?)
Nope, Westminster is over, and while our buddy David Frei and Uno the Westminster-winning beagle make the rounds of the morning talk shows, I’m thinking of that other beauty pageant, the presidential primary races.
My thought for the morning: What do the pet-food recall and Barak Obama have in common?
Give up?
The Internet.
A couple decades ago, without the ability of veterinarians across the country to compare notes on sick, dying and dead pets and realize that something really seriously wrong was happening everywhere at once, we pet lovers would have never known that tainted ingredients — poison — had entered the food supply. And once the nation’s veterinarians made the connection last spring, the Internet drove the story. Pet-lovers responded with a grass-roots efforts to let their elected representatives know that the safety of food — ours and our pets — was something we cared about. The story played out through the news cycles for weeks, Congress held hearings, the FDA felt the heat and the whole thing opened the door for more coverage of tainted imported products — and more heat on the agencies that are supposed to protect us.
The ability of peer-to-peer computer networks to make connections truly did make a difference, even if the reforms we’ve seen so far are not enough, not done, not yet.
OK, and so now Barack Obama. We work to be non-partisan here on the Pet Connection — heck, we praise and criticize everyone who deserves either — but I can’t say the same about our blog-pal the Terrierman, who has been writing about Obama for weeks now. This morning’s post on what went wrong with Hillary Clinton — or what has been wrong all along, really — was a very good read, but the 10th point on his list really got my attention:
Hillary wrote off a lot of America. Hillary’s decided that only a few states and a few people mattered — Fat cat donors, and folks living in Iowa, New Hampshire, and the big states of New York, and California. The rest of us were fodder and she let us know it. It was all going to be over on Super Tuesday. The little states, the late states, and the “fly over” states were not amused, and neither were the folks who give $5, $20 or $50 to a candidate. We were reminded, once again, that Hillary Clinton believes the elite and the chosen are who are really important, and not those who are least among us. Hillary was more interested in cultivating the Super Delegates than she was in cultivating the grass roots. [... ] Hillary really does think we are all idiots.
Obama’s donors number nearly half a million, ordinary people giving $5, $10, $100. It has been written that one of the reasons Clinton had to loan her own money to her campaign was that she had gone first and foremost to the “important” people who wrote her a check for the maximum amount allowed by law, so she couldn’t get more money from them. Obama, on the other hand, could tap the same “donor base” (read: real people, not the usual suspects representing special interests) again and again. And sometimes he didn’t even have to reach out: So many real people were trying to give him those modest amounts that his servers had to shut down from time to time and take a deep breath.
Now, as I said above, this isn’t really about Obama, but rather about a sea change in the ability to reach people and hear from people – real people, not the “idiot consumer masses” many corporations and politicians have believed us to be and treated us like.
Listen up you: Be honest with us. Be open with us. Ask for our input and our help. Don’t patronize us. We’re not idiots, any of us, no matter where we live, where we worship (or don’t), what we do for a living and how we spend our leisure time. We’re people, individuals, not “home-schooling Christians,” “blue-state latte drinkers,” “NASCAR dads,” etc., etc., etc. Heck, some of us vote liberal and own guns. We’re so very sorry if that messes with the neat little demographic boxes you want to push us into so you can treat us like an object to support your ambitions.
The fact that we’re people, not demographics, is why some of us can enjoy the Westminster Kennel Club dog show and still rescue and foster pets. Because life is not as black-and-white as some believe — it’s about shades of gray. Or maybe, about a man with a Kansan mom, a Kenyan dad who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii and has the middle name that any consultant would have sworn was as deadly as last spring’s pet food.
As they rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic embarassment of the Clinton campaign, somebody ought to be paying attention. We’re not “demographics”; we’re people. Miss that point? Well, here’s your hat, there’s the door. The “good ol’ days” are over, and thank heavens for that.
The poodles aren’t winning any more at Westminster. As Uno the everyman beagle would say, “Ahhhhhhh-rooooooooooooo.”
This is Westminster’s 132nd annual show. The groups tonight are Sporting, Toy and Working.