I have complained about PETA before, and will most likely do so again, so I’m sorry to repeat myself.

But it goes without saying that the general public thinks that PETA is a vegan organization and that all vegans are members of PETA. But the general public also thinks that Barack Obama would make a better BBQ guest than John McCain, and so I have no idea what to make of what is on the minds of the general public.

But what is important is that vegans get a lot of bad press, sometimes justifiably, but most of the time not so. For instance, this celebrity (someone I have never heard of, but then I don’t really get out much) writes about a recent bad experience with a makeup artist who “proceeded to walk up to me and ream me about eating meat the entire time I ate!”

Now, first of all, I would be really curious as to what, exactly, constitutes a ‘reaming.’ In political coverage, for instance, newspapers and blogs love to use headlines like this one: “Obama slams McCain, Bush on economy.” Whenever a wrestling term is invoked, I am always immediately suspicious of the person using it. Two people disagreeing about a political subject, and having a discussion about it, is not equivalent to ’slamming’ someone down on the ground. So, was the celebrity omnivore really the victim of a full-on ‘reaming?’  Perhaps so, perhaps not.  I’d be really curious to have a tape or transcript of that conversation to see what was really said and how it was said.

But here’s the crux of the matter:

Call me crazy, but you would think that if a person wanted you to understand their cause, they would be KIND to you..informative, etc. Nope, I have never got that from a vegan. I always get the nut jobs. It almost reminds me of terrorists! This is one of the many reasons I cannot support PETA.

On the one hand, I tend to believe that this is yet another example of how anyone who is different is  dismissed as ‘angry’ or a ‘nut job.’  On the other hand, there are a few angry vegans out there (sometimes I am one), and there are also some angry atheists out there, too (again, sometimes me).

But irrespective of any of that, why is it that PETA is thought of as THE vegan organization, and why is it that anytime anyone has a problem with any vegan, PETA is immediately invoked?

It seems to be the case, for a lot of people, that if they have one bad run-in with a member of a group, they are likely to judge all members of the group based upon the actions of that one person.  For instance, a while ago I was at my local barber shop and one of the people waiting to get his hair cut was ranting about a run-in he had had with a person on a bike (as he was driving his pickup truck).  The person on the bike apparently rode out in front of him or disobeyed some traffic law or did some stupid thing, and the story ended with the truck driver saying something like ‘I wish those stupid people on bikes would just stop being idiots!’  Now, being an ex-car-owner myself, I had the immediate urge to add ‘yeah, and how about those stupid people in their trucks and SUVs?  I wish they’d get their act together, too!’  But I didn’t, mainly because I didn’t want to get ‘reamed’ or ’slammed.’

It’s true that there are a lot of vegans out there not helping the cause, as it were, through their personal behavior.  But it is also true that one vegan, and even one organization, does not represent or speak for all vegans or the animal rights issue itself.  Just like one man does not speak for all men, or one woman for all women, or one left-handed Pakistani for all left-handed Pakistanis.

And it is also true that what we eat and how we live are such personal and fundamental issues that, no matter how well the average vegan or non-believer or anarchist or whatever behaves, just being in one or more of those groups will tend to color other people’s perception of anything you say or do simply because of the ingrained cultural norms that your mere presence threatens.

So, on the one hand, I’d love to say that we should all be very careful and avoid stepping on other people’s toes with our crazy beliefs.  But on the other hand, I’d also say that we can’t possibly please everyone we meet (something about not being able to please all of the people all of the time springs to mind), and that no matter how much we bend over backwards to be nice, our principles will always bother some people.  Like many things in life, it’s important to take things on a case-by-case basis, and I’d simply say to use common sense and be appropriate for whatever situation you happen to find yourself in.

For instance, if you find yourself at a photo shoot with a meat eater, perhaps while they’re eating is not the best time to try and do some vegan outreach.  At the same time, if you find yourself confronted by an angry vegan, it might behoove you to remember that she only speaks for herself.

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