Sometimes I take a break from reading the newspaper. I can become very confused and emotional over what I read. I’ll read one story and then another and another and think: Isn’t there a connection here? Or rather — a disconnect?
The paper reports Cecil the lion has been murdered. I love animals, all kinds of animals. I saw lions while we were in South Africa and they are amazing beasts (carnivores, mind you, not helpless kittens). I was very glad to be in a truck with a guide who had a loaded gun handy. I’m sorry about that lion; sorry, too, that people want to torture and kill Dr. Palmer. Zimbabwe officials want him extradited and brought to trial. How many human beings have died in the years since Robert Mugabe’s regime came into power? No mention of that backdrop.
Also in the paper was a news article about a lawsuit over the personhood of chimpanzees. If a chimp can be a person, our dog Sarge should be a person, too. He’s a family member. (There may even be a resemblance.) He is as intelligent as any seven year old. He’s four; that makes him 28 in human years. He should be able to vote. If he wants to run free (and amuck), he should have that right, too — as a person.
Every year, the paper will carry something about people protesting the mistreatment of turkeys. That cry for rights will come up soon and probably be on the front or second page. There will be renewed angry protests that turkeys have a right to range free. Turkeys need quality of life, especially if they’re going to end up on someone’s dinner table. And the food section of the papers will be filled with recipes for turkey alternatives to gobble.
What I could not find in today’s paper was any mention, let alone outrage, over what may be happening inside Planned Parenthood clinics. There was no mention of a video, let alone more than one video, made by people trying to make people aware that body parts of aborted babies are for sale. Isn’t this the same organization that tells women they aren’t really aborting a baby? There’s no baby; it’s just fetal material? It’s clear now they know the truth. That aborted baby is a human being with heart and lungs and liver. That baby feels pain when dying. Those body parts are valuable and worth a lot of money to those harvesting them. Where is the full story about that? Where are the interviews? Is there a federal investigation? Not one word in print about any of that today.
I guess human beings are less important than a lion, chimpanzees and turkeys.