Sunday, August 12, 2007

Suicide Sport: a digression

¡Viva Pedrito!

This tough-talking, crowd-pleasing, animal-stabbing-to-death bullfighter from Portugal shows us how far the suicidefoodist worldview has spread. How like toxic smoke it is, insinuating itself into cultures and pastimes around the globe.

In Portugal, where bullfighting is merely cruel and not necessarily deadly, the matador Pedrito de Portugal (or, in English, Petey Portugal) was fined €100,000 for enthusiastically giving in to the wishes of a frenzied mob audience and killing his bull-opponent. (Tauricide has been outlawed there since 1928, even though bullfighting remains legal. Petey Portugal recently struck out in court, and, presumably, will now cough up the cash.)

In a New York Times article, Petey reveals that he is more than just another vicious idiot. He's also the vanguard of a new form of suicidefoodism, one that we may call suicidesportism. Here are Petey's words:

"Bullfighting in Portugal is like a play with the ending missing. Killing the bull is an art, and the way we do it in Portugal deprives the bull of his dignity." (Emphasis added, to drive home the point that this guy is a special sort of madman.)

To clarify: Portugal (the country) allows bullfighting, just not to the death. Petey, spokesman for an obsolete ideology, pooh-poohs such (moderate) decency, claiming that sparing a bull's life injures its honor.

Do you see? Just as pigs, cows, chicken, deer, lambs, lobsters, fish, and crabs want nothing more than to die at our hands so that they might be fried, roasted, or boiled, Portuguese bulls want to be killed in the name of bloody spectacle.

(Photo of Petey Portugal: Jose Manuel Ribeiro/Reuters.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

seriously, if these acts were perpetuated upon dogs and cats, you and everyone in America would be outraged.

Anonymous said...

by 'you' i meant frenchie up there