Nobody expects the Carnivore Inquisition. Their chief weapons are surprise, fear, misuse of House testimony, and being a giant jackass named Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa).
King bragged at a recent town hall meeting that he’d grilled witnesses before the House Agriculture Committee on their dietary habits, forcing them to “confess” that they were vegetarians.
King: I’m here to tell you I’m a committed carnivore. I like meat. I sit on the Ag Committee and we had a hearing before the Ag Committee when we invited in the president of the Humane Society of the United States, HSUS, President Wayne Pacelle. And we had one or two other witnesses from the anti-meat crowd or anti-animal husbandry crowd. PETA was there and one other animal activist group. So we just asked them, under oath, “are you a vegetarian?” And they confessed they were vegetarians, all of them. Well there they are with an agenda for our diets.
Rep. King, under oath, have you ever met a vegetarian? They’re … not exactly secretive about it. It’s like forcing people to “confess” that they’re on the paleo diet. Spoiler alert: THEY WANT YOU TO KNOW.
It’s especially head-smacky because we’re talking about PETA, the organization that buys billboards and organizes sexy sexy protests all in the name of promoting vegetarianism. Seriously, you’re congratulating yourself over getting PETA members to admit to vegetarianism? Did you also get a bear to admit to shitting in the woods?
Also, of course, more seriously, just because someone is a vegetarian doesn’t mean they have “an agenda for OUR diets.” (PETA does, though, and again, this is NOT NEWS.) But mostly this quote is just a scream because of King’s delusions about what constitutes a political victory. For an encore, perhaps he’ll outwit Barney Frank into admitting that he’s gay — or, ooh, maybe he’ll deftly corner Barack Obama so he has no choice but to confess that he’s president. There’s one for the birther messageboards!
