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Some old news I only just heard about: PETA is\\xa0offering to pay the water bills\\xa0for needy Detroit families if (and only if) those families agree to stop eating meat.

(this story makes more sense if you know Detroit is in a crisis where the bankrupt city government is trying to increase revenues by cracking down on poor people who can\\u2019t pay for the water they use.)

Predictably, the move has caused a backlash. The International Business Times, in what I can only assume is an attempted pun, describes them as\\xa0\\u201cdrowning in backlash\\u201d. Groundswell thinks it\\u2019s a\\xa0\\u201cbig blunder\\u201d. Daily Banter says it\\u2019s\\xa0\\u201cexactly why everyone hates PETA\\u201d. Jezebel calls them\\xa0\\u201cassholes\\u201d, and we can all agree Jezebel knows a thing or two about assholery.

Of course, this is par for the course for PETA, who have previously engaged in campaigns like throwing red paint on fashion models who wear fur, juxtaposing pictures of animals with Holocaust victims, juxtaposing pictures of animals with African-American slaves, and ads featuring naked people that cross the line into pornography.

People call these things \\u201cblunders\\u201d, but consider the alternative.\\xa0Vegan Outreach\\xa0is an extremely responsible charity doing excellent and unimpeachable work in the same area PETA is. Nobody has heard of them.\\xa0Everybodyhas heard of PETA, precisely because of the interminable stupid debates about \\u201cdid this publicity stunt cross the line?\\u201d

While not everyone is a vegan, pretty much everybody who knows anything about factory farming is upset by it. There is pretty much zero room for PETA to convert people from pro-factory-farming to anti-factory-farming, because there aren\\u2019t any radical grassroot pro-factory-farming activists to be found. Their problem isn\\u2019t lack of agreement. It\\u2019s lack of publicity.

PETA creates publicity, but at a cost. Everybody\\u2019s talking about PETA, which is sort of like everybody talking about ethical treatment of animals, which is sort of a victory. But most of the talk is \\u201cI hate them and they make me really angry.\\u201d Some of the talk is even \\u201cI am going to eat a lot more animals just to make PETA mad.\\u201d

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