HBO has created quite a name for themselves, both with in house produced movies, and also increasingly with documentaries. HBO tackles issues that are too hot for the mainstream media to handle, and that makes for some good viewing.
I managed to get a sneak peek at this documentary that will be airing on November 19th. Many may not agree with PETA’s tactics, and they certainly do have members that are on the lunatic fringe, but this is riveting film making. While I may not agree with the goals or the methods employed by this organization, they present a very convincing and at times, ugly view of our relationship with animals. The footage that I saw was very disturbing. So disturbing that I am not really sure I will be able to watch the entire show.
This will be a program that you will NOT want your kids to watch. I shared a clip with my wife, and she had this to say “Oh my god!, that poor animal was still alive when they done that!â€
Man’s inhumanity to man is well understood, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, they are all shining examples, what we maybe do not grasp as well is how we treat animals.
Somehow I have to write a review of this documentary. The good news is that I still have two weeks to pluck up courage and watch the entire thing!
Simon Barrett
12 users commented in " Coming Soon: I Am An Animal – The Story Of Ingrid Newkirk And PETA "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI wonder how much Ingrid and PETA paid HBO to air their “commercial.” I am thinking of canceling my subscription. To this point, I had watched and admired many of their documentaries but this is insufferable: To validate an organization like PETA is truly beyond the pale. I have totally lost faith in their objectivity. By demystifying this woman and making her seem human & only compassionate then justifies the means they have used to accomplish their goal of eliminating all meat consumption, ending pet ownership, eliminating all pet breeding (think about that the next time you decide you must have a puppy/kitten). Their twisted thinking has allowed them to kill pets such as dogs and cats instead of allowing them to be adopted by “guardians” or whatever weird title they want to emblazon on those who keep small animals as pets. There are proven instances where shelters allowed PETA to take animals out of shelters, assuming they would find great pet-loving homes, only to have PETA slaughter them and dump their bodies in trash bags. Look in the mirror, PETA:, We have seen the enemy and the enemy is US! Yes, animal cruelty needs to be corrected and as long as it still exists, unfortunately people such as PETA will exploit it to raise $$ and further their radical agenda. Send $$ instead to your local animal shelter or spay/neuter clinic. They need it more.
Oh, whipping girl, what indeed is YOUR agenda?
Do you really think cats & dogs will become extinct if all breeders stop selling animals as pets? That is absurd. Have you ever been to a pound? Millions are put to death every day!
Do you really think Ingrid has no compassion? PETA has done more to shine a spotlight on animal cruelty than any other organization in the world.
What is “twisted” about wishing to stop ALL animal cruelty, whether it be the food industry, the vivisection industry, the breeding industry, the fur industry, the entertainment industry, etc.?? Since when is “some” cruelty okay for any living being? Only when it makes money or makes your lifestyle of eating (or wearing) animals “inconvenient”?
Wake up and get with the future. Abolishing ALL animal cruelty is PETA’s only goal and they will not stop until that is achieved.
Gee whiz whipping girl,
Did you get up on the wrong side of life or what? If it is what you can an ad, good let it be an ad for the way animals SHOULD be treated. I am shocked at how uninformed you are about PETA. I wonder if you have ever even seen first had the work PETA has done for animals. I am not employed by PETA but I have seen first hand working for political action committies for animals what they have done, before you pass judgement do some volunteering for them, and dont believe everything you read. I am proud to say I support PETA and HSUS and my local animal shelters and my money will all go to animal rights orgs. when I die because without orgs lijke PETA the animals would suffer even more.
CANT WAIT TO SEE “I AM AN ANIMAL”
Ms. Newkirk has the kind of raw courage I lack. I flat out don’t have the guts to do the kinds of things she does. After I saw a video called “Meet Your Meat,” I went vegetarian and have never felt better. But that is “easy” compared to putting yourself on the front lines everyday, hitting heads with people who still want to eat animals, trap them, poison them, slice, dice, and saute them, make them dance and jump through hoops, and wear them on their backs.
Ms. Newkirk should be awarded the medal of bravery!
I can’t wait to see this film. Ingrid Newkirk has done more to improve life for animals than perhaps any other person. She shakes people out of their complacency with lifestyle choices–such as eating meat and buying products that have been tested on animals–that cause animals extreme suffering and provides us with humane alternatives. Her compassion and commitment to animals are truly inspiring.
I am going to ignore what whipping girl has said. It is obviously someone who has no clue what PETA is about. I am excited for November 19th and I will be readily watching it. Ingrid is my hero, my idol, and my inspiration. She has opened my mind to how badly treated animals are. I am disgusted with meat and I view it as cannibals eating living beings. It’s exactly what meat eating is. It’s morally wrong to treat these animals this way. They did not ask to be put here, let alone live in a holocaust lifestyle only to die miserably. They do not deserve this and I am so thankful that Ingrid has made a movie. I support her and her work 100$ all the way and will stand behind her for life.
I have adopted all my animal’s
I’m glad HBO is going to show this documentary, I admired Ingrid for all she’s doing and I think all people, even children must Know,watch how animals are really treated, stop lying to childrens!! If they don’t know anythings or if they are only told want people who eat meat want them to know ,then they wouldn’t be able to have their own opinions, they would only think the way they were thougth to think and they would only say what they were thougth to say like machines.
so parents, please, let children know the truth and allow them to make their own choices.
I talk like this due to muy own experience. I’m vegetarian since 12 years old but it was after a great figth with my family and with myself because of all the thing they used to say to me to change my mind and make me think like them.At the end I decided to follow my heart and stop listening what other people said to me about animals because I really love them, they are like my little siblings and I hate the cruelty against them like no other thing in the world.
There is nothing wrong or lunatic in trying to stop any cruelty against helpless and sensitive beings who deserve living as much as any of us.
Whipping girl: after reading your comment, I know already the rest of you. You are an ignoramus, egotistical being for criticizing the ONLY organization in the world that opened the eyes of people as to the real truth of the plight of animals…evidently without knowing this group, and also for not having any compassion for those who don’t have a voice to tell all those bloody tortures inflicted on them…before murdering them, so humans can frivolously satisfy their appetites (factory farms); can “amuse” themselves hunting animals even inside their cages! called canned hunting, rodeos, bullfights, circuses, etc. the list of tortures and murders is too long to enumerate here. If you became ignorant and egotistical for whatever reasons of your own, then perhaps there’s hope for you. But if you were born this ugly way…god help you through all the sad vicissitudes you’ll be going through in life.
TO Simon Barrett, the horrific scenes (true photos taken clandestinely) appear very quickly and only a few times so don’t be afraid of watching the entire marvelous video and allowing yoru children to see the truth (they’ll be forever grateful to you for opening their eyes at an early age, assuming they are young). I saw it at a private showing and can tell you it’s one of the most valuable revelations. People will love to get to meet Ingrid Newkirk “in person” and observe how she creates and develops her plans of action and other important facets of the PETA operation.
When you’ll show it you’ll get lots of readers and they’ll comment profusely on your article and video. ;o)
Meantime, anyone who wants to see the comments PETA got from this video please go to: http://www.peta.org/feat/HBO_I_Am_an_Animal/index.asp
Thumbs up to you for showing it in your Blogger!!! ^-^ Adela
frankly i think everyone in this peta promotional film are wrong.
The abuse clips sprinkled throughout the film are disgusting and made me sick although it did not even for a moment make me think about my eating meat. what it did make me think about was what kind of sociopath takes pleasure doing the things shown. these are NOT normal people.
Ingrid Newkirk however isn’t a saint or heroine either, she’s a fanatic and any kind of fanatacism is dangerous.
while i admire her mission and agree that there needs to be changes i neither agree nor admire the way she has taken a good idea and twisted it making herself and peta look like a bunch of crazy media whores.
as to showing this to kids? are you crazy as well? show this to children and you’ll scar them for life. this imho should be at least a pg-13.
give your money to the humane society or animal shelter, it will do alot more good there than in the multi-million dollar offices of peta.
blackmira, you apparently don’t know much about the organization you worship. Peta’s mission, their only goal, is Total Animal Liberation. Listen to your messiah more carefully. Then dig deeper into the peta’s own website! They want a ban on guide dogs for the blind! They DO want domesticated dogs and cats and horses and pigs to go extinct because they call them “perversions” created by man. Honestly, there are those of us who are very well educated on peta and the HSUS. We have seen the enemy, and the enemy is peta and the HSUS. And before you attempt to tell me I don’t know what I am talking about, I was a member of peta briefly in the 80’s. Didn’t take me long to realize just how evil and insidious those freaks who run it really are. Ask the hypocrite why she still takes insulin but other diabetics aren’t “worthy” of taking it.
I think Ingrid and the rest of the Peta extremists are the biggest pieces of garbage and waste of human life that have ever been alive. I agree with Whipping Girl 100000000000000%. I literally just finished watching the HBO special and the story she (Ingrid) told about the bull in India was the worst thing I have ever heard in my life. She said that she was sitting in some place drinking her soup and she was sitting in front of an open door way and saw a man with a bull and the bull was pulling a cart. The bull stopped pulling the cart and it made the man upset. So the man began to hit the animal with a stick and then apparently he lifted the tail and inserted the stick into the bulls rectum. The bull cried out and collapsed. She said she dropped her bowl and ran out and took the stick away from him and she said, and I quote “HE IS LUCKY I DIDN’T KILL HIM”.
Are you serious? That is absolutely amazing that she has that much love for animals that she would literally think about killing someone over the way they treated an animal. Please don’t get me wrong I do not think what he did was OK by any stretch of the imagination. I think what he did, if it even happened the way she explained it, was utterly disgusting and completely wrong.
I am an animal lover, but not to the extreme. I would never put an animals life higher then I put a HUMAN beings life. Just like I would not put a plants life higher then I would put a HUMAN beings life.
How can you people support a company/organization that has people saying things like this in their defense at animal rights lectures:
Tom Regan said that if a boat capsized at sea and a dog and a retarded child fell into the water he would save the dog over the child.
That is DISGUSTING, the fact that he would say something like that is appalling. What if it were his child (i hate using this word but) retarded or not, and it was not his choice to make and someone else saved the dog over his child? I think, I HOPE and I BET he would feel differently.
And for all you people that are trying to say that Peta is so great and wonderful take a look at this site and tell that they are so great. Look at the number of animals THEY KILLED verses the number of animals they saved and had adopted to good homes.
From 1998 – 2008 : Totals
Animals Received:
25,112
Adopted:
3,083
Killed:
21,339
Transferred:
446
Killed %:
85.0
Adopted %:
12.28
Now that is pretty funny if you ask me. They talk about how other people are terrible that kill animals for food to survive/live off. and they turn around and kill 85% of the animals that received in they facilities over the past 10 yrs. GIVE ME A BREAK. those of you that think Ingrid and Peta are so incredible need to understand that they are a hypocrites and need to understand the VALUE of HUMAN LIVES and stop.
I think I might start me own group now P.E.T.P. People for The Ethical Treatment of Pencils. I have seen things that people have done to pencils in my live and I don’t think that any pieces of wood should have to live through that. LOL. And saying that I am not trying to demean the lives of animals and say that I think animals lives and worth no more then a pencil or piece of woods life because that would be crazy. I am just doing what Peta would do and say something stupid and crazy to get my point across.
RECAP: I DO LOVE ANIMALS AND DO NOT THINK THEY SHOULD BE ABUSED OR NEGLECTED IN ANYWAY. I JUST THINK PETA IS AN EXTREME GROUP THAT GOES ABOUT TRYING TO GET THEIR POINT ACROSS IN THE WRONG WAY AND NEED A REALITY CHECK. That is my opinion and I am entitled to it as you are entitled to disagree with it.
Leave A Reply