Selling the Vegetarian Cause—Moonies, A Yawn, and No Respect

Some time ago I was at a party with a bunch of other vegetarians. One of the guests was bemoaning the fact that it was hard to make meat-eaters see the advantages of vegetarianism. "They don't get it," he kept saying. "They just don't get it."

At the time I thought it was an odd thing to say. You either "got it" or you didn't, as if vegetarianism was some kind of counterculture religion, or maybe the latest pop psychology trend? But the more I've thought about it, the more I feel that guy was exactly right. Just like religion, vegetarianism is a hard sell, and those who aren't buying really aren't buying.

Everyone in the world has a cause these days. But not all causes are created equal—at least in the eyes of the public. There are some things that almost everyone supports. Tell someone you're a Big Brother or you work for the Special Olympics, for example, and they'll immediately warm up to you.

On the other side of the spectrum are what I call the "love/hate" groups. They get an immediate reaction—pro or con—from almost everyone. Examples that come to mind are Planned Parenthood, the Neo-Nazis, and those "feed Jane Fonda to the Whales" people at the airport. And remember a few years ago when people were accusing the "Moonies" of brainwashing their kids? Not many people could remain neutral on that issue.

Most causes, though, are less controversial. They have their followers, and in some cases their detractors, but the majority of us don't really think much about them. I think for the most part vegetarianism as a cause is in this largely ignored group. But as the movement gains momentum I get the feeling we may be drifting into that small group of causes that people either love or hate. It seems that lately when I extol the virtues of vegetarianism I have been getting a stronger and stronger reaction.

It happened again the other day. A woman at work asked me why I'm a vegetarian.

"Well...," I said, giving her my most sincere smile. "...Let me just tell you."

I launched into my canned 10 minute speech on the merits of vegetarianism. Unfortunately, I didn't get far—maybe forty-five seconds into it—when I saw her eyes glaze over and she stifled a yawn. Knowing I was going to lose her if I didn't do something, I skipped straight to the end of my speech where I get to the heavy stuff like veal calves and world starvation. The bored look turned to terror, as if I was carrying a bomb or (even worse) asking her for money. She started taking large backward steps, and I suddenly felt about as welcome a Bobby Seale at a DAR convention.

I guess the message is clear. Everybody knows we vegetarians are around, and most of the time they don't really care. To the average meat eater out there our cause is about as important as the Rochester Worm Museum, of the Albanian Home for Aging Soldiers. When we really press the issue, though, it gets personal. At that point the meat eater will either "get it," or treat us like a Moonie hanging around the local playground. It seems that just like the Moonies and those other love/hate groups, we don't yet have the respect of most of those who disagree with us.

The early days of the anti-smoking movement must have been like this. Those people probably encountered lots of hostility from smokers and industry lobbyists. Their persistence paid off, though. As people started to learn and accept the facts, they became much more receptive. Even though there are still plenty of smokers in the world, the anti-smokers are generally acknowledged as having a legitimate cause, and being on the "right" side of the issue. Truth won out in the end.

Hopefully it won't be long before vegetarians get that kind of respect. I know the day will come, because vegetarianism is such a great cause. After all, look at its attributes: it doesn't cost any money to participate, we don't advocate the violent overthrow of the government, and we won't even try to brainwash your kids.

If only people knew.

Still More Pathetic Tales of the Veggie Avenger

"Store Wars"

When we last left the Veggie Avenger, our favorite vegetarian activist was shamelessly accosting meat-eaters in his jobs as an elevator operator and waiter. Unfortunately, those jobs didn't last long. Employers, it seems, were quick to realize that a tactless vegetarian superhero was not their ideal choice in interacting with the public. Nevertheless, the Veggie Avenger remains undaunted. "Hey," he says with a shrug, "why be subtle if you know you're right?" Yes, it's clear that this is a man of principle—at least until his unemployment checks run out.

The Veggie Avenger has been spending his free time (actually, all of his time is free time) pasting nasty stickers on the meat packages at some of Big City's supermarkets. The stickers have sayings on them like: "My name was Elsie, and I had brown eyes," and "Beef: Real Food for Morons." The Veggie Avenger is very proud of himself for being so clever. Suddenly, he senses someone behind him. He turns around to see a butcher the size of Delaware, with arms like fir trees.

Butcher: So, you're the guy who's been treading on our tenderloin!

Veggie Avenger [articulate, as usual]: Who, me??

The butcher grabs our hero's throat with a blood-stained hand and starts pulling him down the aisle. There's the sound of Converse All-Stars squeaking as they drag along the linoleum floor.

Butcher: I've got a meat saw in the back I want you to get acquainted with.

Veggie Avenger [unable to breath]: Arrghh!

Just then a little old lady shopper whacks the butcher in the ribs with her cane.

Little Old Lady: Hey fatso, what are you doing with the geek?

Butcher: I'm going to soak him in meat tenderizer 'til he dissolves.

Veggie Avenger: Arrghh!

By this time several shoppers have gathered around to watch the commotion. The store manager comes over to intervene.

Store Manager: What's going on?

Little Old Lady [pointing to the butcher]: Arnold Schwarzenegger here is trying to deep-six this pathetic hippie.

Butcher: He's the one who's been putting the stickers on our meat. I'm going to lock him up in cold storage for a couple of days.

Veggie Avenger: Arrghh!

Manager: Hmm. Sounds like a violation of Federal product tampering laws to me. I'd better call the FBI.

Veggie Avenger [by this time turning blue, with his eyes bulging out]: Arrghh! Arrghh!

Little Old Lady: Let me take him home with me, boys. I'll straighten him out.

Manager: Lady, if you promise to keep him out of the store, he's yours.

Reluctantly, the butcher takes his hand off the Veggie Avenger's throat. Our hero, breathing again, knows he's won another battle. Air returns to his lungs. A confident look returns to his face, and he smirks at the butcher and store manager. He's just about to thank the little old lady when he feels her iron grip on his arm and the rap of her cane on his shins.

Little Old Lady: Now come along with me, sonny. I'm going to fix you a nice bowl of chicken soup.

Veggie Avenger: Arrghh!!!

The Four Words Missing from the English Language

We speakers of English really have it made. Our language is probably the most comprehensive tool for expressing ourselves ever developed by humankind. The Oxford English Dictionary contains about a quarter of a million distinct English words. When we consider that many of those words have multiple meanings and can be used in multiple senses (for example as both a noun and a verb), the number of usable words increases dramatically. Add on top of that hundreds of thousands of different chemicals, drugs and other scientific names, and the list of English words could easily top a million.

You'd think with all those words at our disposal—with the ability to call at will upon such goodies as "bower" and "kip" and "wincey"—that everyday speech and writing would be a breeze. Well, it would be, except for the sad fact that there are four words missing from the English language. Missing?! Yes, and these are not obscure words either. I'm not talking about, for example, a word to express the wrinkles under the legs of a horny toad. No, these are words that, if available, we would use all the time in our everyday lives. These are words that we need, and they don't exist!

I won't keep you in suspense any longer. The four words missing from the English language are words needed to express the common pronouns "he" and "she" and their variations in a gender-neutral manner. Simply put, we need a word that means "he or she," a word that means "him or her," a word that means "his or hers" and a word that means "himself or herself."

In these politically-correct times, most of us want to give both sexes their due, but without these words available to us that can often be difficult. Consider, for example, how cumbersome this simple English sentence becomes: "When the person in the chicken suit gets here, he or she may need to excuse himself or herself, because his or her sports team is trying to reach him or her."

Isn't that a mess?! And it gets worse when the context of what we're saying or writing demands that we go on like this for sentence after sentence. Most people just give up and use the male pronouns to implicitly include the female, kind of like using "mankind" when you really mean "humankind." But that, of course, simply ignores the problem, and it certainly isn't gender-neutral, even if you reverse it and throw in some "shes" and "hers" every few sentences.

Worse yet is when people wrongly use variants of the plural word "they" in referring to an individual man or woman, as in "The person in the chicken suit just fell on their tail." This drives me nuts, and it just emphasizes that English does have gender-neutral pronouns for multiple men and/or women, but not for the singular.

I think we can do better. If we can come up with 40 silly new drug names every day, surely we can coin four new words that we really need.

Here's my suggestion. Rather than coming up with totally new words that people will have to learn from scratch, lets just combine the existing male and female pronouns into new words. For example, "heshe" refers to a person of indeterminate sex, "hisher" is its possessive form, and "himherself" is… well, you know what it is. For the objective form I suggest "herhim," because it puts the woman first for once, I like the way it rolls off the tongue, and it creates an exception to the rule—something for which English is known.

So, lets take these new words for a spin. If we go back to our original sentence, it's much simpler now: "When the person in the chicken suit gets here, heshe may need to excuse himherself, because hisher sports team is trying to reach herhim." If it still sounds a little awkward, that's just because you aren't used to hearing the words yet. Remember how odd and silly words like "Flonase" and "GasX" sounded when you first heard them? …Okay, so they still sound silly. But trust me; with a little practice these new pronouns will become second nature.

So there you have it—"heshe," "hisher," "himherself" and "herhim"—four new words the English language desperately needs. Start using them today, and if we're lucky the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary will make them official in hisher next edition!

Becoming a Vegetarian—A Personal Remembrance

For many of us who were originally of the meat-eating persuasion, the conversion to vegetarianism was lengthy and convoluted. After all, major lifestyle changes of any kind don't normally happen overnight. The desire and motivation to change require knowledge and outside influence, to be sure. But it also takes something intangible. From speaking with vegetarians, I've found most of them were guided much more by their hearts than by a rational decision-making process.

I know that was true for me. Looking back on it, I can trace my own conversion to vegetarianism to a series of learning and changing steps that started when I was very young.

The Unknown

When I was a kid my mother's best friend had a vegetarian uncle. The women used to sit at the kitchen table with their tea and talk about him in hushed, embarrassed tones. Maybe I wasn't supposed to know, but of course I overheard everything. I was fascinated. In my mind I tried to imagine someone who didn't eat meat. I conjured up a dark image of a strange, antisocial man. Perhaps someone with a scraggly beard and long, unkempt fingernails.

One day my mother took me aside and confided to me. "He doesn't even wear leather," she said with wide eyes. Wow, I thought. This new information was just too much for me to reconcile with my eight-year-old suburban American view of life. Suddenly the mysterious character I had envisioned was barefoot besides. The thought haunted me for days. He doesn't eat meat or even wear leather, I kept thinking. What an odd person he must be.

I never met the mysterious "vegetarian uncle," and I suppose after a while I pretty much forgot about him. I was busy growing up, and vegetarianism was the farthest thing from my mind. School, friends and activities consumed my time and my thoughts.

Rejection

By the time I got to high school the country was in the throes of the social revolution of the '60s. New ideas were being tried and old values were subject to question. One day my best friend announced that he had become a vegetarian. I have vivid memories of him visiting our house—sitting at my family's dinner table and refusing to eat anything.

I felt betrayed. Here was someone I thought I could trust, and suddenly he was rejecting the meat-eating lifestyle I had grown up with, and my family had practiced for generations. I was angry at both him and the whole concept of vegetarianism. It was wrong, I told myself. It just had to be wrong.

My friend didn't stay a vegetarian for long. After a few months he moved on to other causes, and I was relieved because we no longer had a major rift between us.

Curiosity

It was several years before I was to confront vegetarianism again. This time I was in college. My junior year I moved to a new dormitory and quickly discovered that a large percentage of the people with whom I was now living were vegetarian. I would sit across from them in the dining hall eating my roast beef and eyeing them—at first suspiciously, but then with a good measure of curiosity. They looked healthy, I thought. Some of them were even fine athletes. They didn't talk a lot about their vegetarianism, but I sensed a great deal of commitment. I knew it took courage to go against the norm, and as I watched them eat their vegetables and grains I couldn't help but be impressed.

The more I learned about vegetarianism, and the more I thought about it, the more conflicted I became. In the back of my mind I was starting to realize that vegetarianism was for me. Intellectually and emotionally I agreed with everything about it. But I just couldn't admit that to myself. Instead I tried in vain to rationalize meat-eating. I was afraid, I guess. Afraid to give up those late night trips to the diner for a hamburger, and even more afraid of the reaction I would get from family and carnivorous friends if I suddenly went meatless. I took the coward's way out—I did nothing.

Acceptance

Three months after I graduated from college I moved to a big city hundreds of miles from home. For the first time in my life I was truly on my own. I didn't know anyone. It was only there, in the security that my solitude offered, that I did something I'd probably wanted to do for a long time. I became a vegetarian.

Over the years since then people have asked me if it's difficult to give up meat. No, I tell them with a casual shrug, it's very easy. I guess what I don't tell them about are the years that I spent finding out about vegetarianism and then struggling to reconcile it with my lifestyle. In retrospect vegetarianism is a snap—the choice is clear, and there are very few worthwhile things in life as easy to implement.

It's just that some of us, I suppose, were a little slow to learn.

More Tales of the Veggie Avenger—The Saga of “Vegetables Fred”

The Veggie Avenger, our superhero of vegetarian superheroes, has lost his position as an elevator operator. (His boss gave some flimsy excuse about rudeness and body parts getting caught in the doors.) Desperately in need of money he takes a job as a waiter in one of Big City's swankiest restaurants. Clad in a tuxedo but still wearing his traditional white canvas tennis shoes, our hero feels a little out of place as he waits on his first customers– a middle-aged man and woman from the suburbs.

Man: What exactly is the Veal Oscar?

Veggie Avenger: Actually, Oscar was the name of the calf. We were all very fond of him. [He sniffles] We'll miss him a lot.

Man [taken aback]: Oh, I see. Well, how's the lamb tonight?

VA: He's dead too.

Man [losing patience]: Yes, I know that. I was referring to his...uh, its taste.

VA: Oh, not bad. He did have the one John Denver album, and for some reason he liked Sylvester Stallone movies. But other than that his taste was pretty good.

Man: Young man, you're joking with me.

VA [sincerely]: I swear I am.

Man [closing his menu]: Well, I'll just have the chicken.

VA: Chickens.

Man: Pardon?

VA: Chickens. They're individuals, you know.

The man becomes angry and gets up to leave. The Veggie Avenger fears he may have gone too far. If these customers walk out he's in danger of losing his new job before it starts, and he's already spent his first week's salary on a new bowling shirt.

VA: Please don't leave! Listen we have a terrific special tonight. We call it... uh... Vegetables Fred. It's a mixed vegetable grill sautéed in olive oil with capers and pine nuts. We serve it with fresh snow peas, red peppers with dill sauce and a tomato stuffed with wild rice. It's much tastier than some boring piece of meat, and I guarantee it's cholesterol free!

Woman [to husband]: You should watch your cholesterol.

VA: It's also five dollars cheaper than anything else on the menu.

Man [smiling now]: Actually, that does sound pretty good... Okay, I'll go with it.

[The woman nods her approval.]

The Veggie Avenger walks back to the kitchen gloating over his victory. These were his very first customers, and he's talked them into ordering vegetarian. What charm, he thinks. What savoir-faire! Only one thing worries him. How in the world is he going to talk the chef into cooking Vegetables Fred?

 

The Veggie Avenger's Code

The Veggie Avenger vows to fight tirelessly for truth, justice and the Vegetarian Way, and to do his best not to get arrested, beat up, or run out of beer in the process.

Morally Correct vs. Politically Correct

It's only been a few days since Sarah Palin was nominated to run for Vice President of the United States, but I've already received dozens of emails from animal rights and vegetarian groups opposing her. Those emails portray her, quite honestly from what I can tell, as a passionate hunter and fur wearer who opposes protection for polar bears, likes to decorate with dead animals, and supports eradication of wolves with airplanes and high-powered rifles.

My guess is that Governor Palin probably doesn't mind these email assassinations of her character at all. Sure, the McCain ticket will probably lose some votes from animal lovers, but the image of having a gun-slinging cowboy for a Vice President (remember the old TV show Maverick?) will probably attract lots more votes than it loses.

I am personally plenty offended by Ms. Palin's beliefs and actions with respect to animals, but that's okay. I've offended lots of folks myself by espousing veganism over the years. One of the wonderful things about our country is that no one has the right not to be offended. The First Amendment guarantees it. The Governor can believe and say anything she wants, and that's what makes life in the good old U.S. of A always interesting. That's also what makes our political system so entertaining, and often so frustrating.

The real question for the election is not whether someone has the right to say or believe one thing or another—of course they do, and thank goodness we all agree on that. No, the real question for the election is whether those beliefs will negatively affect their ability to govern. "Reasonable" minds may differ on polar bear legislation or what constitutes "sport" in hunting. I'm not so worried about that. The majority of the people will decide what they decide on those issues, and that's how it should be. I think Ms. Palin's beliefs and behavior, though, tell us something even more important about her. I think they tell us that she lacks compassion and empathy, and that's where I have the problem.

Please know that I am not talking about all hunters here. I've known plenty of hunters who were wonderful, caring people. They knew what they were doing, they ate what they killed, and they had respect for wildlife (…though obviously not much respect for the individual animals that they killed). Their venison dinners caused much less suffering than a suburban hockey mom picking up KFC for the family. My friends who were hunters didn't wear fur. They didn't chase wolves with airplanes.

I personally don't think that people, like Sarah Palin, who find great entertainment and personal ego in killing and exploiting animals are wired for compassion and empathy. I doubt that in dealing with human animals their feelings are going to be much different, and for a politician that's a serious problem. We live in a much smaller world than we did when Teddy Roosevelt was President. (Who, by the way, would have made a great running mate for Ms. Palin!) The United States can't go it alone anymore. To effectively solve the world's many problems, our leaders have to work with others and understand the plight of the oppressed. They have to put themselves in the shoes of those who disagree with them, and see issues from all different viewpoints. In other words, an important prerequisite for the job should be the very compassion and empathy Sarah Palin lacks. The world has already had too many leaders who prefer shooting things from airplanes; what we need now are leaders who can use the tools of dialog and understanding.

I find Governor Palin's current popularity terribly sad. Sure it's sad for the animals in question, but it's sad for people and our society as well. It's sad that, in an era when politicians bend over backwards to be politically correct, it's still okay for someone running for the second-highest office in the land to publically portray herself as an animal abuser. I guess what's morally correct doesn't become politically correct until enough voters care about it. Thomas Jefferson could get elected President despite a sadly small minority of people objecting to the fact that he was a slave owner, and now, two hundred years later, Sarah Palin might well be elected Vice President despite a sadly small minority of people objecting to the fact that she mistreats animals.

I know I shouldn't be sad. For now, Sarah Palin can say and do as she pleases, and I can vote for… well, for somebody else. But the fact that we have made enough progress on putting the shame of slavery behind us that we now have a black man as a serious candidate for President gives me hope. One day soon I hope that we'll put the shame of killing and exploiting animals for our own amusement and vanity equally far behind us. When that happens, politics will be even more entertaining, and far less frustrating.

Getting All Choked Up on Old Food

Over the years I've found that there are certain advantages to being part of the so-called "baby-boomer" generation. There are so many of us that we have a purchasing power probably no other demographic group can match. Consequently, businesses tend to cater to us, and certainly advertisers target us. As we go through the years most of the national trends seem to follow our station in life, or at least what somebody thinks our station in life should be.

Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the food industry. I don't think it's just my imagination, for example, that in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we were students there were a lot of restaurants around that sported rustic wood paneling and sitar music. They all had mellow "waitpeople" that plied us with mango juice and "Ethereal Planet Burgers." Sprouts were everywhere.

In the 1980s our generation turned materialistic with a vengeance, and the food industry was there to capitalize on it. The "Whole Life Café" was suddenly renamed the "Exchange Grill," and it began catering to the power lunch set. The ferns were taken out, and the paneling was changed from old barn siding to polished mahogany. Even Jeff, the catatonic waiter who had been there ever since that day he wandered in on his way back from Woodstock, had changed. He was now referred to as "Geoffrey," and he wore a tux and worked at being rude.

Supermarkets took advantage of the materialism of the 1980s as well. They made a killing by offering expensive vegetables that no one ever heard of, and by selling gourmet frozen dinners to busy working people for twelve dollars apiece.

Now that the 1990s are upon us, the food industry has once again changed the way it relates to the baby-boom generation. Someone has gotten the idea that now that we're getting a little long in the tooth, we must all be responsible family people. That means we have to make decisions about what we feed our children and, even more important, it means we are starting to get nostalgic about what we ate as a kid.

The food industry seems to have created a clever and highly profitable marketing plan to take advantage of these assumptions they have made about us. I say highly profitable because, by pushing nostalgia on us, they can sell all those old products they've been making for forty years. The hope, of course, is that not only will we try these things again for "nostalgic" reasons, but we'll feed them to our kids as well.

All of this has made watching television almost unbearable (all right, even more unbearable.) Over the past few months I've heard corny jingles and seen cartoon mascots that I thought had mercifully died in the fifties. Even lowly products like corn flakes are getting national airtime at two hundred thousand dollars a minute.

By far the worst of all these nostalgia ads is one that shows a decidedly yuppie-looking fellow patiently teaching his too-cute-to-be-believed son the proper method of eating an Oreo cookie. This is no subtle manipulation of the buyer at home. This is shameless sentimentality, and I guess I resent the fact that it is aimed at my generation.

I, for one, am not going to get caught up in this food nostalgia thing. Mostly, that's because when I look back on the things I ate twenty or thirty years ago I have only to borrow a phrase from the generation after mine: gag me with a spoon! I remember that as a kid (in those dark pre-vegetarian days) my favorite dinner was a twenty-five cent box of macaroni and cheese mix with a couple of hot dogs sliced up in it. I'd wash that down with about a quart of cheap, store brand ice cream. This is something to be nostalgic about?

Things didn't improve very quickly, either. As a student living in poverty I was fond of microwaved American cheese sandwiches (at least they were fast) and salads made of nothing but iceberg lettuce. These are days to be remembered, but certainly not days to be relived.

Now I don't want to sound snobby about all of this, but vegetarians are by definition choosier than the general public about what they put in their bodies. We, more than most people, feel that our diet has become a little more sophisticated, a little healthier, over the years. That being the case, we're not likely to take a step backwards twenty or thirty years for any reason, much less at the urgings of some advertiser trying to make a buck off food nostalgia.

So don't I ever get nostalgic about food? Well, yes. But only food from my post-vegetarian era. On occasion I remember how nice the Whole Life Cafe used to be. We would sit there amongst the knotty pine and play with the honey container on the table while we waited for our dinner. And you know, when he wasn't stoned, old Jeff could be a pretty darned good waiter, too. Sometimes, when I ordered the Ethereal Planet Burger, he'd give me extra sprouts.

Mark's All-Star List of Foods Consumed During the (Pre-Vegetarian) 1960s

• Kool Aid (I didn't even like it very much as a kid)
  
• Cool Whip (At least they spelled it right)
  
  • My Grandmother's Buttermilk Pancakes (These I could get nostalgic about—I'm waiting for the ads)
    
  • Herring (Really, no kidding!)
    
  • Hostess Snack Pies (They were always filled with two cherries and lots of gloppy syrup)
    
  • Dietetic Soft Drinks with Cyclamates (At least this is one thing we won't be seeing nostalgia ads for)