I was reading more on PT Barnum and I have to agree that it was easy to like the character in the movie as he was portrayed to us and then having the actor be the charismatic and good looking Wolverine guy, Hugh Jackman. PETA was/is trying to start shit that PT Barnum was in reality a bad guy who abused and profited off animals he kept imprisoned.
We were not there to say he was abusive or not but I am sure you can't control elephants and tigers the same way you control puppies, so more power and force will be needed. We have to look at life through the lens of the people living in those times. Barnum lived from 1810 to 1891, America was young and spread out over a lot of land. The television would not be invented until after Barnum passed away, so people in small towns were not introduced to new things very often. There were newspapers, but a black and white image does not compare to a living creature moving about. Someone bringing something you may have only heard about to your town along with hoopla and fanfare sounds exciting and I might pay a nickel to see that. It is sad that nowadays we can say the animals were treated unfairly, but even the people were sometimes treated badly too. It was a hard life and not everything had been figured out. A couple of koala bears probably died before it was figured out that they live off of eucalyptus leaves almost exclusively, but that was not learned until zoos and people like Barnum kept them in captivity long enough.
It is easy for PETA today to judge and look down on the goings on from 100 years ago today when all they have to do is look at their IPADS and phones. Life was not the same 100 years ago, people struggled to survive, let alone choose a life to not eat the most nutritious portion of their meal, the meat. Off topic, but again, if not for Barnum, maybe we don't have as many scientists. How many kids saw a giraffe or a hippo and decided they were going to become a zoologist, or contribute to science positively? This is a similar argument to people who hate zoos because they keep animals imprisoned. It is through these systems that we have learned the most of animal behavior, and even been able to keep certain animals from becoming extinct. Plus the truth is, most of us would not see 99% of the animals we see if not for zoos and circuses and that is of value in itself.
PETA may not like it, but we can't let all these animals just exist, specially the carnivores who might eat us, if we don't pay attention. I don't agree that we are all equal animals, if we try to build housing and there are hyenas or other predators that might take our children at any moment, fuck that, clean out the predators for one hundred miles. It sucks and it is selfish, but we are humans, it is what we do. It is not worth the risk, and the PETA types can suck it. They wouldn't live in a neighborhood where walking to Starbucks might mean possibly having to fight for their life from a tiger or other animal bigger than them. But they will whine if predators are taken out of an ecosystem right now to protect other people.
I have nothing against PETA,what they intend to do is noble, protecting animals that can't protect themselves is great, but trying to convert us all into vegetarians should not be in their job description. Sadly, we are omnivores, and we need the protein of meat to function properly. Looking at the past and judging it is also unfair, the rules were different. PT Barnum may not have been right on how he treated his animals, but the masses of the day showed up to support him, otherwise he would not have become rich and famous for doing things his way.
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