Cruelty

Re “ There's tough, and then there's Wyoming tough ,” Feb. 25 Such bravado in the headline doesn't excuse animal cruelty. Wyoming resident Mike Gerber, explaining his family's actions against a dog they saw as a predator, told a local newspaper that “I wish it never happened.” He said: “The decisions being made were made fast. Maybe if they would've been thought through more clearly, we would've done things differently.” Laying blame on “fast decisions” does not excuse torture and abusive animal cruelty against a dog. Lauralea Saddick Claremont More letters to the editor ...  

Prosecutors have charged a Mendocino County man with 36 counts of animal cruelty after ailing horses were taken from his property. The charges come after 36 emaciated horses were removed from James DeNoyer's land.

One could never recognize the beautiful and inspiring ("Mr. Deeds," "Mr. Smith") and wonderfully imaginative ("Lost Horizon") films Capra made by reading the McBride/Lambert diatribe against the creative man who so well described America's mainstream values. Today's films exalt the disrespectful, the cruel, the boorish, the hate-filled, the obscene and vulgar, the selfish and faithless. Capra's moving tales of the triumph of good over evil, love over despair, kindness over cruelty, ordinary beings over the powerful not only uplifted our spirits, they also influenced our values.

I read Carlsen's excellent piece on animal rights with interest. It is time for our overly violent and overly populous species to take a hard look at the manner in which we are living on this planet. Our sanctioning of intentional acts of cruelty at every level of society, from factory farm, to laboratory, to prisons and battlefields, has yet to produce a better human being. I do not believe it is possible to confine cruelty to what we might consider to be ugly, lesser creatures.

I am grieved at what a nation of Holocaust survivors can do unto dispossessed others, while lecturing the rest of the world to "never forget" lest it happen again. My aggrieved perception of the situation in Israel is not to be written off as an expression of anti-Semitism (for the Palestinians are Semites also), but of anti-injustice, anti-cruelty, anti-adamant-blind-hypocrisy of the double standard. Let no Israel-supporter defensively point to others who are also doing injustice and cruelty in South Africa, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and Asia, for the point is that one might rightfully expect those who have suffered the most to be the most sensitive to the unjust suffering of others.

So Coe believes that "humankind's cruelty to itself devolves from its cruelty to what are perceived as lower life forms." Baloney! Her vegetarianism does not make her any more sensitive to the plight of man than my eating chicken makes me a barbarian. I have encountered plenty of animal activists who vehemently disdain those of us who don't follow their chosen "morality." Have they rallied behind human rights issues like homelessness because they are now more sensitive to humanity?

I AM disappointed that on an evening promoting human compassion, "American Idol" would take the contestant who provided the emotional close to Tuesday's show and subject her to Wednesday's cruelty ["Tugging Emotions to the Very End," by Randy Lewis, April 27]. The number of votes that fans reportedly cast, 70 million, guaranteed high viewership without announcing a "shocking result" and then pushing Jordin Sparks off the cliff of elimination. For me and my family, it was a great letdown, and instead of ending upbeat about the real issue of the evening, human compassion to end suffering, we saw an example of senseless cruelty imposed on a seemingly wonderful and caring person.

Corrine Flocken's circus review, "It's the Biggest Retirement on Earth" (July 7), glorifies Ringling Bros. exotic-animal trainer Gunther Gebel-Williams, who, we are told, "uses the whip sparingly." What a saint! The article neglected to say that circus animals are routinely trained to perform unnatural acts, such as jumping through flaming hoops and balancing on balls, through the use of beatings and starvation--all for the amusement of callous humans. It is sad that audiences create a market for such cruelty by patronizing such spectacles and disappointing that The Times encourages such cruelty by glorifying those who torture other creatures for profit.