Considering him an honorary "Smith," I have followed Morrissey's amusing histrionics. Wearing his liver on his sleeve, singing overbaked songs, alternately sour and sappy, Morrissey is just the person to theorize on what should or shouldn't be taken with a grain of salt. He also offers opinions on what shouldn't be swallowed at all. Meat especially.
The other day, he named HALAL meat in particular, as something to avoid.
Uh-oh. Let's not say anything that might upset The Muslims. That's not only "racist" it's deadly. Is Morrissey planning any concerts at Bataclan in Paris?
The Sinatra for Neurotics, people often accuse Morrissey of being overly sensitive. Meat is murder? Oh no, ha ha, meat is DELICIOUS. (It's never insensitive to jeer at vegetarians).
As a vegetarian Smith, well before I ever heard of Morrssey, I do believe that a) killing animals is not nice and usually done cruelly, b) meat is not good for you and humans, like gorillas, are designed to chew and eat vegetables and fruits, and c) it's un-ecological to waste resources on producing meat. It takes much more water to feed cattle than to seed a field of wheat or raspberries. We don't need lakes of shit caused by pig farms and the hogs that unload 15 pounds of crap a day.
So, what DID Morrissey say?
He said “halal slaughter requires certification that can only be given by supporters of Isis.”
That may be "over-reaching" as we say when describing the underpinning of a trope that relates to the zeitgeist. Still, when he says that halal slaughter is "evil," who can deny it?
The actual quotes, which Morrissey served up with a dollop of scorn for the politicos of England:
“If you have any concern for animal welfare, for example, you cannot possibly vote for either Conservatives or Labour, because both parties support halal slaughter, which, as we all know, is evil.
“Furthermore, halal slaughter requires certification that can only be given by supporters of ISIS, and yet in England we have halal meat served in hospitals and schools!”
He questioned why Prime Minister May would call "joyous" the Islamic holiday Eid al-Adhar when “millions of animals had their throats slit to mark the occasion."
He also mentioned that the slaughter involved in kosher food is "very cruel," but not "evil." Maybe stupid? There's SOME word for the sight of Orthodox Jews on a Brooklyn street waving chickens over their heads and engaging in rituals that, for some reason, can't be confined to an abbatoir.
Basically halal and kosher slaughter is similar: animals get their throats cut in actions that would repulse Jason of the horror movies, and the blood is drained...something only Dracula would find pleasant viewing.
Many animals are "stunned" before they are murdered. This is supposed to make things more humane. This is sort of a bad Monty Python routine, isn't it? "Oh yes, the Norwegian Blue is dead, and you can pluck its feathers and eat it, but before it got its throat slashed, it was...stunned."
“I am not saying that stunned slaughter is acceptable, because it couldn’t ever be,” Morrissey said. “If you use the term ‘humane slaughter’ then you might as well talk in terms of ‘humane rape’.”
The response to all this, predictably, has been shrugs, scorn, and cries of "racism" for putting halal food slaughter higher than kosher slaughter or simply ordinary slaughter, as is done to pigs (which Jews and Muslims won't eat).
Morrissey thinks that racism doesn't apply in his latest complaint, but it IS lodged by someone concerned about immigration and assimilation, and specifically against the Muslim way of killing animals. It does veer from his usual, general broadsides against cruelty to animals to single out a specific group. His first response was pretty right wing:
"“As far as racism goes, the modern loony left seem to forget that Hitler was left wing,” he says now. “When someone calls you racist, what they are saying is: hmm, you actually have a point, and I don’t know how to answer it, so perhaps if I distract you by calling you a bigot we’ll both forget how enlightened your comment was.”
Perhaps soon enough Morrissey will write a song or deliver a speech regarding how tourism in England will lessen if the country isn't full of whites looking and acting British, or how assimilation isn't happening when there are "no go" zones owned by immigrants, or how many fish and chip shops are going out of business. But getting back "on topic," he points out that racism is almost universal when it comes to the human race vs animals.
“Racism is at its most abhorrent in relation to eating animals," Morrissey countered. "If you eat animals, isn’t it a display of hatred for a certain species? And what gives you the right to eat another species or race? Would you eat people from Sri Lanka?”
Why he chose Sri Lanka, I have no idea. Maybe he noticed how many people in Sri Lanka are on eBay bootlegging books and records. It IS worth noting that some people DO eat other people, even of the same race, although Ed Gein, for example, was sexist about it. Or was he? Eating a man could be considered homosexual, and Gein would have found such an act perverted.
But let's not digress.
The important thing is that once again, Morrissey has raised awareness along with eyebrows. He's not as gentle about it as Paul McCartney (who impressed me by mentioning how he turned vegetarian after eating lamb while watching his pet sheep wandering around his Scotland home). Morrissey is a lot angrier and more graphic. And, yes, sometimes loonier. But there IS no "nice" way of killing, and there IS no reason why people shouldn't be vegetarian (Evander Holyfield would be among the many athletes to tell you that not eating meat won't make you weak).
And remember, animals can't sing the way Morrissey can. They can't sing: "You have killed me...you have killed me...but I forgive you...."
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