An exchange in the blog this morning on the morality of hunting brought me back to the problems with veganism and vegetarianism. Those problems can be summarized in one word: bacon.
This comedy bit from my favorite comedian Jim Gaffigan illustrates the problem quite handily:
I love Gaffigan’s work for three reasons. First, it is just hilarious. Second, like the best observational comedy, it is so true to life. And third, he doesn’t need to work blue to make people laugh. Don’t get me wrong. I can appreciate the work of comedians like Richard Pryor and Russell Peters. But hearing a comedian wallow in scatology and f-bombs gets tiresome after awhile. It reminds me of a guitarist who turns up the distortion to cover a garbled solo.
Anyway, I digress. As I said, the greatest problem for the spread of veganism and vegetarianism is simply the taste of foods like bacon. That’s it.
Watch this delightful clip of Hamlet the pet pig hopping down the stairs for lunch:
Now that must surely be in the top one hundred “Awww, isn’t that cute!” clips on youtube. And yet, despite the overwhelming cuteness of the clip, the first taste of crisp, salty, smoky bacon is enough for us to harden our hearts to Hamlet and send him to the slaughterhouse, and all for the sake of a BLT sandwich.
Really?
We know that going vegan (or at least vegetarian) would be better for the environment and ourselves, to say nothing of the animals. We teeter on the edge of a monumentous decision … and then …
and then we taste Bippity Boppity Bacon!
