I just think that PETA sometimes gives vegans and animal lovers a bad rep by being far to agressive. I think that they fall into the catagory of people who think that the louder and more annoying they are the more that they will be heard and the more that they will convince people but to me they come off more irritating than anything else. I hate to generalize because I'm sure that there are some PETA people that don't believe in their scare tactics.
ITA
I believe in a lot of the things PETA does, I think, but their tactics often seem so abusive of or insulting to people: their "I'd rather go naked" campaign which seems to focus mostly on naked women, their ad using Rudy Guliani's image (without his permission) to underline the link between dairy consumption and prostate cancer, this recent ad campaign.
Even from the reaction of some of the posters here, it seems like they provoke a backlash rather than inspire and motivate and teach.
I also wonder what kind of people this agressive advertising appeals to?
(I mean, do we really want these kind of people as representatives of what "vegan" is? I'm not sure I do.)
On the other hand, they do some good investigative work, which unfortunately is tainted by this other aspect of their group. I've often seen people discount any information furnished by PETA--like the
www.iamscruelty.com info ---simply because it comes from PETA.
As for fat veg*ans : definitely there are vegans who basically follow a Standard American Diet, just using meat and dairy substitutes (highly processed foods) in the place of real meat and dairy; there are vegetarians who use a lot of high-saturated-fat dairy products; others are junk-fooders or eat a lot of white bread, sugar and other 'non-foods'; others eat a lot of processed and cooked food and barely any fresh veggies. But I would say that overall veg*ns are leaner than many meat-eaters.
IMO, PETA would do more good than hard by doing more promos like this: an example of advertising from their 'good side":
(I'll add the link in case the image 'disappears' on me :
http://celebglitz.com/36558/Celebrity-Gossip/cloris-leachman-peta-ad.aspx )
