Myth: PETA is cares about you.

Ok, many things have happened since last I posted, including a wonderful weekend in (of all places) Detroit. But more on this later.

Today, NBC deemed a PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or, People Eating Tasty Animals) ad too offensive to air during the Super Bowl. How offensive is the ad? Well, unless you care about truth in advertising, not very.

The premise of the ad is this: stunning women use produce in a manner that was only fantasized about by the poor migrant worker who picked it. That's pretty much it. Beautiful in it's simplicity, the only message is that "Studies show, vegetarians have better sex." Ahh great. Let me put down my steak and go buy a copy of the Kama Sutra and some scented oils, and everything will fall into place.

First of all, what fucking studies? Surely such a virtuous organization as PETA, that paragon of reason, that beacon to progressives everywhere would have spent some money actually conducting a study. I mean, if you're paying $100,000 a second for air time, please, God, tell me you're not going to use it to lie to one third of Americans. I searched for 20 minutes looking for a study that supported this thesis, but to no avail. This leads me to one of two conclusions: 1.) I didn't look hard enough, or 2.) PETA is lying. Because I am so cynical, I was not surprised when I checked PETA's response to the decision :

Undulating bodies aside, why do vegetarians make better lovers? For one thing, vegetarians are, on average, fitter and slimmer than meat eaters. Also, heart disease and obesity—both linked to meat consumption—can slow someone down so much that sex can give them a coronary. And the consumption of meat and dairy products is linked to impotence: The cholesterol and saturated fats in meat and other animal products restrict the flow of blood to all the body's vital organs—not just to the heart.

So PETA didn't conduct any "studies". That's surprising. The thing that really---I mean really---pisses me off is the fact that the PR guy for PETA is so clearly choosing his words in such a non-committal manner. They know that they don't have any hard data to back up their claims, and they don't care! I mean, it's not WMD, but really...what is?

Eating meat can give you a heart attack, but so can eating peanut butter. (One ounce of chicken: 46 calories, 1 g fat. One ounce of peanut butter: 165 calories, 3 grams of fat.) PETA has only told me what I already know: if you're unhealthy, there's probably a lot bigger things to worry about than sex. Really, the ad should have said "A bunch of people who think that eating meat is morally wrong also think that people who don't eat meat have better sex." At least this would have been honest.

This all isn't really fair---I would have declared victory either way. Suppose I could have found a study that confirmed PETA's thesis. Of course, I can also find studies which show:

• Rich men are better lovers
• On average, white men are more intelligent than black men (by 15 IQ points)
• If you floss, you'll live longer.

So, do I believe that black people are less intelligent than white people, and my sexual prowess is measured by the things that I buy for my girlfriend? Of course not. These studies don't prove anything except that white people are better at taking IQ tests, that people who floss probably also have a lot of other healthy habits, and that some women have become so good at faking orgasms that they can now fool themselves.

But, could it be possible that vegetarians actually make (gasp) worse lovers? This, surely, is the icing on the cake: vegetarian diets can lead to zinc deficiencies, and zinc deficiencies can lead to a low libido. Oh happy day---not only is PETA utterly dishonest in their advertising, they also are ignoring the proverbial plank in their collective eye.

This all goes to show: correlation is not causation. What does this mean? It means that flossing won't make you live longer. It means that rich men don't make better lovers, and it means that the guys who wrote The Bell Curve were full of shit. It works like this: does the fact that you're a vegetarian imply that you're a better lover? Does it imply that you have better sex? Of course not. Similarly, I can dress the question with a few "nots": Does not being a vegetarian imply that you are not a good lover? This is how "if" and "then" statements work. "If you are a vegetarian, then you are a good lover" automatically means "If you are not a vegetarian then you are not a good lover". Simply establishing a correlation between two observables is not enough to establish any logical link between those two observables.

The most honest statement that one could make is "In general, healthy people have better sex." (Why do healthy people have better sex, and what does "better" mean? What does "healthy" mean? If you're Bill Clinton, you have to quibble with the definition of "sex", too.) Just for argument's sake, let's assume that all people are either "healthy" or "unhealthy". There are a subset of "healthy" people who also happen to be "vegetarians". Good for them. But there is also a (much larger) subset of all "healthy" people who love "eating animals". Likewise, all "vegetarians" aren't "healthy"---some "unhealthy" people are also "vegetarians". But even this is not enough reasoning to establish causation between "healthy" and "better sex" because there are, I'm sure, some healthy vegetarians who are lousy in the sack. At best PETA is making a statistical statement with little or no hard evidence, on par with "Blacks are less intelligent than whites". At worst, they are deliberately misleading people.

Of course, the glaring irony in all of this is twofold. First, these are the same people who balked when Bush claimed that people who buy drugs fund terrorists. (Never mind the fact that the Taliban's main source of income is poppy farming, the raw material needed to make heroin.) This begs the question---is it ok to use misleading statements to achieve some moral victory? Even more deliciously, these are the same people who disagree with the proponents of "Abstinence only" programs who stretch the truth about condom fail rates. (For example, did you know that the fail rate for a condom is, at worst, about 15%?) It seems that the ends only justify the means if they're MY ends.

Let's get one thing straight: PETA doesn't care about you. PETA doesn't care about your sex life. PETA cares about cows that were raised to be slaughtered, and KFC employees playing football with chickens. PETA cares about funding domestic terrorists and advancing their own agenda. PETA could care less about you.