For Jay Kirk and Ed Stewart--I've Got Your Embellished "cruelty" Right Here!!!!

End the circus of cruelty

There is a long tradition of mistreatment of elephants and other exotic wild animals to get them to do circus tricks for our entertainment. A long-overdue bill in Congress would ban them from traveling circuses.

By Jay Kirk - Los Angeles Times

December 18, 2011

In 1882, P.T. Barnum paid $10,000 to have Jumbo, the world's most famous elephant, shackled like Houdini, stuffed into a crate and sailed across the ocean to New York City. Barnum got Jumbo on the cheap because — unknown to him but well known to Jumbo's keepers at the London Zoo — the elephant had gone bonkers.

Jumbo had become such a hazard that his owners feared for the safety of the many children who took rides on his back. Alumni of such rides included an asthmatic Teddy Roosevelt, who, perhaps traumatized by the experience, would later go on to kill four elephants in less than five minutes while on safari in British East Africa. (You can see two of these unfortunate beasts still posing for eternity in the Hall of African Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History.)

Jumbo was so traumatized by his travels at sea, confined to his crate, that his handler had to get him stinking drunk. Because beer was already part his regular diet, getting the elephant to swill a few pails of whiskey was no major chore. Three years after Barnum got his prize elephant, Jumbo met his end in a head-on collision with an off-schedule locomotive. Maybe he was drunk. I hope so. The accident happened while they were boarding the animals onto the boxcars to make the next city. A traveling circus is nothing but headache. Especially when you're using stubborn, unreliable beasts like lions and elephants. Left to their own devices, they'll just loll around doing squat.

But, over the centuries, circus trainers have come up with ways to get wild animals to comply. Not very nice things. Things like bullhooks, whips, metal pipes and kicks to the head. Things like systematic and total breakage of spirit. Of course, trainers do so only because they know the results are well worth the entertainment it provides to you and your children. They've been using these same methods — all except the more recent stun gun — since at least Jumbo's time.

The training of circus animals is an effective and long-standing tradition, albeit conducted in secret, presumably under the assumption that it's more fun to watch an elephant put on a fez or do a headstand if you're not burdened by the knowledge of how that elephant came by such magnificent and unnatural skills. But now, that may all change. With the Traveling Exotic Animal Protection Act, or TEAPA, a bill introduced in Congress in November, exotic species would be banned from traveling circuses.

To hear some wild-animal act enthusiasts, in particular the spokespeople for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus, you would think someone had proposed outlawing childhood itself. Of course, Ringling Bros., which is headquartered in Vienna, Va., is not happy that one of the bill's sponsors, Rep. James P. Moran (D-Va.), is going to take jobs away from his own constituency, and from a 141-year-old family business! To use Barnum's favorite expression, that is pure "bunkum," but I'll get back to the jobs thing in a second.

First, let us consider how long ago Ringling Bros. phased out the freak show. Yet, we have somehow managed. Of course, if anyone had suggested, 100 years ago, that people should no longer have the privilege of laughing at individuals with deficient growth hormones or genetic defects, it would have been considered about as uncalled for as saying that dancing bears should be banned in Bulgaria. As it so happens, however, even if it was kind of a naked ploy to humanize its image to gain European Union membership, one must now commend Bulgaria: Its bears no longer have to dance on burning coals.

In fact, there's a long list of other countries — let us doff our hats to Bolivia, Austria, India, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal and Slovakia, among others — that have passed measures to ban wild animals in circus acts. Other nations, including Britain, Norway and Brazil, are on the verge of doing the same. Already, dozens of cities in the United States have banned circus animals.

Just to be clear, this bill does not ban circuses. Nor will TEAPA ban domesticated animals from the circus. Is it too obvious to point out that dancing poodles are much more easily trained, and less dangerous, than elephants and Bengal tigers? Forget, for a moment, the heinous violence apparently required to get a wild animal to perform tricks. Think about the elephant that, in its natural habitat, is a creature in constant motion, that can walk up to 15 miles a day. Then take that animal, confine it to the back of an overheated truck, make it ride America's interstate system up to 50 weeks out of the year, with a few brief moments of chaos, lights and applause, and then force it to spend the remaining 58% to 98% of its life in chains.

One report from Animal Defenders International, which has conducted undercover surveillance of circus animal abuse and which is coordinating the grass-roots campaign behind TEAPA, said that elephants and other animals have been found confined to their transports up to 19 hours for journeys of 5 1/2 hours or less. We cannot be too surprised, then, when we hear about an elephant going on a mad rampage and killing its trainer, or worse, when it results in the death of an innocent bystander or a child, a tragedy that has occurred on numerous occasions.

Ed Stewart, one of the founders of PAWS, a wildlife sanctuary in Galt, Calif., put it best: "People take their most prized possession, their child, give it to a carny, the carny takes it, puts it on the most dangerous animal in the world, and then you give the carny five bucks. No drug test on the elephant or the carny."

If you're like me, you find the spectacle of animals at a circus not only disturbing but weirdly embarrassing. It has to do with knowing that the only reason these animals have suffered is in order to learn, let's admit it, a fairly lame set of tricks, especially when what we are truly eager to see are the acrobats and trapeze artists. The paid entertainers. Which goes to the business about lost jobs.

The fact is, most circus employees already wear multiple hats. The elephant trainer sells tickets and makes the popcorn and helps hoist the big top. Changing over to all-human acts will only increase jobs. Think of Cirque du Soleil and Circus Vargas. Both are more profitable, and I dare say more popular, than Ringling Bros. And all-human acts don't cost taxpayers for the endless animal inspections demanded of the USDA, which already says it cannot afford to conduct the inspections required under the Animal Welfare Act.

Altogether, this bill could be the best news circuses have heard in a long time. And for the rest of us, we will no longer feel like freaks for wanting to watch. This way, we can all be in on the act.



'I don't normally waste my time with type of thing, always assuming that for the most part intelligent human beings would see it for what it is. Amazingly, it seems of late some people have become "confused" by what they are hearing, and I guess folks are not as intelligent as I had originally given them credit.

Why if something is a bad as Mr. Kirk would like to have you believe it is would he need to embellish, make up(chose your word) a situation/scenario so much? He is attempting to turn a man rushing to work and creasing his fender on the garage door, into a fiery, flaming inferno on the freeway. It's that simple. If so bad why make up/embellish statements? His statement about Circus Vargas being more profitable then Ringling attempts to show how much he knows, when he actually pointed out how little he knows, and makes it up as he goes. His statement about Soleil being more profitable then Ringling is as moronic. Is Football more profitable then Baseball? Two different things. Is Theater more profitable then movies? Two different things. I wonder if with his "pretended" knowledge he knows how many Soleil shows have tanked? I wonder if he knows how many times Vargas has changed ownership finally ending up a one ring shell of it's former glory.

I think someone should check into the possibility that this statement is prosecutable as slander, Ed Stewart, one of the founders of PAWS, a wildlife sanctuary in Galt, Calif., put it best: "People take their most prized possession, their child, give it to a carny, the carny takes it, puts it on the most dangerous animal in the world, and then you give the carny five bucks. No drug test on the elephant or the carny." Although Mr. Stewart didn't name a person, per se he pretty much raped every individual in the animal business. Probably the most offensive, discriminatory statement I have ever heard. I particularly take offense as I have never done a drug in my life short of Tylenol for a head ache, and if I think hard I can recall partaking in 10 beers the past 25 years. I met this sad sack Ed Stewart one time, on a freezing night in Illinois. At 10:30 in the evening he decides he is hungry after a late flight out of California. I graciously offered to take him to the only place open at that time of night in Northern Illinois, a local tavern/grill so he can vouch I don't drink, and will just have to take my word on drugs. Upon arrival he informs the waitress he is a vegetarian and the house burger just won't do(he wasn't real Goddamn hungry was he). The restaurant scrounged around for some lettuce to make him a salad, wrongly assuming he was a friend of mine, and french fries. It's not just elephants, this sad sack doesn't want you to eat cow either!!!!!!

Folks like Stewart and Kirk, who live in their own Private Idaho and want the world to live there with them also, because they know what is best for us, need to be watched carefully. There are a pot load out there, just as arrogant as they are "who know what is best for the poor, simple folks of the world." They assume the world is as stupid as a Rev. Jim Jones follower, if they spread enough lies. Go ahead drink their kool-aid. Then do some research and find out what happened to the folks who listened to Jim Jones lies.'