Orwellian Center for Consumer Freedom's hypocrisy further exposed

The Editorial section of the Sunday, July 24, New York Times (Section 4, Page 11) includes an article by Verlyn Klinkenborg headed, "The Story Behind a New York Billboard and the Interests It Serves." It discusses the "PETA kills Animals" billboard in Times Square and exposes the motives of the group behind it, which calls itself "Consumer Freedom."

Klinkenborg writes:
"We live in an age of organizations with anodyne names that conceal their real agenda, and the Center for Consumer Freedom is one of them. We're all consumers, and what could be better than freedom? But CCF was founded by a Washington lobbyist named Richard Berman and is financed, according to at least one watchdog group, by many of the same meat, fast-food, restaurant and beverage companies that have hired him as a lobbyist. Seed money came from Philip Morris."

He tells us that "the language of the Center for Consumer Freedom is as Orwellian as it is possible to get. Its basic linguistic strategy could have been taken directly from George Orwell's 'Politics and the English Language,' still the most important single essay on how to lie without seeming to" and that "The blurring of the distinction between corporate interests and the individual and collective rights of humans is one of the central tropes of our time and the source of much purposeful confusion, of the kind that the Center for Consumer Freedom exploits."

Klinkenborg charges Consumer Freedom with hypocrisy. Then in his last line he tackles the issue milked by the billboard, PETA's euthanization of animals. He writes, "Is it hypocritical for PETA to euthanize dogs and cats, as C.C.F. claims it does? Only if you believe that the ethical treatment of animals never includes euthanasia." There are certainly some animal advocates who feel it doesn't, but Consumer Freedom is not amongst those working towards a no-kill society, so the billboard involves more hypocrisy than any of PETA's stances or actions, and Klinkenborg does a good job of pointing that out.

You can read the whole piece on line at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/opinion/24sun3.html
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