Frank Picchione

Humanity Even for Nonhumans By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

One of the historical election landmarks last year had nothing to do with race or the presidency. Rather, it had to do with pigs and chickens — and with overarching ideas about the limits of human dominion over other species.

I’m referring to the stunning passage in California, by nearly a 2-to-1 majority, of an animal rights ballot initiative that will ban factory farms from keeping calves, pregnant hogs or egg-laying hens in tiny pens or cages in which they can’t stretch out or turn around. It was an element of a broad push in Europe and America alike to grant increasing legal protections to animals.

Spain is moving to grant basic legal rights to apes. In the United States, law schools are offering courses on animal rights, fast-food restaurants including Burger King are working with animal rights groups to ease the plight of hogs and chickens in factory farms and the Humane Society of the United States is preparing to push new legislation to extend the California protections to other states.

At one level, this movement on behalf of oppressed farm animals is emotional, driven by sympathy at photos of forlorn pigs or veal calves kept in tiny pens. Yet the movement is also the product of a deep intellectual ferment pioneered by the Princeton scholar Peter Singer.

Professor Singer wrote a landmark article in 1973 for The New York Review of Books and later expanded it into a 1975 book, “Animal Liberation.” That book helped yank academic philosophy back from a dreary foray into linguistics and pushed it to confront such fascinating questions of applied ethics as: What are our moral obligations to pigs?

John Maynard Keynes wrote that ideas, “both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else.” This idea popularized by Professor Singer — that we have ethical obligations that transcend our species — is one whose time appears to have come.

“There’s some growth in numbers of vegetarians, but the bigger thing is a broad acceptance of the idea that animals count,” Mr. Singer reflected the other day.

What we’re seeing now is an interesting moral moment: a grass-roots effort by members of one species to promote the welfare of others. Legislation is playing a role, with Europe scheduled to phase out bare wire cages for egg production by 2012, but consumer consciences are paramount. It’s because of consumers that companies like Burger King and Hardee’s are beginning to buy pork and eggs from producers that give space to their animals.

For most of history, all of this would have been unimaginable even to people of the most refined ethical sensibility (granted, for many centuries those refined ethicists were also untroubled by slavery). A distinguished philosopher, Thomas Taylor, reacted to Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 call for “the rights of woman” by writing a mocking call for “the rights of brutes.” To him, it seemed as absurd that women should have rights as that animals should have rights.

One of the few exceptions was Jeremy Bentham, the philosopher who 200 years ago also advocated for women’s rights, gay rights and prison reform. He responded to Kant’s lack of interest in animals by saying: “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

In recent years, the issue has entered the mainstream, but even for those who accept that we should try to reduce the suffering of animals, the question remains where to draw lines. I eagerly pushed Mr. Singer to find his boundaries. “Do you have any compunctions about swatting a cockroach?” I asked him.

“Not much,” he replied, citing reasons to doubt that insects are capable of much suffering. Mr. Singer is somewhat unsure about shellfish, although he mostly gives them the benefit of the doubt and tends to avoid eating them.

Free-range eggs don’t seem offensive to him, but there is the awkwardness that even wholesome egg-laying operations depend on the slaughtering of males, since a male chick is executed for every female allowed to survive and lay eggs.

I asked Mr. Singer how he would weigh human lives against animal lives, and he said that he wouldn’t favor executing a human to save any number of animals. But he added that he would be troubled by the idea of keeping one human alive by torturing 10,000 hogs to death.

These are vexing questions, and different people will answer them differently. For my part, I eat meat, but I would prefer that this practice not inflict gratuitous suffering.

Yet however we may answer these questions, there is one profound difference from past centuries: animal rights are now firmly on the mainstream ethical agenda.

Donna Karan Goes Fur Free!

I just received this exciting email from PETA:

Dear Frank,

We have news for you!

Thanks to the hard work of PETA's staff, members, and volunteers and after
nearly a year of pressuring designer Donna Karan to drop fur from her designs—by
protesting outside her boutiques, crashing her runway show, and exposing her
cruel use of fur online—Donna Karan has announced that all her Fall 2009 lines
will be fur-free and that she has "no plans" to use fur in the future. Well
done, everyone!

Karan's turnaround came days after PETA launched our online campaign and after
mega–fashion guru Tim Gunn sent Karan and designer Giorgio Armani a video that
he narrated for PETA showing animals skinned alive for their fur and urged them
to open their eyes to the violent and bloody fur industry.

Thank you for helping to make this happen. Let's keep going strong! While Donna
Karan has followed in the footsteps of top designers—including Ralph Lauren,
Tommy Hilfiger, and Calvin Klein—Armani still refuses to stop using fur. Armani
claims that he "only" uses fur from rabbits who are butchered for meat. We hope
that you will take this opportunity to contact Armani to tell him that the
cruelty depicted in this video on fur farms in both China and France show
animals who are used for both fur and meat. Tell him that even if the meat of
gentle rabbits killed for their fur is sold to be eaten, the rabbits endure the
same suffering.

Thank you for helping make the world safer for fur-bearing animals, and best
wishes for a happy and humane holiday season!

Sincerely,

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President

Amy Goodman and Max Blumenthal on Rick Warren

AMY GOODMAN: President-elect Barack Obama is drawing criticism from many supporters for his choice to deliver the invocation at next month’s inauguration. Obama selected the Reverend Rick Warren, a leading evangelical opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage. Warren supported California’s recent gay marriage ban and has compared abortion to the Nazi Holocaust. In a recent interview with the website beliefnet.com, Warren said he thinks gay marriage is comparable to incest, polygamy and child abuse.

REV. RICK WARREN: I’m opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.

STEVEN WALDMAN: Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?

REV. RICK WARREN: Oh, I do. I just say, for 5,000 years, marriage has been defined by every single culture and every single religion. This is not a Christian issue. Buddhists, Muslims, Jews—you know, historically, marriage is a man and a woman.

AMY GOODMAN: The Reverend Rick Warren, speaking to beliefnet.com. After Warren’s inauguration appearance was announced, Obama was forced to defend his choice.

PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: It is no secret that I am a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans. It is something that I have been consistent on and something that I intend to continue to be consistent on during my presidency.

What I’ve also said is that it is important for America to come together, even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues. And I would note that a couple of years ago, I was invited to Rick Warren’s church to speak, despite his awareness that I held views that were entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights, when it came to issues like abortion. Nevertheless, I had an opportunity to speak. And that dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign’s been all about.

AMY GOODMAN: President-elect Barack Obama, speaking in Chicago last week.

I’m joined now by Max Blumenthal, Puffin Foundation writing fellow at the Nation Institute. His work has appeared in The Nation, Salon and many other publications, currently writing a book on the US evangelical movement. His latest article, “Rick Warren’s Hypocritical Double Life,” is online at dailybeast.com. Max Blumenthal joins us by DN! video stream.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Max.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Great to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the history of Rick Warren.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, the history of Rick Warren is pretty interesting. And you heard some of his views right there. These are views that people have only recently started paying attention to. Prior to this controversy, Rick Warren was, you know, proffered by the media as the voice of the new evangelical movement, which embraces environmentalism and fights poverty and is going to move beyond the old hobgoblins of the Christian right and the old, you know, draconian figures of the Christian right, like James Dobson and Pat Robertson. Rick Warren was supposed to be the pioneer of this new movement. He is the founding pastor of Saddleback Church, a megachurch in Orange County. And he’s the author of The Purpose Driven Life, which is, you know, a sort of subtly Christian, self-help manual that sold 25 million copies. So he has a really broad appeal, and he’s planted churches across the world, especially in Africa.

And because, you know, the media has expected evangelicals, especially conservative evangelicals, to be draconian and retrograde, you know, they’ve made a hero out of Rick Warren without looking at who he really is and what he really believes. Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times, for example, has called Rick Warren an evangelical liberals can love. You know, Newsweek named Rick Warren one of the fifteen people who make America great. And even The Nation, which I’ve written for, you know, the venerable left-wing magazine, in 2005 published a piece calling Rick Warren America’s pastor.

You know, he wears a Hawaiian shirt. He looks like a big teddy bear. He doesn’t holler or hector. He speaks in a ponderous tone. And he does seem to genuinely care about the environment and care about poverty. It’s not clear what he’s actually done.

And he’s been pumped up by a small group of Democratic consultants, who urged Barack Obama first to go to his church and speak with him and then to participate in a debate this August that was broadcast by CNN, the Saddleback Forum, where Rick Warren essentially got to interview both candidates sequentially, John McCain and Barack Obama, on the issues and serve as the national minister. The debate went really badly for Obama, because Rick Warren asked him a trick question about abortion: When does a baby get human rights? Barack Obama couldn’t answer it. Soon after, he was attacked by right-wing radio hosts for his answer, because he said, you know, “This question is above my pay grade.” And Rick Warren even went on a conservative radio show and, you know, chuckled about Obama’s response and kind of lightly mocked him.

So, the real Rick Warren is someone who fights the culture war with a velvet glove. He’s a religious right figure who’s figured out a new strategy to move into a Democratic post-Bush era and still hold influence. He even—he freely admitted to a reporter from the Wall Street Journal that the principal difference, the only difference, between him and James Dobson is a matter of tone. And when I called Rick Warren’s PR handlers, you know, the people that are responsible for making him into this major national figure, from Larry A. Ross Communications, they kind of laughed at the idea that he was America’s pastor. They said he’s consistent with what the Bible teaches. He’s not trying to be America’s pastor or whatever.

So, Rick Warren openly backed Proposition 8 in California last November—this November, and he did so in the terms that you heard him speaking to Steven Waldman, essentially saying that two percent of our population, the homosexual population, was trying to dictate to the rest us, which is a really demagogic thing to say. He told that to his congregation. And he’s backed every anti-gay proposition that’s come down the pike in California in the last ten years, including Proposition 22, which laid the groundwork for Proposition 8. He joined up with James Dobson and Charles Colson and Tony Perkins and these people to do this.

Beyond that, he compares pro-choice advocates to Holocaust deniers. He recently was interviewed by Sean Hannity, and Sean Hannity asked him, “Should we attack Iran?” And Rick Warren said, “Well, it’s our God-given obligation to take out evildoers.” He has recently scrubbed material from his website claiming that man walked the earth with dinosaurs, basically that, you know, history is one big Flintstones episode. He will not allow homosexuals to be members of his church, and he recently scrubbed that from his website.

So it’s just interesting to me that people are finally paying attention to this, after Rick Warren has never tried to hide his views. He’s never really gamed the media. It’s just that progressives have finally drawn the line, where Barack Obama has not.

AMY GOODMAN: You write about, one, Rick Warren saying he doesn’t feel that politics and religion should be mixed. But you also talk about how in the last days of the presidential race of Bush’s 2004 re-election bid, Warren sent an urgent blast email to hundreds of thousands of evangelicals, insisting they base their votes on five non-negotiable issues: abortion, stem cell research, gay marriage, human cloning and euthanasia.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Right. And this is before Rick Warren became a member of the ONE Campaign, before, you know, the media had began puffing him, and before people—Democratic consultants like Mara Vanderslice, who ran a sort of Christian front group for Obama called Matthew 25, and self-proclaimed progressive evangelicals in the media, like Amy Sullivan, began presenting him as one of the new evangelicals who was going to take us beyond the Christian right. But the evidence was there that Rick Warren had sort of insidiously backed George W. Bush by saying that pastors had to vote and urge their congregations to vote on issues like abortion and homosexuality. If you vote on those issues and you say that those issues are non-negotiable, then of course you’re going to vote for George W. Bush, and of course you’re going to back the Republicans for Congress.

Beyond that, you know, Rick Warren says he’s for the environment. Rick Warren says that he’s for fighting poverty, which is great. But what has he actually done? You know, I’ve spent hours scouring the internet, calling around, trying to find some results that Rick Warren has produced in Africa against AIDS, results he’s produced against poverty. And all I can find is that his peace programs, which he calls them, are sort of recruitment vehicles for the churches that he’s planning in Africa and that he is using these programs actually to evangelize, and there’s no real way of measuring his results. And there are Christian groups that are doing good work, you know, in the third world, that are fighting poverty, and they measure results, groups like Medical Teams International. Even World Vision measures results. But we have no way of knowing what Rick Warren is doing. It looks to me like he’s going around to the Aspen Institute and to these big elite festivals and telling people who expect evangelicals to be retrograde and who expect evangelicals to be draconian, that he’s doing something different. And he speaks the language that people want to hear in the media-manufactured age of post-partisanship. But it’s unclear what he’s actually doing, beyond fighting the culture war with a velvet glove.

AMY GOODMAN: Max Blumenthal, let’s turn to another clip highlighting some of Rick Warren’s views. Earlier this month, he was interviewed by Ann Curry of MSNBC.

ANN CURRY: If science finds that this is biological—

REV. RICK WARREN: Yeah?

ANN CURRY: —that people are born to be gay, would you change your position?

REV. RICK WARREN: No. And the reason why is because we all have biological predispositions. I’m naturally inclined to have sex with every beautiful woman I see. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Rick Warren. Max Blumenthal, final thoughts?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, that’s a bizarre remark I haven’t heard. And, you know, I like to get to know women first, and I think, you know, most people do. Rick Warren has a doctrine of women’s submission, which he preaches to his church, and he tells the female members of his church that they have to support their husbands’ decisions, even if they make bad financial decisions, because women have to submit in a biblical manner to their husbands. So this goes way beyond being anti-gay. He’s, you know, patriarchal. He’s supported assassinating Iran’s president. And he’s just—

You know, I have no problem, and I don’t think anyone should have any problem with Barack Obama going to Rick Warren’s church and meeting with him or working with him on good initiatives. But the question is, where does Barack Obama draw the line when someone demonizes a segment of Americans? Is this person really fit to address the nation and confer God’s blessing on the entire United States of America, when Rick Warren freely admits that he only believes that a small segment of Americans are going to heaven and that the rest of us are going to burn in an everlasting lake of fire? That’s the question. And I think that Barack Obama has answered it. But at the very least, progressives have drawn the line here, and I think they should hold the line.

AMY GOODMAN: Max Blumenthal, I want to thank you for being with us, Puffin Foundation writing fellow at the Nation Institute, writing a book on the evangelical movement. His latest article is called “Rick Warren’s Hypocritical Double Life.” It’s online at dailybeast.com.

East River Beach

They've recently built a big new dog run right on the East River. The turf is made of a sandy, gravelly substance that is supposed to neutralize odors, which it seems to do. Dudley loves to gallop through it, and he leaves the park with a mouth (and beard) full of the stuff. In the warmer months they keep a kiddie pool for the dogs. Dudley runs straight for it, hops in, and wades about. It is a peaceful setting, and I really enjoying sitting there, watching him play. When the sun is out, reflecting off the river, and the sky is very blue, you can almost imagine you are at the beach as you gaze across the sand and out over the water. That is until you realize you are staring at the 59th Street Bridge. 

Pretty Leaves

     

My Floating Island with My Martha

When My Martha saw my recipe for floating island she said, "I've been looking for this recipe my entire life."  Okay, that may not be an exact quote, but that is my interpretation of what she said. Before guests are invited to make their recipes with My Martha on her show, her test kitchen does a run through to make sure the finished products pass inspection.  However, My Martha was so enthusiastic about my recipe she took it home and made it herself.  In fact, she made it over and over, again and again, trying it in different molds and various sizes.  She said it was perfection every time and decided to serve it for dessert at David Rockefeller's 90th birthday bash.  She told this all to me on live television when I appeared in the second week of her new post imprisonment show.  Obviously this was the thrill of a lifetime.  That, and the fact that Liza Minelli was the other guest that day - HA!  I am finally posting the recipe and hope you will give it a try.  But I warn you, it is no piece of cake to make.

For more photos of the floating island check out my friend Melissa's blog.  She and her husband Chappy are two of the recipe's biggest fans, and I made it for their dinner party last week.

   

Ingredients

Makes one cake.

• FOR THE MERINGUE
• 18 large organic egg whites, at room temperature
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 cup, plus 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• Nonstick cooking spray
• FOR THE CREME ANGLAISE
• 4 cups half-and-half
• 12 large egg yolks
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon, plus 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• FOR THE CARAMEL SAUCE
• 1 cup sugar

Directions

1. Prepare the meringue. Preheat oven to 325 degrees with rack in center. Fill a large roasting pan halfway with water and transfer to oven.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, slowly whisk whites and salt until slightly foamy. Add cream of tartar, and gradually increase the speed to high. Add sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, until meringue is stiff; lower speed and add vanilla, whisking until combined.
3. Spray a 10-inch (15 cup) nonstick angel-food cake pan without a removable bottom using nonstick cooking spray; transfer meringue to pan. Using a rubber spatula, firmly press down on meringue to remove any air pockets, and to smooth the surface.
4. Transfer to prepared roasting pan. Bake until lightly golden and puffed, 45 to 55 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack, and cool completely; meringue will deflate as it cools. Invert into a shallow serving bowl, and chill until ready to serve.
5. Prepare the creme anglaise. Prepare an ice-water bath; set aside. In a medium saucepan, heat cream over medium heat until just beginning to steam, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, whisk together yolks and sugar in a large bowl until smooth. While whisking constantly, slowly add 1/4 of the heated cream to yolk mixture, being careful not to cook the yolks. When thoroughly combined, slowly add remaining cream. Transfer yolk mixture back into same saucepan, and set over low heat, stirring and scraping down the sides of the pan with a small heatproof spatula until thickened. Strain creme anglaise through a fine sieve into bowl set in the prepared ice bath. Stir in vanilla. Chill until ready to serve.
6. Prepare the caramel syrup. Combine sugar and 1/4 cup water in a small saucepan over medium heat. Do not stir or allow to boil until sugar is completely dissolved; gently swirl or tilt saucepan to help dissolve. Bring syrup to a boil by increasing to high heat; cook, covered, for 2 minutes. Uncover, and continue to boil untouched until caramel begins to darken; swirl until syrup becomes a dark amber color. Remove from heat, and immediately add 1/3 cup water, being careful to stand back. Swirl until smooth and let cool; chill until ready to serve.
7. When ready to serve, pour enough creme anglaise around meringue to surround it. Drizzle meringue with caramel syrup; serve immediately.

Happy Thanksgiving!

  My sister Michele took these pictures of the wild turkeys who frequent her front yard in Wilton.          

Animal Care Affair

 

On September 25th Sara and I went to a benefit for Animal Care and Control.  I fell in love with this cute pooch named Foxy.  I held her in my arms as I walked around the party, and practically had a meltdown when her caretakers told me she had just arrived at the shelter after having been thrown from a car.  One thing you do not want to do is tell someone like me, after he's had three martinis, that the doggy he is holding was recently thrown from a car.  I scolded, "how can you people be telling me this? I cannot have another dog!  Oh, I know, I'll call my mother!  She'd love a dog!" So, not thinking clearly, I handed Foxy off and went out to the hall to call Irene, who replied, "Frank, you need to stop drinking."  Not funny. I decided I was confident that a sweet little beauty like Foxy would find a new loving home in no time.  So I said goodnight, and Sara and I went off to Jewel Bako, where Jack, the owner, had to serve my martinis on the sly because Sara had cut me off.

A Cardinal in the Pinetum

   

Black Birds in Flight