Horton: Who Hearer, Baby Killer, um, I Guess

Sunday, March 09, 2008


http://www.tmz.com/2008/03/08/horton-hears-an-abortion-protest/

Apparently a group of abortion protesters decided to stage a demonstration at the premier of Horton Hears a Who. The pseudo-logic behind their reasoning being that the film's line "After all, a person is a person, no matter how small." could easily refer to a fetus as well as a race of imaginary creatures that live on a speck of dust.

These folks waited until the movie was over then started marching about and and chanting anti-abortion slogans. This stunning display of attention whoring culminated with the protester placing red tape over their mouths with the word "life" printed on it. I personally would have gone with duct tape and scrawled the word "douchebag" on their foreheads with a black sharpie, but that's just me.

Now, while I support the right to free speech, even if I do not agree with the message, this was in a private business, not a public space. Add to that the colossal stupidity of the act and you definitely have a good argument for retroactive abortion.

This little display also illustrates some of the hypocrisy inherent with some of these anti-abortion protesters. Keep in mind, this was the premier of a children's movie, hence, many children in attendance, many of which, I am sure were very young. You have to wonder what was going through their heads as these nutjobs started chanting at them. Some of these kids probably didn't understand the whole pro-choice, pro-life debate and only knew that these people were yelling at them for some strange reason. So, fetuses are people with thought's and feelings that should be respected but it is ok to traumatize the kids that are out of the womb and walking about demonstrateably capable of fear? Besides, how many of these six, seven and eight year-olds do you think were going to watch the movie, finish their popcorn and boogie on down to the local abortion clinic for a quick one? I am guessing not many.

As far as the parents go, that was equally pointless. They were parents! They had their kids! Shouldn't the protesters have just said thanks and left it at that?

I am not going to sound off on the abortion question, that is a rant for later all on it's own. This is strictly about this instance of mindless attention-whoring and whatever personal feelings about the debate sneak through you will have to forgive me for. Or not, whatever makes your train go.

This is not the first case of this kind of foolishness. Now, admittedly, it has been a very long time since I read the book but I am fairly certain that there were no aborted fetuses in the book. Despite that, the anti-abortion folks have been attempting to appropriate this book into there arsenal for a very long time. One, the American Life League, went so far as to publish a pamphlet with Horton's recurring phrase "a person's a person, no matter how small" as the title. This has been going on so long that before his death Dr Suess himself even threatened to sue one group. I am admittedly sorry that he didn't go through with it. I would have loved to read that transcript.



Rant Over... For Now