Thursday, February 17, 2011

Who wants to know?

Who's this guy? Anyone know? I'd like to interview him, since he clearly has something to say. And since all he did was interrupt a press conference and then run out.

During a press conference in which lawmakers were proposing strengthening laws against cockfighting, this guy showed up and started asking some oddly pointed and confrontational questions ... making me figure that he wasn't a reporter.

Reps. Wayne Christian and Eddie Lucio III were pushing their bill with the help of John Goodwin of the animal-fighting policy arm of the Humane Society of the US.

After several questions about whether there's a fiscal note attached (there isn't) and whether it wouldn't backfire by making it MORE dangerous if it were MORE illegal (question by Lone Star Report), a guy sitting behind me piped up at Goodwin.

"Do you eat meat?"

Goodwin's answer: No. But lots of people in the Humane Society do.

That clearly wasn't the answer Anonymous Guy was looking for, but he pressed on: So why is it OK to fry a chicken, but it's not OK to fight them?

The answer: Killing chickens for food isn't the same moral issue as torturing them for gambling reasons.

Then: Do you stand by your statement that you'd like to end all animal agriculture?

The answer: That was 25 years ago. I was a dumb, radical kid back then. I don't believe that anymore.

He didn't have a notebook, nor a video camera, nor anything else that reporters typically keep with them. By the time I turned to get the guy's name, he was gone.

Certain that the two had a history, I asked Goodwin who the guy was. No clue. His handlers didn't know either. This guy had either done some serious homework, or hasn't been much of a Goodwin fan for a very long time.

Everyone up front kept asking each other. "Was he a reporter?" "What station was he with?" "Who's he writing for?"

Gah. I hate that. NO, he wasn't a reporter. We can be boneheads sometimes, and we can even be obnoxious and hard-headed, if you can believe that.

But unless we're the Lone Star Report or the Texas Observer or another publication with an openly stated political bent, we don't tend to wear our politics on our sleeves. Presuming we have any.

Source: http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/02/who-wants-to-know.html

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