New PETA Ad Not Controversial At All

By Warner Todd Huston | July 18, 2008 | 19:35

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**VIDEO Below the Fold**

Apparently the newest big-deal-ad that everyone is supposed to get all upset over is an advertisement by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) that came out this week. Unfortunately for them, I can't see how anyone would get too exercised over it. In fact, to my mind the message and its treatment are perfectly well handled. So, it all is a humbug instead of a controversy.Yes, this is quite a first for PETA. An ad we DON'T have to get upset over.

I guess some people are wondering if the ad is based on a moral equivalence of spaying and neutering animals and teen pregnancy. Apparently, we are supposed to get all up in arms that the ad features parents telling their young teenaged daughter to go have all the sex and pump out all the kids she wants because they can just abandon the unwanted kids in the streets or in shelters. This, of course, is a satiric way to comment on the fact that pet owners don't spay and neuter their pets and, therefore, their pets have unwanted pregnancies that get dumped in the street or left at shelters.

PETA is selling this as an "unusual birth-control message," and Fox News even did a report on the ad saying that PETA was using "teen pregnancy to push pet message."

But, in the end, there is no real there, there. The ad is amusing, the message is mainstream and it is obvious that no one is really saying unwanted teen pregnancies are the same as unwanted pet pregnancies.

But the ad isn't raising any hackles in the conservative community, that's for sure. The folks at HotAir didn't think it a big deal. Allahpundit said, "it’s clearly a goof it’s hard to see them as drawing moral equivalence between teen pregnancy and animal pregnancy." Even the folks at Free Republic didn't think the ad was a big deal.

So, PETA has a miss that is really a hit. They wanted controversy, they wanted to gin everyone up, but all they ended up with is a good message presented in an entertaining way. In other words, they did a good job with the message and a bad job trying for controversy.

Fox News has tried to make a big deal of it. Will the rest of the MSM try to?