I Heart Liam Neeson

There they are, backs against the wall, fighting valiantly for their right to exist and the lives of their precious steeds against the menacing power of City Hall, members of the New York City Council and a well funded propaganda juggernaut known as NYCLASS, when suddenly, the biggest action star on the planet steps in and declares in that smoldering badass Irish baritone, “it’s BS!” Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Liam Neeson, New York resident and occasional Hollywood icon. He could have just stayed out of it, after all, he has nothing to gain or lose in the matter. Yet, there he is courageously aligning himself with the working class. There he is in utter defiance of the Mayor of the most celebrated city in the world. “He should of manned up and come,” declared the movie star expressing his disappointment with Mayor De Blasio and numerous NYC Council members for declining his invitation to tour the Clinton Park Stables to examine the horses they profess to have such dire concern for. I can’t say I was surprised. The Mayor is in too deep. The last thing he needs is the inconvenience of facts.

The truth of the matter is that Mayor De Blasio and members of the NYC Council needn’t visit the stables to make an assessment regarding the care of the horses and the condition of their facilities. There are agencies under his authority courtesy of New York City resident’s tax dollars that regulate the Carriage Horse Industry ad nauseum. Therefore, for Mayor Bill De Blasio to believe the words and thoughts he’s been fed by his ventriloquist like backers via NYCLASS means he has to believe that these agencies under his authority and the authority of previous administrations are either severely inadequate or severely corrupt; or maybe, they’ve been duped by the wily chicanery of the working class folk of the Carriage Horse industry, for several decades.

As a proud native New Yorker and one whose aromatic sense has been finely honed during my tenure with The Greatest Show On Earth, I fancy myself as quite the connoiseur of BS, therefore, I authoritatively concur with Liam Neeson as he so thoughtfully expressed on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, that the campaign to end the Carriage Horse industry in New York City is indeed complete and utter “BS,” and no one knows this better than those who created the campaign in the first place. You hear it in their audacious ignorance regarding the very animals they claim to speak for. Recently, the Executive Director of the heavily funded NYCLASS, Allie Feldman proclaimed in the New York Daily News regarding her group’s next campaign against the circus that, “Animals in nature don’t naturally… stand on their hind legs.” Just think she has the ear of the Mayor of the New York City. Another testament to this BS campaign is what I call the shower of memes. It’s like shock and awe for Animal Rights propaganda campaigns. In the case of NYCLASS we’ve been bombarded with claims of inhumane treatment and abuse, followed by suggestive still photos, even a one sided documentary propped up as a “balanced” assessment of the issue. Yet, despite their best efforts, including the ASPCA’s attempts to exploit the sudden death of a Carriage Horse named Charlie as evidence of inhumane treatment, but was upended by their own veterinarian Dr. Pam Corey who fessed up to manufacturing claims of the horse’s demise due to pressure from then employer, the ASPCA, there’s been no evidence of abuse or inhumane treatment of the Carriage Horses of New York. Enter, the meme that if we were dealing with sane people would have gotten someone fired or flogged, the mind numbing “Horses Don’t Belong In NYC Traffic,” which was corroborated by PeTA via a pensive faced plea from actress Lea Michele. I refuse to insult you the reader by even attempting to explain why that meme is fantastic in its stupidity.

Liam Neeson’s stance with the Carriage Horse Industry of New York is very significant and can never be overlooked. Unlike so many of his colleagues, Neeson’s position on the matter of the Carriage Horse Industry of New York is a responsible use of his celebrity. To truly appreciate the presence of someone with the star power of Liam Neeson aligning himself with the Carriage Horse Industry of New York, you would have to know the distress of having to contend with these oft celebrity endorsed Animal Rights cults. Yes, cults! These groups are not operated by a system of facts and reason, but zealous ideology and dogmatic adherence. To deal in the realm of coherence and reason would not garner them the 10’s of millions, even 100’s of millions of dollars that they attract annually. For example, the ASPCA who is tasked by State and city governments to regulate industries like the Carriage Horses of New York and the circus, once gleefully praised the animal care of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, noting its “professional and extremely humane conditions.” Then they, along with other meme makers, like the Humane Society of the United States famously proceeded to sue The Greatest Show On Earth, in a case which went on for over a decade, exposed their paid plaintiff to be as compromised as their case, and not long after the ASPCA would settle with The Greatest Show On Earth for $9.3 Million dollars. Moral of the story, you can’t raise 100’s of millions of tax free dollars on the reality of healthy animals who enjoy “professional and extremely humane conditions.” It’s a hustle, intellectual bullying at its worse, the exploitation of our compassion and empathy. These groups have masterfully crafted campaigns that thoroughly and grotesquely fleece a public that is mostly naive about animals, convincing seemly intelligent people that much like the cartoons of their youth that nature intended all animals to enjoy the utopia that is the wild where they can know the liberty of breaking into well choreographed songs written by Alan Menken and Tim Rice. These campaigns have grown more insidious by the day courtesy of the worldwide web ushering one and all into the shallow world of sound bite intellectualism, making “experts” of rabid YouTube subscribers. Most egregiously these cults have found an audience with elected officials. Men and women who with a mere vote and stroke of a pen can shatter an entire industry and dramatically alter the existence of 100’s even 1000’s of people and animals alike, all at the behest of those who hold to the conviction that working animals are the new Black.

Sources:

1. DAILY NEWS “Rights Pushes to Ban Animals From the Circus as Ringling Bros. Head to the City” – Erin Durkin

2. NEW YORK POST “The ASPCA’s Dead Horse” – Post Staff Report

3. DAILY BEAST “The ASPCA Pays Price For Bad-Faith Ringling Bros. Elephant Suit – Paul Alexander