 |
| John Maxwell Coetzee |
In an
article in the Spanish major newspaper La Vanguardia, the writer Quim Monzó
recalls a campaign organized by the City Council of a Catalonian village to move
people to collect canine excrements, with a poster where a pig-like dog appeared
to tell its master: "I am your dog. Don’t make me look like a pig. Collect
my excrements." The poster provoked numerous complaints from local
animalists, who considered it an insult to pigs. Quim Monzó adds the
following comment:
As expected... we are now hearing the slogan that the
time has come to eliminate all phrases that trivialize the suffering of
animals. [The animalist association] proposes that we stop using expressions
like "kill two birds with one stone" or "be treated as a guinea
pig”... We must not say "take the bull by the horns". There is also
an English expression "bring home the bacon," which should not be
used either.
Monzó has given his article
a significant title: Idiots, idiots everywhere.
I would not dare to call
animalists idiots, but I must accuse them of irrationality. Do they really
believe that some pig was offended by the campaign for the collection of canine
excrement, or that whenever we say don’t be
a pig (or any of its synonyms) to rebuke a dirty person? I am afraid
that pigs are not even aware of our use of language. The only ones who bother about
this are animalists, and until proven otherwise, we must assume that they are
human beings.
