My letter to talk show host Mike Malloy re SPECIESIST LANGUAGE:
Hi Mike,
Your program (next to mine) is my favorite talk show in radio. In fact, I listen to you more than I listen to me – even though I find your language offensive and awash in speciesism.
Within about an hour tonight, your range of insults for irrational human behavior included “pigs”, “swine”, “cockroaches”, and “turtles”. What did these poor innocent harmless animals do to deserve such degradation? It would be progressive of you to examine speciesism and the language of it, as you would do for racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, classism.
The language of speciesism is used to dehumanize other people as “just animals”, so why not torture them, rape them, kill them, wage war against them, drone them, napalm them, nuke them?
To my ears, when you call “right wingers” pigs, swine, cockroaches, rats, snakes, dogs, monkeys, turtles, etc., you are actually elevating those whom you are attempting to criticize, as other animals never engage in the sadistic, aberrant, hateful, torturous, destructive, homicidal, suicidal, genocidal behavior regularly associated with your species.
You are the leading voice in progressive radio and anachronistic language does not befit you.
Please stick to traditional 4-letter words, body parts, body excretions and secretions, and whatever filth you deem appropriate for your inventory of insults, but please leave the poor animals alone. Their lives are miserable enough without reinforcement from those who should know better, those who are supposed to champion the cause of the oppressed.
Thanks,
Bob Linden
“GO VEGAN RADIO WITH BOB LINDEN”
www.GoVeganRadio.com
