PETA undercover in Asmussen's barn - Whoa!

[tector]

Let me say something I said 15 years ago on the old AOL horse racing boards.

The American people have become more and more divorced from the reality of dealing with animals. Formerly many people grew up on farms or at least rural communities, or had close relatives they visited, and liked, who did so. Many also hunted.

Now, for most Americans, their relationship to animals are strictly as pets (excuse me, in 15 years the term "pet" has become increasing stigmatized--"animal companions" or whatever). Many still consume other animals as "food", although they are completely removed from dealing with the reality of that food chain.

When it comes to horses, however, the overwhelming paradigm that newcomers implicitly apply to race horses is "pets" (I'll stick with the old school term). They are not interested in eating them, and to the extent they ever really dealt with a horse it is riding a pony (or having their kids do so).

Standards of conduct towards horses that were generally acceptable (to the extent they were even known) in past generations simply are not going to fly with this kind of populace. You can say "Nothing new here"--but that is not an answer to a population with different values than you. Some of you sound like the hapless old religious farts who cannot understand how the ground shifted under them on gay rights, or weed, or whatever. Your old certitudes about what is acceptable are just that--yours.

This has been on ongoing process--prior to the 70s or 80s, for example, horses were a disposable commodity in making films. Many were killed or injured filming westerns, for example, with trip wires and the like. That has been out of bounds for a while now.

Horse racing as we know it will not exist in the US in another generation--two at the most. What we will have, I don't know. But it won't be what is on that videotape, "selectively edited" or not. Blaming PETA, as despicable as it is, and the NYT is a distraction.