NY POST ROOTING FOR ANIMALS AT THE RODEO

[Guest guest]

I just LOVE NY!!!!!!! PRIMETIME ROOTING FOR HORSES AT THE RODEO Ultimate Fighting too precious? Try "Toughest Cowboy." January 13, 2008 -- First, to be clear, I eat meat and wear leather belts. But if you asked Monty, our 11-year-old former rescue pooch, I'm confident that he'd concede that outside of not stuffing his ears on the Fourth of July, he has been ethically treated. PETA should even know that it cost $200 more to have one of Monty's teeth pulled than it cost to yank one of mine. But there's no squaring any entertainment-for-profit predicated on antagonizing animals. Yet, Fox Sports Net's

latest, desperate attempt to further attract and desensitize a young, male audience - this time through "The Toughest Cowboy Presented By Jagermeister" - is predicated on exactly that. The recent fate of professional animal antagonists - "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, once shown on his TV show infuriating a crocodile by shoving a gas-powered lawn mower toward its snoot, and dog-fighting kingpin and star NFL quarterback Michael Vick - made me hope that in 2008 TV would reject excessive animal abuse. I didn't make it past Jan. 4, the X-treme rodeo show's TV debut. "The Toughest Cowboy" takes traditional rodeo events, eliminates the tamer ones, intensifies the most violent ones, and attaches the entire show to the excited promise that someone is going to be badly hurt. Or worse. That's right, tinhorns, life-threatening injuries - not mere rodeo bruises - await all comers as they will try to ride the biggest,

angriest, most violent beasts of their kind. All cowboys must hold on for dear life as they will be required, should they avoid hospitalization, to compete in the three most dangerous events – bareback and saddle bronc horse riding and bull riding - "all in one night." Yee-hah! No calf roping in this TV rodeo. Calf roping demands riding and roping skills but rarely provides the kind of violence that's supposed to turn a rider's or young viewer's head into chuck wagon chili. The preview DVD sent along by the producers stressed two things: 1) Enormous horses and bulls in unhappy frenzies. 2) Humans being thrown from these animals, then being stomped, gored, knocked unconscious - and then shown being treated for their injuries while groggily testifying that they were nearly killed, which is precisely the premise and the promise. While this is the life the cowboys chose, it's hard to believe that this is the life the

animals would prefer that Fox Sports executives select for them. And do you think Jagermeister doesn't know what it's doing, attaching its name and seed money to this? Yeah, and remember to drive responsibly. In 2008, antagonizing animals for profit is still something that a TV network and a commercial product are eager to pursue together. So come and git it, buckaroos! Ya'll could use a bit more head-stomping violence in your TV, can't ya? The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different. -Hippocrates