Joy of Not Cooking

(Because I came clean regarding my fraudulence — a full disclosure, in their own magazine — Food & Wine decided they’d continue to let me write articles for them.)
 
I have never cooked a meal in my apartment. Okay, let’s be frank: I have never cooked a meal in my life. I have fried the occasional egg, toasted the odd bagel, boiled random pots of water, but this is lilydipping relative to the great canoe trip that is true cuisine.

PETA’s Death Cult, Part 2: Ingrid Newkirk, The Empress of Extinction

How does a saint become a butcher?

I am convinced that Ingrid Newkirk, the founder of PETA (“People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals”) was once a good person. What happened?

The story of Newkirk’s moral awakening — outrage in response to betrayal — is genuinely affecting. In 1972, when she was a young stockbroker in Maryland, Newkirk rescued a group of abandoned kittens and brought them to an animal shelter.

PETA’s Death Cult, Part 3: The Humane Alternative to PETA’s Pet Slaughter

Nathan Winograd believes that PETA’s founder, Ingrid Newkirk, is mentally ill. That to him is the only credible explanation for her monstrous compulsion to kill healthy shelter animals. In contrast, I have argued that she is fully rational: Her viciousness has its own internal logic; moreover, it is counterproductive to psychologize evil.

PETA’s Death Cult, Part 5: PETA, Fighting for Its Right to Kill

PETA may soon lose the right to kill healthy pets. As I and many others have verified, the headquarters of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Norfolk, Virginia kills 97 per cent of the animals delivered into its care.

Norfolk, however, may soon pass legislation to make the city a “No Kill” zone.

This is a remarkable development in the growing battle to deny PETA the right to liquidate pets at its so-called “Shelter of Last Resort.”

PETA’s Death Cult, Part 7: PETA’s Sinister Interpretation of Animal “Rights”

Animals will never have the right to euthanize PETA’s founder, Ingrid Newkirk. This, arguably, is the intellectual flaw at the core of her special interpretation of animal rights. For PETA, it is a political movement primarily focused on the right to determine when and how an animal should die. The decision is never reciprocal, however: Newkirk has the right to kill — and PETA has killed tens of thousands of pets — but her own life is protected by law.