— "Both these men divorced me because I'm a feminist probably," she claimed. —
Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/03/11/shelby_grantham_activism_is_a_hopeless_task.php
Friday, March 11, 2005
Over a sumptuous table of subs and cider, English Professor Shelby Grantham waxed poetic about the moral and philosophical pillars of her life. As part of the Tucker Foundation's "What Matters to Me and Why" program, a series in which students can get free food and perhaps become more intimate with various teachers, Prof. Grantham felt no compunction in being perfectly open to the small assembly of students and campus representatives. However, given that time was precious (only an hour was allocated to the event), and there was but time for the celebrated activist to discuss one of the three primary topics that compose her character. After some haggling between her views on the need for extreme pacifism and on the ethical treatment of animals and the need for immediate implementation, the latter won the day. Sadly, Grantham's beliefs concerning the congenital racism of the blighted white man came in a distant third.
— "Both these men divorced me because I'm a feminist probably," she claimed. —
However, there was plenty to discuss on the subject of mankind's horrific exploitation of its fellow creatures. In between bites of her Subway vegetable sandwich, Prof. Grantham brought the attendees on a journey to the distant past. We learned of the professor's early efforts in the cause of animal-kind as she heroically, if fruitlessly, attempted to save millions of crickets from suffocating in the chlorine-drenched atmosphere of her Mississippi community swimming hole. It was then, Prof. Grantham noted, that she realized she was an activist. "Spending hours and hours at a hopeless task means you're an activist," she let out with a sigh. In a matter of moments her audience traveled through years of her life, from one peacenik training camp to another, until finally she ended up accepting the life of a vegan as her own.
Perhaps the most gruesome tale concerning the immorality of those dining on ham and turkey subs (I regretfully admit I must have put away at least three) involved her experiences with her no-good second husband, a New Hampshire pig farmer. Prof. Grantham, her eyes moistening at the memory, related her terrible experience having to put down a pig she had raised in order to reap its life-sustaining shanks. After more this incident, in which it took more than three bullets and her husband's intervention before the creature could be put to rest, Prof. Grantham came to the conclusion that there was no ethical way to kill an animal. "We experimented with any number of ways to kill chickens," she remembered, but it was all in vain.
The professor's current moral code holds that killing anything that realizes it is being killed, anything that can smell fear, like clams for instance, cannot be justifiably killed for its delicious meat. Any product created by a creature, principally dairy, is not meant for human consumption. In Prof. Grantham's mind humans were never meant to drink an animal's milk or eat meats in the first place. The "protein myth" alluding to the healthy benefits of a reasonable diet including such delicacies is propagated by the repulsive meat and dairy farmers of this country in their mad greed for profits. Humans, in fact, were never meant to drink milk in the first place, as is proven by the fact that the colored people of the world are apparently lactose intolerant. As Prof. Grantham explained, "The weird people on the planet are those white people who have trained themselves to like milk." Indeed.
So you heard it first here, Dartmouth. Milk and meat is actually bad. Humanity was meant for finer things, like the soy milk and meat alternative our ancient ancestors dined on before the advent of the beef and dairy industries. As if that appendix was ever useful to you anyway. Even our brother animals can be trained to go veggie. Prof. Grantham would surely have had her cats on a vegan diet if the lack of meat would not have made them go blind. So go out and trade in that sin-filled package of goat's cheese from Mom for a nice plate of cake frosting. You'll be glad you did. On a side note, the Subway was delicious.