OK, for a while, Chicago had a ban on Foie Gras. The legal maneuvering that led to this ban was spearheaded by the fearless leader of the 49th Ward, Alderman Joe “Foie Gras” Moore. This is my home ‘hood, and it’s riddled with drug dealing, gang crime, and random street violence (lately, two people who thought they were buying used cars off Craigslist were stuck up at gunpoint in the same alley). Not a single restaurant in his ward even served foie gras, but Moore does represent a lot of pain-in-the-ass holier-than-thou fur-is-murder-yet-I-don’t-shave-my-legs-or-armpits types, and this so this mope got the ban passed by convincing other Chicago alderman, more traditionally interested in kickbacks, lucrative re-zoning and other aspects of the Chicago Way, to go along with it.
And, lo, all our urban woes were solved; we became a shining neighborhood upon a hill. Those champagne-cork drive-bys that were dinging our luxury vehicles were no more. The pate and liverwurst dealers lurking on dark streetcorners fled to less enlightened climes. True, you couldn’t get toast points from that guy by the alley anymore, but we all have to make some sacrifices for the greater good.
Or not. The actual response, besides world-wide ridicule: restaurants across the city gave away foie gras and charged for the salad it came on, became “duckeasies” serving it off-menu, or promoted foie gras sausages they otherwise wouldn’t have bothered selling. Only a handful of joints were ever ticketed, and those that were got more than their money’s worth in free publicity.
In the end, the laughingstock angle took effect, and Mayor Daley used his political muscle to get the ban repealed. There are a lot of problems in the world, and maybe I’ll worry about over-fed geese when we’re out of Iraq, Afghanistan and the pending Second Great Depression. And probably not then.
Absolutely, Chicago Fan. Free Speech is great, and I fully support NARN’s right to protest. However, I think that their energy would be better directed elsewhere.
Oh, and…Foie tastes GOOOOOD. If I didn’t work every Friday I would be at Lark myself. I think NARN will find that they will be seeing more people at Lark snarfing Foie, not less.
Uh, the foie gras ban was overturned in Chicago, but foie gras bans have passed in much of the progressive world: California, most of the European Union, Israel, and Argentina. In Prague, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, London, Buenos Aires, Venice, Munich, Los Angeles, Oslo, Helsinki, San Diego, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, freaking Fresno, and many other cities, Lark Owner John Sundstrom would be jailed or fined for his outrageous animal abuse. The same goes for the owner of Quinn’s.
Yes, blah blah blah, the economy and our wars are more important than torturing geese, but they’re more important than gay marriage or marijuana laws too. We can’t ignore important issues just because some people are dealing with even more important issues. The depressed economy is a perfect time for the owners of Lark and Quinn’s to either start being ethical citizens, or to go out of business.
Well said. My first reaction when w7ngman mentioned some people protesting a restaurant for serving foie gras was, “Where? We should eat there.” And I’m a vegetarian. I’ve never had foie gras, and I never will. It’s just the principle of sticking it to asshats who think that protesting a small, local restaurant is a productive use of their time. I had never heard of Lark before this, but I’ve since been to their website and looked at their menu and it looks delicious. I plan to eat there soon.
what’s next? banning the killing of ducks for consumption?
sorry, i wouldn’t go for that. i like my peking duck, canard a l’orange, and italian duck recipes.
I often wonder how many people who think that animals shouldn’t be eaten have actually spent much time around them. Pigs can and do eat people, and geese are downright vicious at times–they are not the cute and cuddly Disneyfied creatures many seem to think that they are.
Are they obsessed with geese? It is not just foie gras and how it is produced that bothers the NARN crowd. A friend just emailed me an artice from the 1990’s involving geese in our public parks. The geese made a mess with their droopings and were a potenial health issue.
The park dpartment came up with a plan to move the geese to another part of the state instead of killing the birds. Even this more humane approach was not good enough and some clowns from NARN apparently tried to stop this plan. This is one of many reasons they seem unreasonable to so many people.
The white man shall pay for all his injuries to the majestic goose. Goose droppings make stronger rope than hemp.
@2-so why is this important? Because people are being mean to ducks and geese?
I can give a long list of cities where some things are banned that are fine in the US, I can also do the reverse. It proves nothing.
@ 2: yes! well said. @3: so i guess if a small local business were firing gay and lesbian employees because they were gay or lesbian, then we shouldn’t protest their business, huh? are there large corporations serving foi gras (i must have missed it on the applbee’s menu), or are the only restaurants serving it small local ones?
@ #7. By gads you are reight. At exactly 8:23am when you posted a goose left his dropping right on my just cleaned windshield.
so straight people should give two shits about gay rights but humans shouldn’t care about animals. because we should all be thinking about iraq and afghanistan and the economy.
lizzie, did the owner actually raise the goose?
you’re such a pot head.
@10 ” so i guess if a small local business were firing gay and lesbian employees because they were gay or lesbian”
Comparing geese and gays? Do they need to unite in their struggles? Does the LBGC need to add another ‘G’?
#9, I listed those cities because Chicago Fan was trying to say foie gras bans don’t work since it didn’t stick in Chicago, but evidence shows foie gras bans DO work, in dozens of other cities.
#8, Yes, foie gras is the cruelest form of legal animal abuse. Animal abuse is a necessary evil in today’s society, but we should be moving towards MORE ethical food sources, not less ethical.
Foe gras is fucking AMAZING!!!! Damn it is so good!!! I want to go smear myself with it naked in front of Lark on Friday night so the protesters can watch!!
Foie Gras = Gay Marriage
Never forget!
Geese had it coming to them
I think the ban in Chicago didn’t work because it wasn’t the will of the people in the city. You can’t force animal rights on people that live in a city that was built upon slaughterhouses in the late 1800s.
It’s not about foie gras. It’s not about meat. It’s not about animals or cruelty to animals.
It’s about intimidation and it’s about coercion. No one should give in to any of it.
“The laughingstock angle” is the key here, but not necessarily in the way the author intended. It is the bait-and-switch tactic that most people in politics use to engage in character assassination of the left. We are told that by not doing something small that could make a little difference, we will free ourselves up to work on more important issues. But actually that never happens.
What instead happens is that a minor part of local politics is invoked to discredit everything progressive that someone tries to do on a big scale. And we get a conservative restoration of corrupt business as usual, which at the local level means giving tax breaks and subsidies for developers to do whatever it is they were going to do anyway.
Consider the circus animal ban, circa 2000. The Seattle City Council didn’t even pass the ban, but the mere fact that it considered it was used to bludgeon it for five years by conservatives in the Seattle Times, by Cathy Allen’s empty suit candidates for office, and by people too lazy to actually learn about what the City Council spends most of its time doing.
Did we get more serious, more dynamic, more visionary leadership from those who invoked the circus animal ban? No. The exact opposite. We got a bunch of people scared to take strong stands on ANY issue for fear of it being the next circus animal ban. We got a conservative restoration by people happy to do whatever developers and the mayor say is uncontroversial. And we have a press that thinks our mayor spends his days filling potholes, when in fact that was just some symbolic thing he did 7 years ago and mainly he spends his time scheming how to take credit for the sun rising in the morning.
Point is: if you run in fear of being a laughingstock, you’ll become centrist before you even tried. Just look at what the Stranger has done to itself to try to gain credibility: its frequent dismissal of the left for not having power, as being a laughingstock among the politicos it runs with.
Comparing animal rights to human rights is where the vegetarians are going to lose the argument. Most omnivores are going to just going to stop listening. Not to mention, it’s kind of offensive, equating gay people and animals. That’s what the right wingers do when they want to dehumanize gays with the argument, “If we let gays get married then we will have to let people marry their dogs.”
In another thread, someone asked the anti-meat crowd if they were also anti abortion. All he got was flip responses that avoided answering the question asked. Is it okay to kill a fetus, but not an animal? What about aborting animals?
@10: That isn’t even remotely comparable, but no, I wouldn’t protest at a restaurant for that, either. I’d simply not eat there, and calmly and rationally tell people I know why I don’t eat there, so they have the information to make an informed decision.
All this inane foie gras protesting will accomplish is free press for Lark. It is not going to prevent anyone who wants to eat foie gras from doing so. In fact, the most likely result will be MORE people eating foie gras than would have if it had never been staged, which makes the entire endeavor pathetic.
Man, that’s some fucked up logic CF and some commenters have. If you’re going to play the “Well issue a, b, and c are all more important than issue d”, and they’re all entirely unrelated issues, I hope you’ll be out there arguing to cut off all work towards anything other than a, b, and c until a, b, and c are solved.
All the people taking care of the homeless at homeless shelters across the country? Sorry, Iraq & Afghanistan are Jobs 1 and 2, here’s your combat boots.
Are you seriously giving money to your church, the ACLU, or Oxfam? Sorry, all charities are disolved and funds are redirected to Iraq & Afghanistan, Jobs 1 & 2.
What are all these public servants doing protecting the cities from fire, or policing the streets, or cleaning the sidewalks?! And look at all these assholes working on sending crap into space at NASA!! Such government waste! Here’s some more combat boots, good luck with Jobs 1 & 2, Iraq & Afghanistan!
Yes, that makes total sense — we shouldn’t be working on anything other than your top 3 priorities. Bravo, logic!
@22 I like Balut!
@15: battery farms are far more cruel. NARN is a bully- going after an obscure product that most people aren’t going to eat and won’t affect the lives of the majority, and a small restaurant, rather than taking on far more abusive situations. Like most bullies they’re cowards. Protesting Lark an hour a week is much easier and safer than attempting to change things.
And the foie gras bans in Europe that you brought up are on production, not importing. It’s still consumed in those areas and they were never producers anyway, so they haven’t done much.
And, Chicago Fan, the things that *you* are actively doing about these problems would be…?
(pin drops)
Thought so.
NARN wants to keep you from eating meat or animal products of any kind. No thanks.
The connection between animal rights abuse and human rights abuse is that most of us aren’t harmed by either. We can afford to ignore them and live in comfort. DADT and DOMA don’t hurt me so why should I waste my time helping those people? I bet the Slog wasn’t insulting women with unshaved legs and armpits when they were doorbelling against Prop 8.
This advice to worry about “more important things” is disingenuous to the extreme. You want my help fighting injustice that doesn’t affect me only when it suits your selfish agenda.
If it was homophobic businesses being targeted you wouldn’t hear this rag calling it bullying and intimidation.
I live a few blocks away and have been meaning to go to Lark forever, but I do find serving Foie Gras to be distasteful. This makes me less likely to try them out…
@22, Sorry, but I do think gays are animals. I also thing straights are animals. Shocking, I know, that I would dare to not buy into your religious drivel about how Humans are God’s Children and somehow different from any other animal life on this planet. Wake up dude; you’re no different and not entitled to anything special just because you are a homosapien.
#22 – No, people who care about animal rights are not usually anti-abortion. Pretty much everyone agrees that animal abuse is a necessary evil but we shouldn’t do more harm than necessary. We know that having a dogfighting ring like Michael Vick is clearly wrong and is already illegal. Shooting pets is illegal. Torturing animals is illegal. Many cruel slaughterhouse practices are already illegal. We’ve moved from “The Jungle” to better slaughterhouse practices (although certainly not ideal). Foie gras is moving in the absolutely wrong direction, and if it was popular in previous decades when we enacted slaughterhouse reforms, it would already be illegal. It’s not a radical stance to say foie gras is wrong.
@30, What if you showed up and it was on the menu? Would you then leave?
I’ll worry about birds being force-fed after you empty the Bangkok brothels of their child-slave sex workers. Deal?
How can foie gras be moving in the wrong direction if the practice has been static for centuries?
And the radical stance isn’t saying that it’s wrong. The radical stance is saying that it’s wrong and therefore people should be banned from enjoying it, based on your concept of right and wrong. Like prostitution.
31, I’m not religious, so you totally missed the mark there. If you think that animals and humans are equal, are you for interspecies marriage? Should animals be allowed to be entered into elections? Or, do you consider marriage, and running for office special, and things that only humans are entitled?
“character assassination of the left.”
Please, most of us are from the left. You folks are just from the far. whacked out, completely unreasonable left. You embarrass those of us on the reasonable left. This is why Obama has thrown you over board.
“Humans are God’s Children and somehow different from any other animal life on this planet. “
You’re right, we are animals and omnivores, so why are you asking us to stop eating meat? Seems the vegan crowd are the ones forcing their moralistic lifestyle onto our natural way.
“people who care about animal rights are not usually anti-abortion”
Too inconvenient for them.
@36, I think the thinking goes like this;
Humans are so advanced we should be benevolnent in our treatment of animals, being so advanced and stewardnessy and all. To which I say; “Have you seen Independence Day? Those motherfuckers were blowing shit up and we only stopped them because of some nerd shit.”
I ask you, what nerd shit can animals do to stop us?
Lizzie, do you consider abortion to be the “wrong direction”? In your opinion, is the killing of a human fetus wrong? Is the killing of an animal fetus wrong?
@39
Balut!
#35, Foie gras was primarily a Jewish food until a century or two ago when the French started making it – Jewish people wised up and mostly stopped eating it – it’s even banned in Israel. In the past couple decades, foie gras became more popular in France as a symbol of French nationalism (Quebec too). It’s spread from France recently, which is why most of the EU has reacted to ban it (Argentina too, which has close ties to Europe). Now it’s spread to the US and we have a choice to ban it too. We can’t make laws against something until we’re aware it exists. It’s not radical to enact a ban – like I said, many countries have already done it and we already have bans against hundreds of cruel or unsafe practices to animals. Until there is a ban like California has done, reasonable citizens should avoid supporting businesses that engage is unethical practices.
Your last sentence says it all; reasonable people don’t have to patronize the business. The system in place works! Why have a ban for something people you consider reasonable already avoid and don’t support?
@39 – As if your abortion line of argumentation can give you some sort of definitive success in this bullshit wankery.
Are you saying that you prefer the killing of human fetuses? You know, the abortion argument DOES have middle ground: no one prefers MORE abortion. That is to say, no one actively desires to have one in normal circumstances.
Trying to get someone to profess their stance on abortion really does nothing for your pro-foie gras cause.
Rob in Baltimore, no, I don’t believe that fetuses are separate independent creatures. People disagree about fetuses, nobody reasonable disagrees that torturing animals unnecessarily is wrong.
@33 I don’t know that just seeing it on the menu would be enough to motivate me to leave a restaurant. But yes, I would be less likely to go back because they serve it.
I’m a huge fan of Lark and a former vegetarian (shocking!) who has never actually tried foie gras. I just made dinner reservations, so congrats to the bullies. I’m looking forward to showing my support (and eating some yellowtail carpaccio – yum).
Remember when the city banned salt for the roads? That was awesome.
If you honestly believe that Foie Gras is not served in London or Buenos Aires, you are full of geese shit.
Also, I say we band Fresno. That place is inhumane to humans.
The first part of @19 is right. It wasn’t the will of the people in Chicago. Not that people were vehemently opposed to the ban, but, 99% of Chicagoans did not care on way or the other. This wasn’t a grassroots ban, it was the work of Joe Moore. And, it’s not the slaughterhouse thing that’s the reason — it’s that foie gras has nothing to do with the lives of 99% of the population.
43, I didn’t say anything about my stances on abortion, or foie gras. I’m just wondering about the contradiction in saying it’s okay to kill a fetus, but not an animal.
@ 20. I think you are right. Some of the NARNers are willing to be patient and will respect that folks can disagree with them.
On the other hand some others clearly are out to intimidate us as seen in their borish behavior when they try to bully people out of wearing fur. One of their more unstable members was screaming, veins almost popping out that “anybody wearing fur in this city will answer to me.” In reality nobody anywhere under any circumstances need to answer to NARN.