Ah, Ohio, that rust-belt decider of American elections.  John Kerry must remember it with affection.  It just might be Barack Obama’s Waterloo too, although, if you believe the numbers game, he should be a shoo-in because the average unemployment level is below the national average and much improved over 2008.  Kerry’s loss, though, was due to the GOP putting gay marriage on the ballot.  Riding in on the shirt-tails of that debacle, was Fox News commentator John Kasich, who became governor in 2010.

Bordered on the North with old manufacturing towns and urban wastelands, its once thriving farming communities have been laid to waste by agribusiness and born-again fundamentalism.  Johnny Appleseed passed through here but didn’t stay.  His Swedenborgian philosophy would have been like matter to the modern day anti-matter of Fox News ranting.   Amish clans practice new barberian warfare and Mennonites are the new entrepreneurs.  Small-town America meets big-city America.  Here racism, homophobia, and the war between the 1% and the 99% are daily realities in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus and spill across the Ohio countryside—the 1%, though have already laid waste to Ohio.

I’m not writing this to blast this umbilical feature of modern Americana, this state once connected to the birth of a nation, and present-day hernia.  It is what it is.  Like many states in our federal system, states’ rights and lack of interest by the federal government have resulted in progressive rights legislation passing Ohio by as fast as a 747 in route from JFK to LA.  While human rights are also a concern, I’m speaking about animal rights here.  Ohio is the land where not even Jack Hanna has clout.

Let me remind you of the events.  Terry Thompson, the Devil’s version of Dr. Doolittle, had caged on his farm many exotic animals, 50 lions, tigers, and bears among them.  Last Oct. 18 he released most of them and most of them were euthanized as a threat to the community.  John Kasich, as ineffectual a governor as he was a congressperson and news commentator, rose his little pinky in the air of public opinion and promised new laws to control wild and exotic animals.  You see, Ohio has none.  They still don’t, testimony to the priorities of the GOP in the state of Ohio.

While Terry Thompson, a real nut job, committed suicide after unleashing his animals (his death applauded by the animal kingdom, I’m sure), he still has his love disciple, wife Marian, carrying on the Devil’s handiwork.  Knowing that Kasich and cronies couldn’t be bothered with animal rights’ legislation, she petitioned that the remaining animals, a brown bear, spotted leopard, and primates, be returned to her.  This was done last Saturday.

There are lazy politicians, incompetent politicians, and self-serving politicians, and those are just the good guys.  While it’s possible that Kasich and the Ohio House are just too busy with more important issues (how to stay in power, or how to derail Obama), I would guess that they fall into one of the three categories at best.  When you see Jack Hanna in tears as he was on Oct. 18, you know something is dreadfully askew.  I don’t need PETA to tell me this is just plain wrong.

First of all, the exotic animal business is akin to the black market for human organs.  There are many faces of evil and here you have two of them.  Private individuals should not be allowed to own any exotics, plants or animals, period, done, no discussion.  Just like the drug trade, we, the American public, are encouraging this illegal and morally unethical business by providing a market for the illegal importers of exotics.  The only thing morally worse than this is to buy a rhino’s powdered horn to increase your sexual prowess.  It’s all demented, perverted human behavior.

Even organizations shouldn’t be allowed to import exotic animals.  Exotic or not, those pacing animals in the zoo cage should make you ask yourself how you would feel in similar circumstances.  Recall that we have more prisoners in our country per capita than anywhere else in the world and are building more and more human zoos—we call them prisons or penitentiaries, or, as one snooty Concord banker lady told me, “houses of correction” (Concord, MA is home to two MA prisons, just around the corner from Walden Pond).  You’ve perhaps seen “reality shows” on cable channels showing the squalor and overcrowding of our prisons.

In my novel Sing a Samba Galactica, ETs have invaded the Earth and embarked on an extreme form of terraforming.  Most of the human race has succumbed to a retrovirus engineered by the ET scientists.  The remainder, the feral humans, are hunted for sport and sometimes captured and thrown into zoos alongside other terrestrial primates that have survived.  I tried to portray the futility and despair of a small band of feral humans locked in their zoo cage.  It’s an old sci-fi theme but with some twists.

Zoos can make the attempt to make life better for their animals (we sometimes also go to extremes for murderers and perverts, the other extreme of squalor and overcrowding), but they’re still in cages.  One might argue that preserves and theme parks are better for the animals.  You know, those you visit at Disney World or Six Flags.  Yes, if more space means better care, but not like the habitats and preserves in Texas, which are just glorified country clubs that allow macho NRA members to enter and bag their game trophy for the den for a price (they already have their powdered rhino horn).  They can claim that they’re protecting animals from extinction, but the facts contradict that claim.

Yes, the truth is perhaps inconvenient for all those parents that see an outing to the zoo as an ideal outside activity to do with their kids—no exotic or endangered species should be allowed in the U.S., anywhere with anyone, private or organization, unless it is a federally sanctioned bio-ark program, i.e. a program specifically designed to protect a species from extinction.  The care and attention of all other animals should be carefully monitored by both state inspections and covered by comprehensive federal and state laws.  Moreover, if we can’t treat human prisoners humanely, we can at least treat our animal prisoners humanely—they have no ACLU or justice system to watch their back.

So, Ohio has yet another black eye to match the one obtained via the 2004 elections.  Hopefully, Jack Hanna can find it in his heart to forgive.  I know I can’t—the state, that is.  There are good people in Ohio who didn’t want Mrs. Thompson to have those animals.  I don’t have to forgive them.  The do-nothings governor and legislative members should be ashamed.  I would encourage those good Ohio people to throw them out come re-election time.  Revenge for the animals….

And so it goes…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 at 4:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.