Fur, War, Meat...

You see more fur coats when it's 55 degree Beverly Hills, than you do when it's 10 degrees in New York. My favorite is when you see a lady duck-stepping her way down the street in her fur coat with a microscopic lap-dog tucked under her arm. The look on the shivering chihuahua's face always seems to say: Am I next? It's not a bad idea: fur wearers must eventually don their pet pelts as a debt of respect to the animal kingdom.

Wait, that's it! I don't have a problem with fur as long as the wearer did the killing. Same goes for war. The wagers must be required to make the first kills with their bare hands - to taste murder and especially its aftertaste - one week before the actual war can begin. FDR understood the permanence of blood on a leader's hands. "I have seen war," he said in 1936. "I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have see children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war." While I'm on this jag, the same must be said for carnivores (of which I am one). It's just a little too easy to keep throwing those jaundiced chicken breasts on the bar-b-que straight out of the styrofoam package. To pat those ground bulls into tidy burgers. Meat tastes good, and some argue it's good for you (in limited doses). But really, unless you take direct responsibility for the slaughter, you're just adding to mankind's staggering insult to life and championing denial as the foundation of civilization. Hey, Mea culpa. Youa culpa?