The Pros and Cons of Bullfighting...

I'm so torn about this bloodsport it's ridiculous. If I was a politician I would be hogtied and dragged through the streets for all of my flip-flopping on the subject. Who wants to see a beautiful, defenseless animal that is peaceful by nature be cadged into a frenzy and then slowly, brutally murdered while others cheer? I do... Or rather, I want to embrace the pageantry, the conflict, and the brutality - the metaphorical suffering - without owning up to the actual suffering. The way I see it, a world in which bullfighting exists as a bold comment on civilization is far more compelling, agitating, and complete as a span of culture, than one without. I suppose I'm a lefty progressive at heart, but I can't stomach a world in which frustrated liberals systematically defang the planet as if their agenda, their template for reality, was so much better.

What I'd really like to see is a level playing field and a more metaphorical death in the sport. Something closer to sumo wrestling, where the matador's job is to stay in a small ring while being sized up by a procession of successively more terrifying animals of all sorts: capibaras, maribous, spider monkeys, giraffes, dogs, baby elefants, baby cobras, zebras, bulls, crocodiles, silverback gorrillas, manta rays, tigers, and of course, the most dangerous animal of all hippopotamuses. That would be something to see.

("Corrida" by Lisa Alisa - read her refreshingly clear take here.)