Whales at the Polls?
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Not just the poles in the arctic where Japan conducts its routines, but at the voting polls. That’s right, we’re talking about whale suffrage. Hat tip to Bryan at Hot Air for this.
Presidential candidates who take a firm stand against Japanese whaling practices are more likely to gain support from swing voters, a new poll has shown.
That’s right. The Washington Times has an article out that claims that Americans’ anger at Japan’s whaling practices is large enough to comprise a swing vote. That is, that enough voters in America might swing their vote based solely on the presidential candidates’ individual stances on Japan’s whaling practices that it could change the outcome.
I find this patently absurd, as does Bryan at Hot Air. He analyzes the impetus behind the poll, as well as the organizations behind it. I think his conclusions seem are entirely reasonable.
So…half of the country’s swing voters would give up Sony, Honda, Toyota, Panasonic etc etc etc to protest Japanese whaling? Riiiight.
I have posted about Japanese whaling practices before. I got in trouble with friends for having partaken of whale flesh. It wasn’t particularly appetizing. I’ll have a followup entry hopefully soon, because I am determined to go whale watching. It’s weird to have eaten an animal that I’ve never seen alive. But I digress. The Washington Times article makes one particularly interesting anti-whaling thrust, urging the United States to return to an anti-whaling position.
Whales Need US called on the Bush administration to re-establish the United States as a country that “confronts those countries that kill whales” after the announcement of the poll results in Washington yesterday.
“We want the U.S. government to rediscover its backbone and to restore its leadership to protect whales” said D.J. Schubert, wildlife biologist at the animal-welfare institute.
Restore its leadership? Re-establish the country’s anti-whale stance? Some of you might remember that my original article was spurred on by a New York Times story that a friend sent to me…a story explaining that the United States started and encouraged the Japanese whaling practice while Japan was rebuilding post-WWII.
It comes as little surprise that foreign opposition to whaling has fueled nationalist sentiments in Japan. What is far less known is how the United States instigated, at least partly, Japan’s nationalist obsession with whaling by first encouraging the Japanese in the postwar years to hunt and eat whale meat, and then urging them to stop.
So…were we against whaling before we were for it? Or what? I’m confused. I guess I agree with Bryan’s conclusions, though.
Bottom line: I’m skeptical that the 08 vote might swing decisively on the whale question. This one poll is not convincing. But if I’m wrong and this poll turns out to be right and the presidency does hang on the end of a harpoon, expect to see a lot more whale blogging as we run up to ‘08.
Hey, if he’s right about the blog-fodder-ization of whaling as a topic, I guess I’m on the cutting edge. It’ll be an interesting thing to see unfold, anyway. No worries, I’ll keep my limited coverage running as long as the stories keep popping up.