Reuters reports on the latest bone-headed idea from PETA:
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, no stranger to attention-grabbing campaigns featuring nude women, plans to launch a pornography website in the name of animal rights. The nonprofit organization, whose controversial campaigns draw criticism from women's rights groups, said it hopes to raise awareness of veganism through a mix of pornography and graphic footage of animal suffering. "We're hoping to reach a whole new audience of people, some of whom will be shocked by graphic images that maybe they didn't anticipate seeing when they went to the PETA triple-X site," said Lindsay Rajt, PETA's associate director of campaigns.
That leads PZ Myers to wonder:
I am trying to visualize the kind of people who would be drawn to a site featuring naked women and tortured animals"¦and no, those aren't the people I'd want to associate with. It sounds like it might be popular with serial killers, anyway. Is that the audience they want?
Will PETA's latest stunt disprove the bad publicity is better than no publicity axiom?