A fish out of water

The publicity ploy of renaming unpleasant shit to make it sound more appealing, saleable or palatable has been around for years, but has accelerated exponentially in the last image-obsessed, marketing-infested decade or so. ‘Friendly fire’ was coined by some Army PR type for being blowed the fuck up by the Seppos.’Market correction’ is the euphemism for your parents losing three quarters of their super because some speculationary stockbroking twunt and his day-trading arsewit mates couldn’t keep it trousered. And then there’s ‘family-friendly’, as in the political mindset of redneck, racist, homo-hating uber-Christian fucktards.

But now, the gold standard for changing the semantics to fit the purpose. However astonishingly, amazingly, car-crash-stupefyingly misguided.

I give you... the PETA ‘Save the Sea Kittens’ campaign.

I think only taking a look for yourself will truly do this site justice, and explainify the thesis behind this particular bit of intellectual genius. However, perhaps their ‘About the campaign’ screed might give you a clue:

People don't seem to like fish. They're slithery and slimy, and they have eyes on either side of their pointy little heads—which is weird, to say the least. Plus, the small ones nibble at your feet when you're swimming, and the big ones—well, the big ones will bite your face off if Jaws is anything to go by.

Of course, if you look at it another way, what all this really means is that fish need to fire their PR guy—stat. Whoever was in charge of creating a positive image for fish needs to go right back to working on the Britney Spears account and leave our scaly little friends alone. You've done enough damage, buddy. We've got it from here. And we're going to start by retiring the old name for good. When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it's time for a serious image makeover. And who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?

Ask the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to stop promoting sea kitten hunting here.

No, they’re not taking the piss. No, it’s not a hoax site set up by the Chaser or the Yes Men. They’re serious. They’re not fish, they’re ‘sea kittens’. And we need to stop hunting and killing them with big scary hooks because it hurts their feelings. And presumably their mouths too.

If your jaw didn’t drop and a wordless ‘Oh for fuck’s sake’ whisper from your slackened lips, best you shut this complicated looking ‘puter down and go do something more in line with your powers of ideological reasoning and your level of intellectual competence. Turning the letters on ‘Wheel of Fortune’ might be about it.

And as for PETA... Jesus fucking Christ. All I can recommend for this august body is that perhaps it should just stick to its core business. Encouraging easily misled ‘politically aware’ twiglet actresses into nuding up in public.