The Silent Sound Of Reporters Guffawing

Every once in a while you read a line in a news story, presented straightforwardly, cool, and oh, so reportorially, and you just know the reporter was slapping his knees and laughing out loud as he typed it.

Here's one such line:

There was no immediate comment from rebels to the PETA's letter.

Here's what leads up to it:

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - An international animal rights group called on Sri Lanka's separatist Tamil Tigers to "leave animals out" of the armed conflict, two weeks after a grenade attack blamed on rebels at the island's main zoo.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, said in a letter dated Feb. 15 to Velupillai Prabhakaran, the reclusive rebel leader, that "the explosive device that was set off near the zoo's bird enclosures terrified many animals at the zoo."

PETA president Ingrid E. Newkirk pleaded with the rebel leader "to leave animals out of this conflict," the letter said.

Newkirk added that the group has been inundated by messages from people saddened by the attack.

Drum roll, please ...

There was no immediate comment from rebels to the PETA's letter.

Note that no birds were even killed in the Tamil Tiger attack; they just had their feathers ruffled. Yet the animal rights wing of the Lefty insane asylum -- which from the billboard appears to view terrorism as a big hoot -- is a-tizzy with outrage. Of course, they weren't particularly worried about dead people, just bothered birds.

PETA fans will remember that this is hardly the group's most egregious animals-over-people debacle. That came when in their protest to al-Aqsa TV -- the station that brought us Farfur, a character who resembled Mickey Mouse and advocated Palestinian attacks against Israelis until his poor little electrons were beaten to death by an actor depicted as an Israeli.

PETA got mad at the station because an actor verbally harassed some animals at a zoo as part of a show that was teaching children not to be cruel to animals! As I wrote at the time:

Apparently, PETA isn't antisemitic; if it were, and it didn't consider Jews to be fully human, it would rally for their protection. But thinking Jews mere humans, PETA finds itself admonishing the Palestinians for taunting some animals, but not admonishing them for blowing up buses filled with school kids.

Hat-tip: Jim