Demonstrators

I don't know about you, but the more demonstrators I see in the streets, the harder it is for me to take them seriously. That doesn't mean that THEY don't want to be taken seriously. In fact, you get the impression that a lot of them would sooner tear down the country to make a point--even if they don't know what their point is. There are few things more dangerous, and frightening, than hordes of seemingly mindless people roaming the streets destroying property and chanting angry slogans.

I realize that all citizens have a right under the First Amendment to demonstrate, protest, march, and otherwise express their views in a peaceable and lawful manner. I support that. But sometimes I wonder if we haven't become such a nation of grumblers over everything with which we disagree that the change we think we're demanding is lost in the sound and fury of the process.

So I was pleased to hear of a different kind of protest I saw on the television news a while back. Down in California (where else?) a restaurant was serving lion steaks to their customers at $100 a plate, which is about eighty bucks more than I would pay for any steak. So, my first reaction was, "Way to go!" No steak dinner is worth $100 a plate."

I happen to think that the cost of hamburger is too high, not to mention the cost of a hot dog at the game. Even so, I like hamburgers and hot dogs. But a slice of Simba?

As usual, I had missed the point. The protest wasn't against the high cost of lion steak. This crowd was complaining about serving the king of the jungle as the gourmet special. I guess there are certain things you just don't expect to see on the menu of your favorite restaurant: salamander toes, crabgrass soup, iguana livers, filet of lion, etc.

The thought also briefly crossed my mind that if a protest is in order cows have a lot more reason to be upset with restaurants than lions do. But you don't see crowds of protesters marching on Sizzler or Munch-A-Burger calling for the rescue of cows. Well, you may see demonstrators at the burger outlet, but they're probably in the Michele Obama Brigade against "unhealthy" food.

I don't have trouble, however, understanding why a few people would be upset about lion steak on a restaurant menu. What do they know?  Everything they know about lions, they learned from Disney movies. After seeing The Lion King twenty or thirty times with my grandkids I realize how easy it is to forget that lions are predators. And lions, in their native habitat, feast on everything from stately zebras to unwary great, white hunters. I doubt if a lot of the folks out there demonstrating against the restaurant had seen The Ghost and the Darkness. This is a movie about a couple of lions doing some serious demonstrating of their own against the building of a long-distance railroad line in East Africa. There were several graphic scenes showing these two kings of the jungle terrorizing a railroad construction camp and snacking on slow-footed workers.

As I watched these up-scale, Beverly Hills protesters walking around in circles in front of the restaurant I thought to myself that at least they weren't smashing windows and setting fires. They were orderly, and some were carrying expensive-looking, stuffed, toy lions, but I began to wonder just how serious could they really be. They almost looked took cute.

No doubt it seems a bit objectionable to such people that a restaurant should carve up this lordly pussycat of the friendly Disney image solely for the dining pleasure of the upper classes. What was the purpose of this demonstration, then? To force lion meat off the menu? Rescue the reputation of the lion as the king of beasts? Whatever the reason, it seems to me that they were going about it all wrong.

Look, if you want to make lion-steak-eaters sit up and take notice, send in the lions to do the demonstrating.