The War Room

D.A.Pennebaker's landmark 1993 film The War Room documented the 1992 Clinton Presidential campaign. The film follows Communications Director George Stephanopoulos and Lead Strategist James Carville, both of whom later became media celebrities. The film documents the media revolution that occurred during the campaign; at the end of the movie we are unsure whether Stephanopoulos and Carville were creators of the media revolution, or if they were simply more adept at exploiting trends already underway. The inner sanctum where Carville and Stephanopoulos plotted their strategies was called The War Room.

One of the most effective tactics of the campaign was the rapid response to every single news event or charge from the opposing campaign: no event was allowed to go unanswered or unchallenged. The pit bull advocacy campaign employs a similar political strategy; after each pit bull attack the advocates hit the wires with pit-positive stories to neutralize the news.

Over the last months there have been hundreds of legitimate news accounts of pit bull attacks, and always there are stories and editorials in response which deflect attention from the attack. The pit advocacy War Room response follows on the heels of the original news and sometimes it even appears in the same newspaper.

The pit advocacy follow-up often avoids mention of the attack and nearly always employs stock rhetorical phrases. The stories are so similar they would appear to be plagiarism if the articles were serious journalism; they lead us to suspect that the journalists have been reading a list of "talking points."

Here are some examples of recent pit bull attacks, with the subsequent responses from the pit bull War Room.

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San Diego, CA;  June 18, 2011

A:  Attack on 75 year-old  Emako Mendoza in her fenced backyard by neighbor's pit bull. Original news coverage in SignOnSanDiego.com and elsewhere.

B:  June 23; the career pit bull advocate Michael Mountain posts a bathetic defense of the pit bulls which  killed Ms Mendoza. Mountain, host of the StubbyDog blog, titled his post In San Diego Attack, Dogs Were Victims Too. This piece of shameless pit advocacy demonstrates a callous disregard of the victim.

Boulder, CO;  July 4, 2011

A: Attack on Michael O'Neill; news coverage in the Boulder Daily Camera

B: In an extraordinary move the editorial board of the Daily Camera allowed Clay Evans, pit bull advocate (and incidentally the Features and Entertainment editor of the Daily Camera at the time) to represent the editorial board with an editorial response. The opinion piece ran on July 7 and borrowed an overused pit bull advocacy slogan for its title: Not About the Breed.

Amarillo, TX; October 3, 2011
A: On October 4th, the Amarillo Globe-News publishes an account of the canine homicide of an eleven-day old infant.
B: In an extraordinary response, the Amarillo Globe-News published an advocacy piece, also dated October 4th. This piece, like many pit advocacy stories, interviews three pit bull advocates. SRUV previously reported on this extraordinary publishing event in our Rapid Response.

Bridgewater, MA; Dec 1, 2011
A:  Facial disfigurement attack on 71 year-old Normanda Torres by the family pit bull. Original news coverage carried on EnterpriseNews.com, the Boston Globe, and elsewhere.
B: Within three days the Enterprise News rolled over and began publishing a SERIES of pit advocacy stories, including:

• Dec 4: Pit Bull Owners: Blame the Owners, Not the Dogs 
• Dec 7: Owners, not breeds, must be focus in wake of dog bite (484 words)
• Dec 8: Owners, not breeds, must be focus in wake of dog bite (Revised, 422 words)

SRUV notes that this attack,  in which the pit bull ate parts of a woman's face, is calmly referred to as a bite. A bite.


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Google news -- Today's pit bull attacks

Rapid Response

The incident Monday was not a pit bull issue.

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The article in the Amarillo Globe News (Tuesday Oct 4th, by Yann Ranaivo) followed by one day the death of an 11-day old infant after it was attacked by a pit bull. Ranaivo's piece is well written and stylistically sophisticated. In many ways  it is representative of typical pit bull advocacy articles following an attack.

The article is divided into two parts, which are nearly equal in length. The first half consists of the recent history of dog attacks in Amarillo. According to the article, pit bulls account for three times as many bites as the the breeds with the next-highest reports of attacks.

Then, in a remarkable transition, the article closes the first section with a barrage of undisguised advocacy statements, beginning with the line at the top of the page. It continues:

This was about an animal and an infant. . . . . It could have been any dog that was not properly introduced to the infant.

This transition is one of the more adroit pit bull advocacy maneuvers witnessed by SRUV, and one of the most effective. It not only ignores all the preceding dog bite data: it displaces it and attempts to make it irrelevant.

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The second half of the article then goes on to interview three pit bull advocates at length.

* Shannon Barlow, Assistant Director of Amarillo Animal Control
The first of three advocates presented in the article is Shannon Barlow. The incident, as Shannon Barlow refers to it in the line at the top of this page and in the excerpts above, is the death of an eleven-day old infant, which Barlow otherwise fails to mention. Ms Barlow would have us believe that although a pit bull attacked a child and the child died, it is not a pit bull incident.

Readers of SRUV are aware of previous uses of the Any Dog argument used by Ms Barlow. In her efforts to take our attention away from the fact that a pit bull killed a child, Ms Barlow would have us believe that it could just as well have been a Yorkshire Terrier than mauled the infant to death. Theoretically, yes, it could have been any dog that killed the infant, and pigs might fly. The fact remains that it was a pit bull that mauled the infant, one of two infant deaths from pit bull attacks within a week, and one of sixteen fatal pit bull attacks during the current year. Pit bull advocates are seemingly incapable of acknowledging these deaths.

* Cydney Cross, President of Out of the Pits
Ms Cross is called upon to convince us that "pit bulls aren't naturally aggressive." Although the article gives only seven sentences to Ms Cross, she manages to repeat six of the basic refrains of pit bull advocacy. There is nothing new under the sun, and  SRUV will not bore our readers by repeating them. Ms Cross represents one of dozens (if not hundreds) of pit bull advocacy groups around the country. Members of these groups are called upon to defend their breed of obsession after similar attacks, in what is apparently an organized rapid response effort. We wonder what these people do for a living.

* Loralei Zwitt, dog behaviorist and owner of My Dog and Me
The interview with Ms Zwitt is dominated by the canine psychobabble that has unfortunately become more prevalent recently.  Ms Zwitt's comments essentially find an excuse for any poor behavior on the part of a dog. SRUV will remind Ms Zwitt that high-pitched sounds and similar annoyances do not provoke other breeds to kill infants.

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As we have noted elsewhere, after nearly every pit bull attack articles similar to this one appear like mushrooms. But Mr Ranaivo's piece is different, in its scope and intent. Few articles call upon more than one or two pit bull advocates. Few articles integrate dog attack statistics to disarm the reader, then dismiss the data so cavalierly. Few articles that follow an infant's death are so callous in presenting pit bull advocacy. Mr Ranaivo is hereby nominated for the SRUV Hall of Shame.

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Related post: Natural Consequences
Source: Amarillo Globe News

A Prayer

As we have noted elsewhere in these pages, there are a limited number of arguments for advocates to rely on, which we hear over and over.

• Judge the deed, not the breed
• Punish the deed, not the breed
• It's not the dog, it's the owner
• There are no bad dogs; only bad owners
• It's all how they're raised
• and above all, All dogs bite

These phrases are so common that even those who have no interest in dogs are aware of them; they resonate through the collective conscience like advertising jingles, which is what they are. The speakers believe these phrases carry content, but they are bled of all meaning and they are sometimes uttered in the most inappropriate circumstances. They fill a verbal vacuum much the way auto-complete fills in the blanks in your email program.

The use of these phrases has interested SRUV because the speakers believe they still have the power to alter opinion. We have arrived at a point in the pit bull controversy when this kind of speech, consisting almost entirely of phrases plucked from a reservoir of belief, takes the place of original thought. The phrases are repeated until they assume an incantatory, ritualized meaning, and work in the same way a prayer or magic spell is believed to work.

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Just after 9pm on Friday, May 27th,  "Honey" Jubeark ran from her house screaming “Help! He ate my baby! He ate my baby!”

Within minutes after news of Jayelin Graham's death was posted,  pit bull advocates were flooding the internet with comments. Many of the posters seemed disinterested in the child's death and used the occasion to defend their breed of obsession.

I have copied below a comment, and below that, a response to the first comment. (Note: the comment on the Golden Retriever has taken on aspects of an urban myth and is recounted using a variety of breeds including dachshunds.)

• Anthony Barry

no such thing as a bad dog just bad owners.. Pitbulls are beautiful

dogs and a great breed. It takes assholes like this guy to make the

breed look bad. I say we just put him in a cage with a bear and

let the bear rip his head off. Poor child never had a chance with

a monster parent like that.

• Corey Hackett • Burlington, Vermont
it's all about how they're raised/trained. Some of the smartest/
gentlest dogs I know (known) have been Pits and Rotty's...
I work with a woman who was just attacked by a vicious
golden retriver... it's all on their environment...

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These comments were posted in response to a news story about the death of a human child. Nearly every thought in these two comments is a variation of the five statements at the top of this post. Literally thousands of additional posts echo these two.

Hall of Shame: II

We see plenty of dog bites: golden retrievers, labradors, chihuahuas, boston terriers, just as much as pit bulls.

You can take a perfectly docile animal and create a very aggressive animal if you put it in the proper environment. Once these behaviors are learned . . . . there are traumatic experiences, psychological damages, behavioral changes that happen that are very difficult to reverse.

Any dog put in that situation, not just a pit bull but any dog, can be aggressive.

     Dr Kelly Gebhardt
     Happy Tails Emergency Vet Clinic

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Revised: April 28, 2013; 19:30 GMT

Ron Phillips was walking his 11-year-old Chinese Shar-Pei named Alfey at 8:30 Thursday night when Alfey was attacked by two pit bulls.

The two pit bulls are owned by Laura Rhynehardt, who says the attack was a big mistake.

After the attack Dr Gebhardt was asked to comment. Those comments are recorded at the top of this post. In a brief TV interview consisting of 81 words Dr Gebhardt manages to avoid a single attribution of responsibility to the pit bulls.

In the first paragraph Dr Gebhardt associates pit bull bites with the bites of chihuahuas. Most listeners would gasp in disbelief at this, had we not head this monstrous deceit so often before. To those who hear it for the first time the association seems otherworldly.

The second, longer paragraph is a litany of canine psycho-babble. Are we to believe that Laura Rhynehardt's pit bulls were formerly docile animals? They then suffered traumatic experiences and behavior changes? Only after they suffered did they attack Alfey? Are we to sympathize with the pit bulls?

In her third, one-line paragraph she expresses, in scientific terms, the classic pit bull defense. Expressed in the vernacular the argument is simply: All dogs bite. This is another mind-manipulating attempt to equate chihuahuas with pit bulls.

What is significant in Dr Gebhardt's TV interview is that her response is undiluted pit bull advocacy shrouded in scientific language. She is therefore nominated to SRUV's Pit Bull Hall of Shame for this brief, shameful, 81-word pit bull defense.


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Notes:

Statistics in SRUV are from Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada, published by Animal People. To view or download the current PDF click here. Also including information from Dogsbite and Fatal Pit Bull Attacks.

News:

Google News: Today's pit bull attacks


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Breeders' Hall of Shame

If you're unfamiliar with pit bull breeding, a quick glance at the sites listed below will be informative. It should be assumed that these breeders are among the more reputable breeders, are probably licensed, and many of their dogs have papers. Stud fees reach stratospheric figures; we've seen figures of $4,000 for puppies.

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• Bully Gods
• xtremepitbulls
• Southern Smoke Pit Bulls
• Mugleston's Pitbull Farm
• xtreme bully pitbulls
• Monster G line
• RCK (Raising Cain Kennels) featuring rednose pits

Take a moment to reflect on these names; do they sound like good sources for the family pet?  A Google search for "pit bull breeders" returns over 843,000 similar results.

These known breeders are the tip of the iceberg  Many of the pit bulls used as status or weapons dogs are under the radar, bred by backyard breeders, and it is these dogs that are filling humane shelters and draining their resources.

Shelters are then faced with the unenviable task of euthanizing these dogs or adopting them out as family pets. Ironically, few shelters or humane agencies have shown any interest in passing legislation to limit backyard breeding.

If you know of a backyard breeder report it to your local law enforcement agency. If you have reason to suspect that the local Sheriff will be unresponsive, report the backyard breeder to your town or county council or to the responsible state authority. If you have difficulty finding the appropriate authority contact SRUV for assistance, as they vary from state to state.