Don't quit your day job, whatever that is

Pamela Anderson, hosting the Juno Awards last night - and believe me, I really wish that sentence actually made sense - slammed the seal hunt, but I doubt she expected this reaction:

Juno host Pamela Anderson raised the hackles of musicians being honoured at the Halifax awards ceremony by taking a swipe at the East Coast seal hunt.

"I don't mind a little blood on the ice when it's a hockey rink, but I hate seeing blood on the ice when it's from baby seals," Anderson told the crowd of 7,500 in Halifax's Metro Centre.

Many in the crowd booed, although a few cheers were audible.

"I can take it, I can take it – I have high heels and they dig in deep," Anderson said in response to the boos.

Anderson is a vocal member of the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. While in Halifax on the weekend, she mailed a stack of letters to the Prime Minister's Office demanding the seal hunt be outlawed.

Here in Newfoundland, Costco is being slammed for their decision to stop selling seal oil capsules, allegedly in response to lobbying from Paul Watson's radical Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. And the Humane Society of the United States is running advertisements on VOCM radio which must be heard to be believed. The announcer doesn't even try to argue that sealing is cruel - he just threatens a massive boycott of Canadian seafood products if the hunt isn't ended, and ends with the rather ominous demand that Newfoundlanders "tell Loyola Hearn to stop the seal hunt and save your fishing income".

Well, we weren't going to, but since you asked so nicely...

Update: a local publisher called in to VOCM's Backtalk a few minutes ago and made an excellent point: Costco may have pulled this item from its shelves, but the St. John's store carries a much larger selection of Newfoundland books, CDs, videos and baked goods than Wal-Mart, Zellers or other national retailers.

Newfoundlanders who want to boycott Costco should keep that in mind. (The company, for the record, officially denies caving in to pressure from animal-rights activists.)

Posted by damian at April 3, 2006 01:29 PM