Those wild and crazy vegetarians

Reading The Guardian on my flight home from Europe today, I came across this funny (bitingly so) note from Hadley Freeman, an American by birth, but Brit and vegetarian by circumstance. I think I once tried to be vegetarian. It lasted for a few days.

While one of my best friends and favorite people is vegetarian, I must admit that Freeman's description is very apt for many of the vegetarians I know:

...[T]he worst thing about being vegetarian isn't that epiphanical moment when you realise the one phrase you know in multiple languages is, "Just a green salad, please." It's other vegetarians.

When I used to say that I was vegetarian back in the 80s, the reaction I got was something akin to what I imagine Scientologists get today. Now, though, I swim limpidly in the mainstream alongside the tedious likes of Moby....One day I woke up and realised these had become my people. As if having crap hair wasn't bad enough.

Because the vegetarian bandwagon has been so thoroughly jumped by celebrities, a demographic that survives by constant self-validation, we now live in a world of high-profile vegetarian evangelism. Thus, the whole shebang...has taken on the sweaty sheen of moral superiority, bossiness, and over-simplification...and makes me want to stuff a fistful of veal in their gobs to shut them all up.

Indeed.

Unfortunately, I find that this isn't unique to vegetarians or, really, to cause-mongers of any kind. I find myself embarrassed all the time by people that share my beliefs/habits, just as I'm sure I set others' teeth grinding at my behavior or comments. (Perhaps your teeth are grinding even as you read this.)

From self-righteous Mormons to clueless conservatives, I'm surrounded by people that think like me...but don't. Not all of them, anyway. Not really.

So, my apologies to the non-bozo vegetarians out there. I'm sure you're nice in your way. I am, too, in mine. We just choose to be obnoxious in different ways. :-)