Don’t laugh.
Let’s try to take seriously the 21-year-old woman in Flagstaff, Arizona, who has changed her last name from “Feather†to “FishingHurts†(one word).
She wanted the name FishingHurts.com, but the judge wouldn’t go along.
Well, the PETA-built website is up and running, and you can read all about her cause. I don’t doubt that fish hurt when they are pulled out of the water by hook or net. But they taste good, and they’re good for you.
Hey, I liked Finding Nemo, but you can anthropomorphize a hundred thousand fish and thousand different stories and I’m still not likely to support animal rights . . . or even the watered-down notion that sympathy should stop me from remaining in the precise part of the food chain that I was born into.
My ancestors were fishermen. I would like to continue their tradition, if only at the eating end of the industry.
Now, Ms. FishingHurts may seem ludicrous or quixotic or merely idiotic to you. But she has a right to her cause, and a right to change her name.
I’m more upset about the judge who disallowed her dot com suffix. Why, I wonder.
As I understand it, under the Ninth Amendment we Americans have the right to call ourselves anything we want, so long as it doesn’t aid in fraud.
No one would look at Ms. FishingHurts.com and think: Why, she’s a website!
She’s a person. With rights.
To make a fool out of herself, if nothing else.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.com.