WSJ

Anticircus Freaks Will Ringling Bros. beat animal-rights clowns at their own game?

BY COLLIN LEVEY Monday, January 7, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST

Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, it would take a company in the business of juggling fire and whispering with tigers to summon the courage for such an act of derring-do as we are about to see. In ads scheduled to appear in newspapers around the country today, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will be taking on animal-rights activists and their snarling campaign against the "Greatest Show on Earth."

Ringling Bros. is not easily provoked. For years, just about anywhere the circus went, a gaggle of activists tagged along. Their attention-getting antics were a sideshow in their own right. In Seattle last year, a woman was arrested for indecent exposure after displaying herself in a cage wearing nothing but painted-on tiger stripes.

Circus executives saw the headaches and public-relations skirmishes as just another cost of doing business in the modern world. But Ringling Bros. persisted, and, luckily, the old-style circus, even in this age of Cirque du Soleil, still draws record crowds. The "Greatest Show on Earth" has been an American institution since 1919.

But then the activists pushed too far. In a case that attracted media attention across the country, animal-rights groups filed charges in California accusing Mark Oliver Gebel, one of the circus's best known performers, of "elephant abuse." Mr. Gebel, son of famed animal trainer Gunther Gebel-Williams, grew up in the circus and took over the family business when his father died. Citing a peculiar California law against the mistreatment of elephants, the Humane Society charged Mr. Gebel with grievously mistreating a pachyderm performer just before it entered the ring by nicking it with a hook-shaped training instrument called an ankus.

The accusation would have been funny had the stakes not been so high. An inspector for the Humane Society reported seeing a "nickel-sized bloody spot" behind the elephant's left leg, though the purported injury was not visible after the elephant had been hosed off a short time later. But never mind: The alleged "piercing of the elephant's hide" was all the animal-rights groups thought they needed. Last month a jury laughed the case out of court, acquitting Mr. Gebel after just two hours' deliberation.

Let's hope the animal-righters have gotten a lesson in the more-rigorous standards of proof that prevail in courtrooms than on the evening news. Even under California's special elephant-abuse law, the prosecution's case was so weak that Mr. Gebels lawyers didn't even bother to offer a defense.

As typically happens, the victory did not get quite the same coverage as the accusations did. So starting today Ringling Bros. will be taking its case straight to the public with an ad campaign that make clear that the circus is done taking abuse.

Groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Performing Animal Welfare Society make their living by creating media sensations. Yet while their campaign against the circus has been going on for years, their attacks hardly made a dent in attendance. Little wonder they've turned to the courts. Last spring, several groups brought suit under the Endangered Species Act in an effort to prevent circuses from using elephants at all in their acts. In yet another California boondoggle, Rep. Sam Farr, a Golden State Democrat, introduced legislation in the called the Captive Elephant Accident Prevention Act, to prevent elephants from crossing state lines.

The fun doesn't stop there. The screeching of animal rights activists brought Seattle to the brink of banning "exotic animal acts" altogether. In another amusing twist, PETA filed a lawsuit this summer accusing Ringling Bros. of espionage, after the company hired the CIA's Reagan-era special-ops director to infiltrate PETA with moles to find out about future activities. PAWS had filed a similar suit, but settled for some retired elephants.

Many companies find it easier to just buy pesky activists off by caving in to their demands or donating large sums to the very groups that torment them. Some even seek broad sponsorship and association with groups that despise them in hopes it will cast a greenish, new-age light on their products. Groups like PETA and PAWS aren't accustomed to enemies who fight back. PETA once registered the domain name ringlingbrothers.com to set up a site loosely alleging unspeakable abuses suffered by circus animals. But when one Internet jokester registered the site PETA.org for a group he called People Eating Tasty Animals, the group threw a fit and successfully challenged his ownership of the name.

It will be interesting to see what happens when one of its favorite punching bags, Ringling Bros., starts punching back. After the recent California verdict, Ringling producer Kenneth Feldwasn't mincing words. "A small group of extremists does not have the right to impose their radical views on the people of California to prevent the majority, who want to see animals in the circus, from doing so," he said.

In many cases, the endangered species are actually well served by the circus--a lucrative industry with a vested interest in being popular with the public and presenting healthy and happy animals. Ringling Bros. has even gone so far as to set up retirement pastures for its dear old performers once they're too old to perform.

But the fringe pressure groups of the world have learned that American business usually pays up. With its talent for showmanship, maybe the circus will set an example of how the mau-mau crowd can be beaten at its own game. Now that would be the greatest show on earth.

-- Anonymous, January 07, 2002