Spinning animal cruelty

Robin Starr, the CEO of the Richmond Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, has become a victim in the court of public opinion. The Richmond Times Dispatch broke the story this past Wednesday that Starr’s dog was left in her car at the SPCA parking lot for four hours in 90-degree heat. The pooch, a 16-year old cocker spaniel/poodle mix (it’s called a cockapoo) did not survive the incident.

Now, obviously, this is very ironic. Moreover, the whole situation is rather sad, especially because it was Starr’s husband who took responsibility for leaving the animal in the car without attendance, and it is Starr who is taking the heat in this bad news vehicle. People have called for her resignation, and the incident has really mucked up the reputation of the Richmond SPCA as a whole.

This story is completely sensational; its only value is in its ability to shame an otherwise upstanding citizen for what appears to be an unfortunate accident. People have been eager to condemn without taking the time to understand the story’s full context.

Firstly, the dog (whose name was Louie) was 16 years old, blind and deaf. A dog that age could have died taking a walk. The fact that he had been left in the car and was not able to call for help by barking or otherwise was testament to his frailty. Secondly, Louie was a cockapoo, a breed of dog smaller than most housecats; it’s understandable that Starr could have overlooked him if he was quiet.

Thirdly, Starr is an outspoken advocate for animal rights. She probably feels worse than most people because she is a role model, and now people are trying to say she is guilty of the very crime that has been her life’s work to prevent.

The only reason I am even addressing this particular story is because there is a valuable lesson to be learned about how the media works in the United States: spin turns complex issues into egregious sound bites that the public uses to make judgments. These decisions are so lacking in detail, they wreck any possibility of public discourse yielding any sort of advancement within the issue, especially when political groups attempt to form “the deciders” into voting blocs that will inevitably butt heads.

Issues such has health care, stem cell research, mandatory minimum sentencing in prisons and others, have been locked in partisanship for the past decade because people are more absorbed in the sound bites than they are in considering what to actually think.

Tragically, this type of decision-making feeds back into itself, producing knee-jerk reactions and idiotic results. In the case of Starr, one Times-Dispatch reader remarked in a comment online,
“She should go to jail. The dog is dead and suffered a horrible death and she is responsible and should go to jail for two years just like Michael Vick!! She murdered that poor dog!”

Granted, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but according to the Times- Dispatch, within two days of breaking the story there were over 500 comments on its web site, many of which had to be taken down because they contained vicious personal attacks. Many critics of Starr’s actions contend that because the dog’s death occurred a week prior to when the newspaper broke the story, there was some sort of cover-up to prevent bad publicity, and the “true” circumstances of the dog’s death are being hidden.

Even more ironically, despite all the negative press this has supposedly caused for the SPCA, a representative reported a record attendance and donations at a recent annual fundraiser. Maybe I’m wrong and people really do love animals and can accept that accidents happen, but then again it took the sacrifice of a woman’s reputation and her dog’s life to get people to reach deeper into their pockets.

Whatever the case might be, it looks like the reactionaries have won again, hopefully to the SPCA’s benefit and not its loss in the long run. No matter what the outcome, it will still keep spinning.