Steven Patrick Morrissey has many preferences: He prefers celibacy (or at least the illusion thereof). He prefers that immigrants stay the hell out England. And, of course, he believes “meat is murder” and prefers that you don’t bring any of it into the hallowed space of a Morrissey performance. This has long been the case; Moz is known to prohibit meat at the venues where he performs. But now, he’s taken his obsessive-compulsive vegetarianism to a new level. According to Britain’s Daily Mirror, he’s now instructing security at his gigs to search fans’ bags for meat products!
“A member of the security staff then went through my bag and told me that they were checking to make sure that I was not carrying any meat products inside,” recalled concertgoer Mel Stokes, opining, “I think it was just Morrissey being a diva – again.” Although venue staffer Laura Hannaway told the Mirror that they do perform searches for anything attendees might be able to throw at the band — and Moz has been pelted by his share of sausages over the years — she did concede that confiscating meat was “a bit random.” [via NME]
Today is World Vegetarian Day, the official kickoff of the North American Vegetarian Society’s annual Vegetarian Awareness Month. In honor of the unofficial holiday, we decided to seek out some of the more surprising famous meat shunners. Maybe these unlikely herbivores will help convince you that anyone can do it. Or maybe they’ll just make you want to go eat a burger. Either way, enjoy!
Having already mastered the idioms of an ESL Ukrainian and a young boy with Asperger’s, Jonathan Safran Foer debuts his new voice in Eating Animals, a book-length screed devoted to the evils of meat eating. This voice may be Foer’s real one — his walk-around voice, or his walk-around-Park-Slope-pushing-a-Bugaboo-baby-stroller-in-which-his-new-son, Sasha, happily-munches-on-a-tofu-roll-up voice. It’s conversational to the point of artlessness, passionate to the point of hysteria. It’s scary, intelligent, and incredibly grating. Reading Eating Animals is like getting a colonoscopy: It’s important and salutary and everyone should do it. But if it were just a bit more pleasant, or done with a drop more lube, it would be a lot easier to make it a regular thing.
