What’s Wrong w/ Showing Eight Belles Injury On Air?
May 5th, 2008 . by ChuckIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive instant updates.
I want to preface this by saying I didn’t necessarily want to see an animal suffering, because in all honesty I don’t care about horse racing. In fact, I didn’t even watch the Kentucky Derby, nor will I watch next year’s race. However, seeing how everyone is patting NBC on the back for “doing the right thing” by not broadcasting the horse’s injury and death during the Kentucky Derby is quite frankly…full of horse shit.
After Big Brown crossed the finish line this weekend as the Derby winner, Eight Belles broke both ankles and collapsed on the track. The injuries were so severe that she had to be euthanized on the spot to prevent further suffering. The term that’s being thrown around in the media is that people didn’t want to see the horse “writhing in agony” in the moments before her death.
Ok…I’m assuming everyone reading this is a sports fan. How many times have we watched a football player completely snap his leg in half, with the producers showing the incident over and over before moving on? They zoom in on these *human beings* writhing in agony almost every week from their injuries and nobody bats an eyelash. How is it so different to apply the same standards to an *animal*?
This post isn’t about me wanting to see an animal suffer, it’s moreso pointing out a double standard by the sports media. I’ve seen Willis McGahee get his leg snapped in half, I’ve seen Joe Theismann get his leg snapped in half, Michael Bush, Michael Vick… I can go on and on…..
But god forbid this poor animal goes through pain on the airwaves. These thoroughbred race horses are treated better than more humans than we care to admit, I guess it’s only fitting to continue the preferential treatment to the very end right?
[Shout out to Ruth Hochberger of the Huffington Post, who shares my views on this subject]







The winner of this year’s Kentucky Derby Big Brown is getting all the glory from the press, but the runner up…. well….the runner up is dead.