I’ve spent some time lurking on the Post Punk Kitchen message board. I can’t really deny it at this point. Remember all those “Vegan Quotes of the Day” I used to do? (By “used to do,” I mean that I haven’t posted any today yet.) Well, I was following the links on some of them recently, and I noticed something — a disproportionate amount of them seem to be from the post punk kitchen.

I don’t mean to rely on them so much. I’ve tried lurking on other vegan message boards for research and material. But there’s something about the ppk that keeps drawing me back. If I were still vegan, and if I were a vegan who went to message boards, I would go to the PPK.

(Not to knock the other boards. I’m a fan of Vegan Represent too!)

The reason I bring all this up is that some accusations have been leveled against members of the post punk kitchen message board, and there’s even been talk of reprisals against those presumed guilty. But, thanks in part to all my sleuthing (okay, lurking), I know these accusations are untrue. The PPK was in no way involved in facilitating the conspiracy to hit Lierre Keith with pies.

The only reason anyone at the PPK was ever suspected of this was because of a coincidence. A few post-punks had started a thread to organize a small group to attend a Lierre Keith speech and ask her hardball questions about her book, The Vegetarian Myth. Everything on said thread somehow related to this question asking plot. Clearly they were not out to make friends with her, but their plan was not an unusual way to confront a controversial speaker. 

Unfortunately for these inquisitive post punks (but even more so for Lierre Keith), Lierre got pied on the same day they planned to ask questions. That in itself isn’t all that suspicious. But what really inflamed the imagination of those seeking culprits was that in the midst of the thread about getting people together to ask Lierre questions, there was one post that was deleted. And in place of the deleted text, it said “Deleted, in case Lierre Keith is reading.”

That missing post became like the 18 minute gap in the Nixon tapes. It seemed to prove something insidious just by not being there. But there’s one difference. Unlike those missing minutes, this deleted message is not lost forever to history.

Here it is:

“Here are some of the bullet points I have so far-

Don’t you think it’s convenient that in your claim that plants need to eat animals to survive, you overlook that our veggies don’t torture and kill us to get their nutrients and that they have no capacity for ethics unlike humans?

“built my whole identity—on the idea that my life did not require death.” - page 18. The goal of veganism is to reduce suffering and the infringement on other creatures interests. The interests of a cow take greater precedence over the interests of a million nematodes because nematodes have no central nervous system.

How does she account for the factual errors (lies?), especially at the beginning of the book where she claims there are no sources of vegan tryptophan (soy has more tryptophan than any meat except codfish), and that there’s no way to get enough saturated fat as a vegan (uh… how about coconuts?)

“Another good lie is the extra-deceptive chart of characteristics between Humans, Dogs, and Cows that she claims proves that humans are meant to eat meat. The funny part, of course, is that dogs don’t need to eat meat either. If she compared humans to cats, she’d see how different humans are to actual carnivores.”

She talks about plants being as worthy of our compassion as animals because trees warn each other of impending stress by releasing chemicals, etc. but this just shows an evolutionary advantageous stimulus response and not cognition or pain perception. Ability to transmit information does not equal sentience.

A hunter gatherer world at anything near our current population would only devastate the earth much quicker than current harmful agricultural techniques. Does she propose that 10 billion people (estimated world pop by 2050) could really live on grass fed beef/hunting and gathering?

Why does she never discuss forest gardening, permaculture, or veganic farming in her book?

Why is it that grass-fed meat fans like her and Pollan can never stick to their own advice? Pollan has admitted he eats factory farm meat sometimes and on her own blog she demonstrates her own hypocrisy by buying (grass-fed?) candy bars - http://lierrekeith.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/halloween-09/ and grain-fed bacon from this farm which she declares “perfect” http://lierrekeith.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/the-trip-home/ (From their web site “As much as they love tearing up the grass with their snouts, pigs won’t get fat on pasture alone. We supplement our hogs’ feed with organic whey left over from nearby Cowgirl Creamery’s cheesemaking operations, along with a custom blend of organic grains.”).

Relatedly, wouldn’t it be more ethical of her to be living in the forest hunting and gathering rather than self-publishing books printed on trees (most likely from a south american rain forest)?

I’ll have to double check but I think she blames vegan soy consumption for damage to the amazon forest. We could roll that into the above point and also point out that the overwhelming majority of Brazilian soy is grown to feed livestock and that there’s no reason soy (a natural nitrogen fixer which doesn’t even require manure and is already grown in the United States) couldn’t be grown sustainably.

Oh, and let’s hit her with pies.

Obviously I added that last line as joke. But otherwise, that’s the notorious deleted message.

Okay, now first of all, calling her out for killing trees to publish a book? I know that was only a rough draft of a question, but that sounds like what conservatives said when Julia Butterfly Hill wrote The Legacy of Luna. Or what any conservative has said about any environmentalist publishing a book ever. And by the way, I happen to know that the trees murdered for The Vegetarian Myth were locally-sourced protected ancient redwoods (specifically demanded by Lierre), so there goes your South American rain forest theory. 

Okay, now second of all, why waste time brainstorming all these questions if you’re just going to hit her with pies, which might cause her to not take questions at all?

Well, yeah. You wouldn’t. Case closed.

But in case anyone reading this is still calling for the head of every post punk in the bay area… let’s pretend we didn’t have this missing text. Even then, there’s plenty of reasons that “the ppk did it” theory doesn’t work.

Everything leading up to the deleted message and everything after the deleted message was about asking Lierre Keith questions. If someone had suddenly written “Hey, what about throwing pies at her instead?” in the middle of the discussion, there would have been some reactions to that sudden change in strategy. Maybe something like “What?” or “You mean while we’re asking the questions?”

But this deleted message was the only deleted message, and the messages that immediately followed weren’t written as if reacting to some new strategy idea. It makes sense that they would compile all their questions together into one post, and it makes sense that they would then realize Lierre Keith might be reading and so delete it. They deleted the message so Lierre couldn’t prepare for their questions in advance. They didn’t want her best possible answer, they wanted a “gotcha.” This is war, for God’s sake. Animal lives are at stake.

A few more points in their defense:

Nobody at the PPK has been grandstanding, claiming they are going to find the real pie-throwing culprits. That’s a good sign.

There are lots of vegans who don’t like Lierre Keith. She is seen as the figurehead of anti-veganism. It is entirely possible for two totally unrelated groups of vegans to go after her in different ways when she makes a public appearance.

When people on the “let’s ask Lierre questions” thread reported the pieing incident, they reacted as if it was news to them. Good news, in some cases (this was before they knew about the cayenne), but either way they were surprised. There was no “we pulled it off!” or anything that would indicate that they were involved in any way. One person commented that whomever did that messed up their chance to ask all their questions. And none of them had firsthand accounts. Their early reports were inaccurate hearsay. They referenced “a pie” when really there were three.

The reason they weren’t there to even witness the pie attack is that Lierre was speaking twice that day, and the PPK plan had always been to ask questions at the second speech. The first speech is when she got pied. The second speech is when someone from the PPK did indeed ask one of their questions.

Though that factually strengthens the PPK members’ case, it suggests another reason why in the haze of emotion, the PPK members were falsely accused. Even though they knew Lierre Keith had been humiliated with a pie in the face earlier that day, they continued with their original plan. And when Lierre requested only friendly questions, they went ahead and asked an unfriendly one.

Here’s my guess about what they were thinking. From the perspective of the PPK group, Lierre Keith is a prominent and arguably evil anti-vegan who is maliciously out to crush a positive movement and thus probably has no feelings (except for ecstatic joy while watching the suffering of an animal that has been partially grain fed). Or if she does have feelings, those feelings are less important than the feelings of the animals being so callously slaughtered because Lierre tells people that veganism doesn’t work.

Okay, I’m exaggerating (and pretending to read minds), but the point is, they apparently didn’t see much of a reason to spare Lierre their “gotchas” even though she got pied earlier in the day.

But to Lierre, since the intention of their questions was to make her stammer and lose credibility, it would have felt like another attack in an already unbearable day. And that, along with the missing message board post, made it easier for those appalled by the pie attack to link it to the premeditated question asking.

But they were unrelated. Because the PPK didn’t do it.