The Racing of the Bulls
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wbur/sets/72157622790606232
- Buy the book
-
Comments
Leave a comment
© Copyright 2010 Trustees of Boston University
Only A Game is produced by 90.9 WBUR FM · Boston, MA 02215
This story will backfire as I will contact tens of thousands of Americans who will contact as many more to tell them to boycott this perversion.
What a sick promotion of heinous animal cruelty.
Big tough macho boys turn into big tough macho rapists, domestic abusers, drug addicts, and perhaps other forms of predators.
Great for the military industrial complex and lousy for society at large…
Your program should NOT be a commercial to travel to this place to bear witness to a perversion of behavior that causes animals to suffer.
Who the hell are you being paid by?
NPR is suppose to be non-commercial. Sure…..One giant ad for the economic interests that support and encourage this barbarism.
I am as grateful as ever for NPR bringing such well-crafted stories to us from around the world. Only narrow minded individuals would seek to ban a story depicting real life in a place where few will travel, and even fewer will understand. It always amazes me how some who claim to be accepting of others make snap judgments based on their own small understanding of the world.
APPALLING! APPALLING! APPALLING! This segment was an endorsement of the most heinous animal cruelty and cynical exploitation of children for the entertainment of sadists. The bulls are treated as pampered pets, we hear, until the day of the running. Then they are whipped until they’re bloody and salt is rubbed into their wounds — and even on their genitals! And the pitiful children: Little boys of 12 and 13, risking their lives to prove their “manhood”, who wrap their bare feet in rags to protect them as they drive these huge animals, maddened with pain, for the amusement of the crowd. And Americans should travel to this barbaric country to see this? I was completely horrified at this story. Who but a Michael Vick would consider this activity good, sporting fun? What were you thinking airing a nauseating piece like this? NPR and Only a Game need to broadcast an apology. And to Kristin, above: What part of cruelty don’t YOU understand?
I totally agree with Laura and Jane…and Kristin is completely out of touch with reality. This was a stupid segment of a normally reasonable program, probably broadcast because Bill was away and the brainless Karen Given was in the chair. How sick. Apology definitely due for glorifying animal abuse in the name of sport.
By the way, I’m in Boston and it’s just after 7 pm so I don’t know why it’s registering 5 hours hence…
Disgusting. Definitely the worst story I’ve ever heard on the this show. Where is your rage at this appalling spectacle of violence and abuse? This event is only a few years out have having regular machete fights break out and you suggest people should go and visit? Shame on you Only a Game.
This story should have been presented as the perversion it is, culture shock for us yes, but about as humane as dog fighting, bull fighting, puppy mills, slaughter houses in the US, etc. Makes one wonder how empathy for other species can be so lacking in so much of the world. Especially sickening when done by people who raise animals for these purposes.
Kristin,
I just watched a movie called, A Mighty Heart, the story of Wall Street Journalist Daniel Perle, his abduction in Pakistan and beheading.
As diabolic as this act was, I found it equally as diabolic that within the content of the film, his own wife described a ceremony taking place in the country where animals are sacrificed, cut into pieces, and their bodies given to various entities. It showed the poor beasts being forced to the ground, men kneeing them to keep them down, getting ready to behead them. I heard an anguished cry from one and saw the fear in the others eyes as they knew, as Mr. Perle knew, he was about to die a heinous death.
My view of the world is not narrow, it is as broad and all encompassing as I can bear. Sometimes, based upon what I learn is happening to humans and animals around the world, I can hardly believe the human species calls itself civilized. For example last night when a friend came over upset after someone posted a Craigs List appeal to find a sadist who posted a video of a kitten he burned with gasoline.Joseph Evers posted it on Encyclopedia Dramatica, of which I had never heard.
My view of the world is so much broader than perhaps even yours as I see, more importantly, understand, that everything we learned as a species about domination, use of force, cruelty and violence, we learned FIRST, when we adopted the herding behavior at the advent of animal domestication….
Read http://www.powerfulbook.com by Dr. Charles Patterson
or The World Peace Diet, by Will Tuttle
or Jim Mason’s book, An Unnatural Order, Why We Are Destroying The Planet and Ourselves
I wish I had a narrow view of the world and was, like most people, content with working a job, eating 3 meals, having a beer, watching the tube, and going to bed…..
Only a Game? This is no game. This is no “theater.” This practice encourages the most hardened side of children to manifest when REAL strength, true lasting courage, inner fortitude and guts builds from the internal power we all have, the power to resist violence, resist cruelty, and act out of the most important organ of the human body, our hearts. We so get it backwards measuring strength and power by domination.
Those bulls would eat out of the boys hands as any puppy would as animals trust us, before we desecrate that trust. I’d much rather hear stories of the children and teens who oppose these savage acts of cruelty as THEY are the true hero’s.
I look forward every Saturday to Only A Game’s quirky and intelligent look at sports the world over. I am often entranced and entertained, but your coverage of the “racing” bulls in Indonesia was horrifying and completely out of place on your program. My view of your show and the people who put it together has been profoundly shaken. You owe your audience an apology for your totally inappropriate approach to this spectacle of cruelty to animals.
Gotta agree with Kristin. Take your head out of the sand, folks.
Im with kristin and Mark. This cultural practice is in no way more cruel or dangerous than bull fights in Spain, the Kentucky Derby, or rodeo’s in the U.S.