Wednesday, July 30, 2008

From Ben Trumble

I feel the need to comment on the ridiculous “Kelly Miller Circus Animal Abuse” video now on YouTube. Not a single word of what this “reporter” claims to have seen during our setup in Greenville, PA is true. Not a word. Most of his misstatements are easily refuted by simple facts. The reporter claims that animals are transported in unventilated trailers. His own video clearly shows the many windows in the animal transports. He claims that the ride ponies stood for hours in their own feces. His video shows me moving a pony that was tied to the side of a truck for less than twenty minutes while a picket line was setup in a grassy field. He refers to our lot boss as “slave labor.” He calls Armando Loyal, the elephant manager a “smelly circus worker” In point of fact he threatened to “call immigration” after having worlds with Armando. Then when Armando noted that he was born in Oklahoma he threatened violence. He states that all of our workers are “illegal aliens.” That the INS "confirmed" that. All of our guest workers have H-2B visas. He claims that an observer from the Cleveland Zoo was on hand. The young man with the zoo patches on his shirt was mentally challenged. He was a fan of zoos and circuses and attended the show with his mother. He wasn’t employed by the zoo, he bought the patches in their gift shop. He implies that I may have shoved him. It never happened. And for all of his claims of animal and human abuse, he shows nothing even remotely abusive.

Ben

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ben I applaud your ability to remain cool/calm with these extremists. There is no doubt in my mind that I would have been in jail a long time ago. cc

Casey McCoy Cainan said...

The weird thing with this case was that the man didn't seem so much an animal extremist, but an Americans First extremist. His beef with Armando started after he threatened to call immigration to check him out, at which point Armando explained he was born and bred in Hugo OK, and the man should call whom ever he would like. The guy responded with "I'm gonna kick your ass", which provoked Armando to do his Micheal Jackson impersonation and start dancing. Yes folks, we are going to try and get him some dance lessons in case this ever happens again LOL. I am still shocked at the amount of lying this man does in his video, he is a far far cry from a journalist.

Anonymous said...

It is a real shame today that the TV News media has adopted a "Jerry Springer" show format. I have noticed this from news broadcasts that cover a wide variety in subject matter.

Whinny news reporters do "investigative reporting" about things they know nothing about.

I'm all for freedom of the press, but there needs to be a dramatic return to the News ethics that were around a few decades ago. Jimmy Cole