Shocker: PETA Isn't Going to Condemn Dog-Killer Abdul El-Sayed

PETA has sued backyard breeders, sent celebrities hate mail over leather boots, and once compared chicken farming to the Holocaust. So when allegations surface that Abdul El-Sayed, running for Senate as a Democrat, presided over serious animal abuse during his time as Detroit's health director, you'd expect the group to be first in line with a press release. Instead, silence. That tells you everything about how selective outrage actually works in practice.

This isn't really about dogs, as awful as the underlying allegations are. It's about what happens when an advocacy group's supposed principles run into partisan convenience. PETA has built its entire brand on the idea that cruelty to animals is a moral emergency that transcends politics, that they'll call out anyone, anywhere, for anything. That's the pitch. The moment a Democrat with real institutional power is implicated, the group that usually can't stay quiet for five minutes suddenly finds its voice missing.

We've seen this movie before with plenty of organizations that claim to sit above politics. The test was never whether they'd criticize the easy targets. It was whether they'd criticize their own side when it mattered. PETA just failed that test in about the most obvious way possible, by simply saying nothing at all.

If the allegations against El-Sayed are false, PETA should say so and defend him loudly, the way it defends every other cause it claims to care about. If they're true, staying quiet because he has a "D" next to his name isn't neutrality. It's a choice, and voters in Michigan deserve to know which one PETA made.