And Finally Beef Of The Week

CMU Beef Of The Week #47: Tommy Lee v SeaWorld

By | Published on Saturday 11 December 2010

Animal rights group PETA has made effective use of celebrity letter writers in the past to varying effect. Who could forget Pink writing to the Queen to protest the use of bearskin for the hats of the Grenadier Guards? But, come on, who thought it would be a great idea to get Tommy Lee to put pen to paper?

The Motley Crue drummer this week wrote an angry letter to the president of SeaWorld in Florida, Terry Prather, condemning him for the conditions in which the marine park keeps one of its male killer whales, named Tilikum, and for the decision to “masturbate him with a cow’s vagina filled with hot water” for breeding purposes. He calls on Prather to set the whale, who has killed several people while in captivity, free.

In the letter to Prather, published by TMZ, Lee wrote: “After learning about the bizarre way you breed killer whales, my friends at PETA and I are stumped about SeaWorld’s announcement that no people will ever again have direct contact with Tilikum, the orca who has killed three people, including his trainer, this year. We understand that you refuse to release this frustrated whale because he is your chief sperm bank, and we know from SeaWorld’s own director of safety (as well as videos on the web) that the way you get his sperm is by having someone get into the pool and masturbate him with a cow’s vagina filled with hot water”.

He continued: “Even during my wildest days with Motley Crue, I never could have imagined something so sick and twisted. Simply put, how can SeaWorld claim that trainers no longer have direct contact with this whale when they are jacking him off? This is about as ‘direct’ as it gets. I hope it doesn’t take another tragic death for SeaWorld to realise it shouldn’t frustrate these smart animals by keeping them in tanks”.

Really? Even in your wildest days you wouldn’t have thought to wank off a killer whale? Surely it must have crossed your mind once or twice, Tommy. I mean, who amongst us hasn’t, when faced with the tedium of yet another night of sex and drugs, thought to themselves: ‘I could be filling the detached vagina of a cow with warm water right now’?

Either way, SeaWorld seem a bit annoyed with Lee’s rant, claiming there is nothing out of the ordinary with their whale breeding programme. They’re also not too pleased with Lee’s claims that staff are being put in danger in the process.

A spokesperson for SeaWorld told TMZ: “The process of collecting semen for [artificial insemination] doesn’t differ in any meaningful way from the techniques employed in managing livestock or other species for zoological display. Contrary to the charges made by PETA and repeated in Lee’s letter, our trainers do not now nor have they ever entered the water with Tilikum for this purpose. The safety of SeaWorld staff and the welfare of our animals are our highest priorities”.

Still, perhaps finding it a little hard to take Tommy Lee 100% seriously, they saved most of their criticism for their more traditional sparring partners, PETA themselves: “If Mr Lee’s information on Tilikum and SeaWorld’s artificial insemination program for killer whales comes from PETA we’re not surprised that it’s wrong. PETA is as careless with facts as they are extreme in their views. Whatever his views on SeaWorld, Mr Lee would be wise to spend more time checking his facts”.

This Beef Of The Week comes from this edition of the CMU Weekly. Subscribe to the CMU Weekly here.



READ MORE ABOUT: |