Race to the spit

“Bikes, Blues & BBQ” is a welcome invasion of chrome, black leather, bandanas, brassy chicks, and defiant Weekend Warriors high riding into NW Arkansas in September. Urgency prevents me from googling why some of these beautiful, expensive, suicidal machines are calledHOGs by some folks, but it catapults me into the bone I must pick: i.e., “The Hambone Express Pig Races.”

Concealed guns, drugs and alcohol, Port-a-Potties, bring it on Man ... I don’t care.  But ridiculing and tormenting those about to be eaten?

Pigs are not paid athletes, nor paid clowns. Pigs are sensitive, intelligent beings condemned by human carnivores to physical and mental hell at the factory farms from where these poor “racing” pigs come ... and where they will return to be mercilessly slaughtered.  Thank you for the nice run, little piggy. Now bleed.

“Family entertanment” say the promos. Whose family, Caligula’s? Bikers’ families ... but BBB bikers are not lawless “one percenters.” They are tradesmen, professionals, trust-fund beneficiaries, retired couples ... Would someone in that worthwhile, if sometimes wild, crowd ask BBB organizers to draw the line between animals for food and animals for entertainment?

Anyone unable to realize the perversion inherent to mocking those destined to be sacrificed and eaten, puts the least astute racing pig in the Einstein IQ category compared to the spectators’.  In a civilized society, you can’t race your pig and eat it too.