"This is what happens when hippies get money."

The Tall One is on a freaking ROLL right now. Here's another gem:

"This is why God made hippies poor, so they can't afford to pull crap like this."

And: "There's nothing worse than a SMUG hippie."

Sigh.

So, there's this new "show" (and I use the term loosely) on Animal Planet called Whale Wars. In it, hippies drive around in really really expensive ships wearing ostentaciously expensive outerwear and attack commercial fishermen killing whales.  They're like "green" pirates, complete with their own pirate flag (I kid you not, it's their version of a skull & crossbones), that they run up when they come out from behind icebergs to go on the offensive. We found it so hilariously lame, the Tall One had to turn the channel in frustration when they did that.  Somewhere, they got the funding for this sort of thing and it includes Zodiacs with which they ram the fishing boats in an attempt to get them to stop killing whales. While I should let it go that this is just natural selection at its finest (I mean, really? You're going to ram an inflatable boat into a LARGE moving steel object and think you're going to have an impact? By all means, carry on...), I'm a little astounded by this whole thing.

I'm all for saving the whales.  They're beautiful, and awesome, and worth making sure we keep their numbers safe and healthy.  But somewhere, some dirty hippies (complete with bad facial hair and ponytails on both sexes) got a fire lit under their butts and they're using some pretty questionable techniques to see that their agenda is being heard.  And they're using a lot of money to get it done.  And now, some TV channel is paying a lot of freaking money to show this sort of thing.  What recession?!  I thought times were tough and there was an economic crisis?  Apparently not, because in some freezing cold ocean at one of the poles, a whole fleet of hippies is wearing some high end all-weather gear and trashing seagoing vessels.  Seriously, how is this legal?

And here's what gets me.  These guys are doing some things that if we saw them being done on land, or if they were done by certain other shall we say "often talked about and rather violent groups", we'd be more ticked off rather than cheering them on.  I'm not saying it's OK to kill lots of whales, and I'm certainly NOT agreeing with people that use violent overtures to get their point across.  And maybe it's way less black/white than I'm taking it, but what they're doing comes across as slightly terrorist.  If it was a fundamental Muslim group sneak-attacking boats for God knows whatever reason, we'd be raising a holy ruckus! But because it's nice fluffy cute whales, it's OK?  

I'm confused.  

But it's really fun to watch the Tall One get all riled up and spit out one liners.  Makes my night.