Animal Planet Show Accused of Drugging and Killing Animals
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As I’ve written before, I have a major thing for animal shows. Animal Planet’s Call of the Wildman is a little broad and manufactured for my tastes (I like my animal stories with DIGNITY), but damned if that stopped me from watching ten episodes in a row in a lazy Sunday marathon the other week. The antics of Ernie “Turtleman” Brown, Jr. and his pal, Neal—whose “job” appears to be to follow Turtleman around and describe everything that he does, while never, ever helping—are pretty much pure entertainment. (I like to pretend that Turtleman is actually a straight-laced lawyer named Barry J. Turtleman, Esq. who just likes chasing possums on the weekends.) Call of the Wildman is also, according to a new investigative report by Mother Jones, cruel, exploitative, and potentially illegal.
It’s a long, in-depth piece that indicts not just Call of the Wildman but, by extension, the way our reality TV sausage gets made in general. You should read the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts.