Yes, the City Council actually wants to run the circus. Strangely appropriate, isn’t it?
Next week, the council’s Health Committee will take up a bill to ban the use of lions, tigers and so on for performance and amusement. It’s another bid to curry favor with animal-rights extremists, who’ve already gotten Jersey City and a few other US towns to pass similar laws.
Too bad about the disappointed kids — and the lost jobs.
The goal is plainly to force animals out nationally: Outlaw them in a few big cities, and it just becomes economically impossible for any circus to keep its animals.
Unless you’re a fanatic who opposes any commercial use of animals, there’s no real cause here: Circus beasts are already protected by federal, state and city laws.
“It would be a shame to prohibit such a family tradition,” says Dave Lalumondier, the president of Teamsters Local 688, which reps 175 Ringling Bros. animal handlers.
More jobs are at stake with UniverSoul Circuses — and with stagehands, ushers and others who don’t work directly with the beasts.
You’d think that our leftist City Council would be loath to destroy union jobs — but perhaps the well-funded animal-rights movement matters more.
Then again, the professionals at the head of the movement need some cause to keep their fundraising up. They’ve met repeated humiliation in the effort to kill the city’s humble carriage-horse trade.
Mind you, the council has plenty of people to worry about: kids not protected by the Administration for Children’s Services, public-housing residents who suffer thanks to NYCHA mismanagement and so on. How about some hearings on the city’s ham-handed siting of new homeless shelters?
The circus bill is just the kind of idle-hands-doing-the-devil’s-work that we feared when the council’s members voted themselves into full-time jobs. (The fat pay hike was just an added insult.)
Here’s hoping the more adult lawmakers find the spine to ignore the animal-rights activists. If the council insists on messing with the circus, it’s proving itself a pack of clowns.