(This post originally appeared on October 2, 2011)

So the New York Times put up a really cute picture of a sassy little bird:

You know you want it…..

It’s got that certain je ne sais quoi , no?  I don’t know about you, but when I saw it, I laughed and smiled, because That.Bird.Has.Attitude.  It’s sweet.  It’s funny.

It’s playful and – dare I say it? – sexy.

And then PETA had to make themselves the center of attention:

“When I saw it I just couldn’t believe that an editor of The New York Times would find it acceptable,” PETA’s founder and president Ingrid Newkirk told The Atlantic Wire. “It’s downright offensive, not just to people who care about animals but almost to everyone. It’s a plucked, beheaded, young chicken in a young pose,” she said.

Boy, that’s rich, coming from the president of a group that announced that they were going to start a PORN channel:

But don’t worry – PETA officials will be tracking the website to determine if people are viewing the animal rights messages and not just the nudity. “Past experience has shown that they will.”

Uh-huh.

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Quick – what’s the message?

(**Yes, these are all images from PETA print ads – I got the truncated views so that my mother wouldn’t disown me…..)

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