By Christopher Harper
If you know your Bible history, you’ll recall that Jezebel was one of the most ruthless women in the ancient world.
The website, named after the all-around bad girl, was launched in 2007 with the tagline: “Celebrity. Sex. Fashion. Without airbrushing.” Emma Goldberg of The New York Times described the site as “feminist cultural criticism, with an edge.”
Now Jezebel has become the lynchpin of an attack ad against Mehmet Oz that he tortured animals.
I discovered this tidbit in an advertisement in the middle of a baseball game between the Atlanta Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies. Not exactly the red meat time for “feminist cultural criticism.”
The ads are part of a $33 million campaign sponsored by the Democrats Senate Majority PAC, the top outside group looking to keep the legislative chamber in Democratic control.
The ads stem from Oz’s time as a researcher in the Columbia University Institute of Comparative Medicine labs. Oz’s research involved dogs, pigs, calves, rabbits, and rodents between 1989 and 2010.
The ads use videos labeled as generic footage of animal testing – including dogs in cages and other lab settings – not videos specifically taken from inside Oz’s lab at Columbia. Moreover, the Super PAC apparently couldn’t find any photos of Oz in the lab.
I’m not a big proponent of using animals in medical research, but is this issue a critical one before the electorate of Pennsylvania and the nation? I would wager that many medical researchers use animals to test drugs and other treatments.
Jezebel has offered a variety of attacks against Oz, including his couples counseling and appearances at celebrity bashes during his TV days.
All this mishegoss wouldn’t be noteworthy except that the Democrats are playing it back in prime time, and other “media outlets” like CNN are running it as truth.
Maybe it’s time to send this Jezebel to the dogs, too.