And Now Edie Falco Is Yelling at Me About Cheese?!

Things are bad enough in the world right now. I don’t need to tell you about it. You’re online. You have eyes. You get it. We’re all just trying to make it through each day the best we can, hopefully leaving our corner of the world a little better than we found it. All of which is to say: I don’t need Edie Falco and PETA making me feel bad about eating cheese in a Super Bowl ad.

Setting aside the probable futility of yelling at a largely male audience during the biggest sports game of the year, for which many a cheese-laden dish will be prepared and consumed, this PETA ad is unhinged.

The press release accompanying the ad, which, again, is set to air during the Super Bowl, tries really hard to sell the Sopranos angle (emphasis theirs):

Carmela, Is That You? Edie Falco Stars in Surprise Super Bowl Spot With a Sopranos Twist

Newark, N.J. — Twenty-five years after her Emmy Award–winning role as Carmela Soprano in The Sopranos, Edie Falco is taking on a seedy, violent underworld again—this time in PETA’s 2024 Super Bowl ad that shows her back in the family’s kitchen making pizza when a couple of shady characters burst in and take her cheese away, prompting her to weep for its return. As she desperately chases after their getaway truck, the surreal comedic scene suddenly cuts to somber footage of a mother cow chasing after a truck as it carries away her calf—real life, standard practice on dairy farms, which remove newborn calves from their mothers so that the milk meant to nourish them can be sold for human consumption instead. The text reads, “Cheese isn’t your baby. But it robs a mother of hers. Go vegan.”

Oh, and there’s this “fun” quote from Ingrid Newkirk, the president of PETA: “Once people think about severing the bond between mother cows and their beloved calves, it’s a fair bet that many of them will say ‘fuhgeddaboudit’ to cheese.” This is a rare instance where I think PETA could actually benefit from hiring a try-hard Gen Z publicist/social media strategist. Cheese Whiz does rhyme with rizz. That’s something.

I love animals. I’ve become, like, 98% vegetarian in the last couple of years (the two percent is burgers, sorry) because I see my cat-son in every creature’s eyes and I’ve been radicalized by knowing that animals are sentient beings who also have feelings, like me. (Did you know that even insects feel pain?! Listen, if you still need to murder a giant cockroach, I am fully on board and you can rest relatively easy knowing that swift death is preferable to torturing them with chemicals.)

But life is hard. The world is terrible and—not to pile on—seemingly getting worse every day! Wars, genocides, pandemics, capitalism, the implosion of journalism, the 2024 election seemingly justifying that entire Turd Sandwich vs. Douchebag episode of South Park (there is literally NO ONE ELSE to nominate?!). Again, you get it. The last thing anyone needs right now is professional very good actor Edie Falco screaming and crying because we are tearing cow families apart with our need for cheese.

Like weighing the choice between Biden and Trump, this is not a one-to-one scenario. Two thugs taking Edie Falco’s cheese while she’s trying to make pizza in a TV kitchen is not the same as forcibly removing calves from their mothers. The meat industry—like most multibillion-dollar industries—does much worse harm to animals and human beings every day, much of it unseen by the public, and some of it seen, thanks in part to groups like PETA. As sad as it is to watch a cow chase after her calf in that ad, at worst it’s a gross oversimplification of the evils committed by food industries; at best it’s an ill-conceived attempt to appeal to viewers on a personal level by doing what conservatives do all the time: claim that it’s really about the children.

No, PETA. Sometimes it’s just about me enjoying a little treat.

(featured image: PETA)