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Vegans Stage a Protest in a Steakhouse. Surprisingly, it Does Not Succeed.

SourceTHIS is the moment angry vegans stormed a Brazilian restaurant and played recordings of cows being slaughtered as diners tucked into their steaks.

The gang, from Direct Action Everywhere, flashed anti-meat eating signs with “It’s not food, it’s violence” emblazoned on them and barked out a speech at the Touro Steakhouse in Brighton.

But after barging through the restaurant they were ordered to leave with jeering diners chanting “you’re not singing anymore” as they were marched out.

Footage of the demonstration begins with the person filming saying: “This smells horrible, look at all the flesh.”

But as a spokeswoman attempts to give a speech about the benefits of veganism, patrons can be heard mocking her with one mimicking a cow mooing while waiters can be seen arguing with the protesters.

Behind the camera, someone says: “They’re letting us protest but they’re eating the flesh of animals in front of us.”

The protesters remained in the steakhouse for 20 minutes before departing to stand outside.

I love this story in so many ways I don’t even know where to begin. Walk a circle around it and no matter which angle you look at it from, it’s just a thing of beauty. A perfect way to start my day that will once again be filled with the simple joy of Thanksgiving leftovers and elastic waistband-sweatpants.

So all else being equal, I’ll start with the diners. If you’re wondering how best to handle it when a nice steak dinner out with your friends is interrupted by a sad group of shrill, squealing, skinny jeaned, pasty-faced baristas, look no further than these heroic everymen. They didn’t argue with these trust funded, mewling little herbivores. They didn’t punch down by threatening them and making it look like the juice from a perfectly grilled, medium rare T-bone makes you prone to violence. They laughed. They mooed. They barely stopped their conversations. They simply dug into their meals and used the delicious aroma of a nice NY strip as a form of tear gas that finally forced the protesters out into the street. If you showed this video to aliens who know nothing about concept of eating meat vs. eating veggies and asked them what they think, I guarantee you they’d think all vegans are assholes.

Now look at it from the vegans point of view. How exactly is this expected to work? You barge into a place of business uninvited to shriek about your bad personal choices into the faces of strangers while they’re out enjoying themselves  so that … what? What exactly is the endgame here? Do they expect that the group of buddies who deliberately chose a steakhouse to go to are going to see how happy these cruelty-free-Birkenstock clad kids seem to be, send back their steaks and order the tofurkey? The way to sell people on your lifestyle isn’t to be miserable, indignant and morally superior. I mean, Jesus didn’t get to be Jesus by screaming in the apostles ears about how sad that lamb they served at the Last Supper was to get slaughtered. But I guess they don’t teach that to Humanities Majors.

So let this be a lesson to us all the next time this happens. If a gang of irate, green-hued legume eaters inserts themselves into your dinner to try to intimidate you into not helping restaurant workers make a living, don’t engage.

Don’t say anything. Kill them by having a good time right in their gaunt faces. Wait them out. And in a few minutes they’ll grow tired from the lack of iron and protein in their systems and leave of their own volition. Well done, Touro Steakhouse (pun not intended but I’ll leave it). Well done indeed.