Ugh …No, seriously. Ugh!OK, having turned *mumble* years old last Friday, I'm not really a member of this show's "target demographic." But even 'tweens must find the heartless use of a live baby chimpanzee in Nickelodeon's Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh offensive.Forget for a moment that this is a program with so little imagination that they named the lead characters—played by Drake Bell and Josh Peck—"Drake" and "Josh." Forget that their idea of family-appropriate humor is to depict a child on the receiving end of a stream of ape urine—and I'm not sure that qualifies as "humor" at all. Still, although these folks clearly aren't very smart or creative, nothing justifies exploiting an animal for supposed "entertainment."

Chubbs, who loved to blow kisses to our investigator at the Amarillio Wildlife Refuge, was often sad and depressed. He reportedly appeared in several episodes of Monkey Movies, on Animal Planet, and in the remake of Planet of the Apes.

So what's so wrong with using a chimpanzee? I'm glad you asked. You or I might have fantasies of thanking "the Academy" while clutching a statuette and dressed to the nines (wearing Stella or Marc, natch), but animals want to be left in peace—they don't want to be "stars." In fact, the chimps in movies and TV are still toddlers who need to be back with their families doing what they're meant to do. I mean, think about it: When you see documentaries about apes in nature, are they wearing clothes or riding unicycles? Do they have hidden restraints and shock collars?To get chimpanzees, orangutans, and other great apes to perform, "trainers" often beat and electro-shock them. The rest of the time, most of the animals live in tiny metal cages. And when they're no longer useful to producers, they're often dumped at horrible roadside zoos—usually when they're only about 8 years old and have about 50 years left to stare at the wall. There's no time like the holidays to remind Hollywood that we're not going to put up with any more "monkey" business. Please join us in telling Nickelodeon that there's nothing less Merry than a lonely, suffering chimpanzee forced to grimace and mug for a few chuckles.

Written by Jeff Mackey

The moose-hunting, fur-wearing, pro-aerial-wolf-gunning governor is in the news again. On Thursday, Sarah Palin visited a turkey farm in Wasilla for the traditional pre-Thanksgiving turkey "pardoning." Now, most people probably don't think about exactly how the turkeys raised for Thanksgiving dinner every year meet their maker. But not to worry. Sarah has that under control. In this video, while responding to a reporter who asks about her post-election plans, Palin talks about how she wants to "promote a local business" and do something that won't "invite criticism." While turkeys are being slaughtered. Behind her. ON CAMERA.

Was that one of those "gotcha" questions, Sarah? Because it seems to me that showing the bloody reality of slaughter is just about the worst thing you could do to promote this business. Some people just won't want to eat turkey after watching—especially when this happened the day after PETA released new undercover video from the world's leading poultry-breeding facility. In that video, workers stomp on turkeys' heads, punch them, and bang their heads against metal scaffolding.

This is a country of people who love animals—in fact, numerous polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that farmed animals deserve protection from abuse. The more that people are confronted with the ways that animals who are raised for food suffer—from the moment they're born until the moment they're killed—the more that people will start thinking about giving vegetarian meals a try. And then the factory farming industry will need a bigger bailout than the "Big Three."

Written by Dan Shannon

P.S.—Sarah Palin should take a cue from our own "President Bush," whose turkey-pardoning this year really was a "mission accomplished."