Nothing like a controversial sporting event to bring out the opinionated tuppeny giver in all of us. Especially if criticizing that sporting event is remotely fashionable and backed with letters of endorsement from C-list celebrities and publicity pundits. What irritates me about events like Shanghai’s hosting of a bullfight is not the spectacle itself but the bilious uproar it arouses. Of the world’s ills bullfighting doesn’t even rate, but the hypocrisy of many of its critics does.

A letter decrying the ‘foul pursuit?of bullfighting appeared recently in the China Daily (Nov 15). “This entertainment must be banned all over the world.?“It should be the honour of Shanghai to forbid such morbid entertainment, which shows such a barbarous regression of mankind.?The contributor could be forgiven for his alarmist rant were he to have sent a similar letter enlightening the world of the mass slaughter of goats in the Mallorcan Mountains, or the appalling conditions in half the world’s abattoirs or the plight of chickens, fish and other creatures in Shanghai’s very own flower and bird markets. But, it seems, cruelty can only be done unto those poor creatures that do not end up delicious and succulent on our plates.

Bullfighting’s here and it’s enjoyed by tens of thousands of people around the world. To make such outlandish claims of a world ban lack a wisdom and sense of reality often seen in the hue and cry following such an event. If you don’t like bullfighting, don’t watch it. If you’re upset about cruelty to animals there are thousands of worthy causes that need your efforts, least of which is this particular Spanish tradition. In terms of numbers it is an irrelevance in the world of animal cruelty. The gaze of fashionable hate needs to be shifted from this sport, and onto other, much more commendable causes in which we can actually make a difference through headlines, and letters to the editor. Oh, not forgetting the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan, the world AIDS crisis, Third World debt, 100,000 civilians dead in Iraq, child prostitution, etc. Cruelty to animals is wrong but perspective is needed, and it’s not helped by media-fed feeding frenzies at the trough of populism.