To say that pit bull terriers have an unfair reputation is an understatement. It has been a hard road for the animals that are grouped into this breed since a stupid 1987 Sports Illustrated article maligned them and caused a panic. So many potentially wonderful pets have been euthanized in the years since, lives destroyed due to a fear campaign that led people to be wary to adopt. The tides are turning through pit bull advocacy, but there is a long way to go.
It is not a joke.
While anyone with a brain knows that all dog types have been known to bite and the way an animal is raised and treated situationally is the leading factor in behavior rather than an 'inherently bad' personality, click bait driven media and miseducated people still try to smear the wonderful breed and call for Breed-Discriminatory-Legislation. It is even worse when someone with a large platform in the entertainment industry consistently uses it to spread disinfo and propaganda about dogs in a lazy manner that can get animals killed or drive down adoption rates.
Joseph Kahn is a famed and very successful Korean American music video director. He has worked with various artists such as U2, Kylie Minogue, Lady Gaga, Shakira, Aaliyah, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, 50 Cent, Maroon 5, AKB48, Britney Spears, Eminem, Janet Jackson, Taylor Swift, Destiny's Child, Katy Perry and Imagine Dragons. For some reason, when he is not posting problematic tweets on multiple MLK days, Kahn spends the majority of his time on Twitter demonizing pit bull terriers, ignoring dissenting pleas for rational education about the dog breed and insisting that they should be banned or "phased out".
"At the end of the day, all you need to do to refute this pit bull dog of peace bullsh*t is a daily google search. Facts and news are stubborn things," Kahn once tweeted. It is ironic because he ignores real facts about pit bulls daily in favor of promoting one sided dog attack articles.
Despite the breed scoring higher than most on the ATTS Temperament Test (even besting Golden Retrievers Beagles, Bull Dogs, Basset Hounds, Bichon Frise, Corgis, Chihuahuas, German Shepherds, Poodles and Yorkshier Terriers), Kahn insists they are not the wonderful breed pet owners know and love. This is obstinate.
He has said: "Dogs are modified wolves. Designed by humans for a purpose. And the purpose of breeding a bulldog and a terrier was for the sport of dogfighting, to relentlessly kill. We created this breed, we can phase it out."
This is fucking stupid. So are all of these tweets.
https://twitter.com/JosephKahn/status/955012897687552001
https://twitter.com/JosephKahn/status/954907066111475712
https://twitter.com/JosephKahn/status/954917694746185728
Elizabeth Gomez is an indie folk psych singer from California who performs under the name of Globelamp. She recently finished her third album Romantic Cancer, out soon.
Her family owns four loving pitties and she is an avid Taylor Swift fan or 'Swiftie'. It really shocked, hurt her feelings and was offensive to her as a dog lover and fan of Swift's to go on Kahn's twitter seeking news about when Taylor Swift's newest video "End Game" (also featuring huge artists like Ed Sheeran and Future) would be released, only to find numerous posts attacking pit bull terriers. Complaining about it on the popular new fan app The Swift Life led to dog loving "Swifties" (the insiders name for Taylor Swift's fanbase) to voice support for Gomez's complaints. She even started several petitions for him to be dropped by Taylor.
"Kahn is an influential music video director who lost a fan here because of his incessant nonsense about pitbulls," Gomez says. "You can’t tell someone who has a pitbull as a pet that they are evil and wrong. It’s like me telling you your Cocker Spaniel is bad because of a bad incident with them. My brother Gunnar helped raise them since he was six. If Kahn was really concerned with helping victims of dog attacks, he could look into donating to causes that help rehabilitate dogs and try to end dog fighting. It isn’t a dogs fault the way an owner raises it. Since animals have no voices, it is up to us to protect them."
Despite Globelamp and many others efforts to educate him, Kahn continues to rant online about pit bulls and recently blocked Gomez and other fans of the breed and Swift on Twitter. He even used Martin Luther King day to crack jokes about how pit bulls kill babies (not startling since on another MLK day in 2013 he tweeted a horribly tasteless joke about how the holiday failed at race relations because no black women were having sex with him). He needs to face some outcry from the industry and media or artists he has worked with. Swift's Reputation was the number one album of 2017 and everyone who associates with Kahn without vetting his awful anti-animal stance is helping normalize his toxic behavior towards dogs.
"Joseph Kahn thinks his words have no repercussions," says Gomez. "He is a bully. He divides people over human and animal rights. I didn’t drop almost all my money for Reputation Tour tickets to have this era ruined by Joseph Kahn. I shouldn’t be having to get upset about pitbulls daily since Kahn's tweets on New Year's Day. I am a huge fan of Taylor Swift but this behavior from her chief video director is unacceptable and he has a big platform he is using to hurt animals."
All dogs bite at times. Owners affect this the most and people who are scared around dogs stress them the out and they likely wont trust you. Monitor your children around any type of animal you are uncertain of and teach your kids not to poke dogs in the eye and wave their hands in their face. Would you let your kid hit a horse? A small dog would bite them and hurt them badly as well. They are some of the best dogs ever. Sweeping generalizations such as "no pit bull terrier makes a safe pet" can lead directly to animals being killed and abandoned.
"It is not good to pick on an already misunderstood dog breed," says Gomez. "Kahn targeting them all the time is not a joke. He says he can do it all day long and enjoys annoying people and it isn't funny. As a Taylor fan and someone from a family who have had our lives enriched by these wonderful animals, his actions really offend me. They are my little brother's best friends."
It is ironic that Taylor Swift's Reputation is all about not blindly believing the bad things people say about her, but her own video director insists on smearing the reputation of one of the coolest dog breeds in the world without all the facts.
Please sign this petition for Taylor and other pop stars to drop this director who hates animals:
Change.org Petition for Taylor to drop Joseph Kahn because he sucks
