I just heard Scott Simon unctuously pontificating. I know I'm being tautologic, but I have to explain to others why I find him so annoying. According to the subscriber-only OED Online, unction implies "that the feeling or manner is superficial or assumed, or is tinged with obvious self-complacency". M-w.com says unctuous is "revealing or marked by a smug, ingratiating, and false earnestness or spirituality". OED says to "pontificate" is to "act the pontiff, assume the airs of a pontiff (a chief or high priest); to behave or speak in a pompous or dogmatic manner." So I guess I'm being doubly tautautologic. Anyway, he was pontificating about the selling of Ferdinand for horse meat. A couple of years ago, in Americans squeamish over horse meat Bill Maxwell wrote,

Many horse owners who cannot or are unwilling to pay for caring for injured or old mounts.... These owners do not want to pay hundreds of dollars for traditional disposal, which involves injection, perhaps burial or transport to a dump.

Another surprising supporter is Dr. Tom Lenz, president-elect of the 7,000-member American Association of Equine Practitioners. "The issue is what do you do with unwanted horses," he said. "Some people can't afford to keep them."

Lenz, who has witnessed slaughters at Beltex, said the industry kills horses "humanely." The companies use the same method used to kill cows and other live stock that we eat: a quick killing blow of a stun gun to the head. Veterinarians worry that if the Texas network succeeds in banning horse meat processing in this country, our unwanted animals will be sent to the busy killing floors of Canada and Mexico.

A mystified Kemseke believes that Americans' sentimentality has made the horse a sacred cow. Further, the closing of U.S. plants would result in the needlessly expensive, unintended consequence of euthanizing and burying tens of thousands of horses annually. Kemseke reasons that if we are going to kill horses anyway, why not use the meat as food? In reality, he said, Americans cannot stop horse slaughtering everywhere in the world.