Editorial: Elephants in the room at City Hall

A strange performance draws to a close in Minneapolis.

Last update: February 1, 2008 - 8:02 PM

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CIRCUS IN TOWN

"These are wild animals with a lot of tonnage. ... Elephants do kill.''

Ralph Remington, Minneapolis City Council member

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"This whole thing from the very beginning was a solution in search of a problem.''

Tim Davison, cochairman, Minneapolis Shrine Circus

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They should have hawked popcorn outside Minneapolis City Hall on Friday. Inside, the City Council finally closed its long-running circus act.

As the show wound down after months of debate, sanity prevailed: Shriners will still be able to raise money by allowing children to ride circus elephants and, yes, actually touch the animals. Council Members Cam Gordon and Ralph Remington were stymied in their attempts to ban the popular rides.

Ringmaster Remington deserved the spotlight yesterday. While explaining his thinking in also seeking a ban on the use of bullhooks to guide elephants, the council member actually produced one of the devices. (Memo to council members: Keep the bullhook around the chambers. Just think how it might speed up deliberations!) His amendment failed.

Gordon admitted that wild-animal regulation is not among the major public-safety issues facing Minneapolis these days, and that it might not even make the top 1,000. Even so, the council spent countless hours working on wild animal regulation over the past year or so. It's still not clear why. Despite the all-out efforts of animal rights activists, the council never made a convincing case that the city of Minneapolis had a problem that needed to be regulated.

You may recall that Remington called for a ban on wild animal circuses about a year ago, which would have made Minneapolis the second U.S. city to take that step. The council later voted against the ban, moving toward more sensible safety regulations offered by Council Members Paul Ostrow and Betsy Hodges. But if you remain dumbfounded over the need for the Dumbo regulations, you're not alone.

The Minneapolis Shriners, whose annual three-day run at Target Center is key to the organization's charitable giving, took all of this personally, even threatening to pull out of town if the elephant rides were shut down. That's understandable. The Shriners have a clean record running the circus and did nothing to draw the regulatory attention of City Hall.

With this episode of "Wild Kingdom'' behind us, you have to wonder what's next on the animal-control list for the City Council. Might we suggest birth control counseling for rabbits?

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