The Horse and Carriage Association of New York isn’t raising a glass to pop star Pink’s offer to adopt a carriage horse should Mayor Bill de Blasio make good on his threat to abolish the carriages.
“I would never give Pink my horse!” said Christina Hansen, a carriage horse driver and spokeswoman for the city’s carriage horse industry. “What does she know about horses?”
Pink wrote on PETA’s blog Monday that she grew up mucking stalls for an aunt who had a horse farm in North Carolina and when the carriage horses are idled, “I will be among the first to adopt one of these horses so that he or she can live as nature intended.”
Pink is “a bully,” who “dehumanizes carriage horse drivers so others feel empowered to harass us,” Hansen said.
The Pennsylvania native has previously acknowledged she yells “animal cruelty!” when seeing the horses and carriages in city.
Hanson said the growing roster of celebrities – Lea Michele, Pink, Alec Baldwin, Pamela Anderson and Kathy Najimy – who oppose the use of horses in midtown traffic do not alarm the carriage horse drivers.
Publicity hungry celebrities see opposing the carriage horse trade as a way “to get their names in the press,” said Hanson. Besides, she said, “we’ve got Liam Neeson and Jimmy Fallon and the many people over the years who have enjoyed our services.”
(Sheila Anne Feeney)
