Remember the Tiger King era of quarantine?
It feels like decades ago, right? The crazy-yet-addicting series about the ongoing conflicts between Joe Exotic, who is now in prison for attempted murder, and Carole Baskin, the CEO of Big Cat Rescue near Tampa, Florida, drew millions of viewers to pass the time in lockdown.
Flash-forward to now, where we are officially in the Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B release a not-subtle-and-incredibly-sexually-explicit-yet-totally-iconic-song era of quarantine...but with a blast from the past.
Cardi B - WAP feat. Megan Thee Stallion [Official Music Video]www.youtube.com
Even "WAP," (short for wet a$$ pu**y, in case you were curious) isn't safe from the grip of the cool cats and kittens of Tiger King.
Carole Baskin, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, said that the video "glamorizes the idea of rich people having tigers as pets."
She said that in order to accomplish the "photoshopped" tigers and lions walking around in the video, "you have to pose a wildcat in front of a green screen to get that image and that doesn't happen in the wild."
"It can't happen in sanctuaries like ours where cats have plenty of room to avoid a green screen (or would shred it if offered access and could die from ingesting it). That tells me they probably dealt with one of the big cat pimps, probably even one of the ones shown in Tiger King, Murder, Mayhem and Madness, who make a living from beating, shocking and starving cats to make them stand on cue in front of a green screen in a studio. That's never good for the cat."
Baskin also went on to say that the glamorization of big cats make fans "want to imitate by doing the same [keeping tigers as pets]."
"After tigers are too old for pay to play sessions by people like Joe Exotic, Bhagavan [Doc] Antle, Marc McCarthy, Mario Tabraue and others, they become a liability instead of an asset. While I think most are destroyed behind closed gates at that point, some end up being given away to people who want to have a tiger to show off. That never works out and the cats either die or end up dumped in sanctuaries or worse yet, breeding mills. There have been some accounts of tigers just being turned loose on communities when they no longer served as ego props. No matter how you cut it, it's always abusive to the cat and dangerous to the public."
Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion have not yet commented on Baskin's narrative, as it's possible the animals aren't real at all—meaning the situation that Baskin is assuming never happened.
Baskin recently came up in the news when the family of her missing husband offered a $100,000 reward for information about the whereabouts of him.
If the safety of the cats were at risk, hopefully Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion take Baskin's comments seriously. However, if the cats were CGI, we think they'll be okay.
