A cousin of mine just had a baby. The baby’s name is Charlie. Whenever I hear the name Charlie (as opposed to Charles), it always reminds me of Charlie the tuna. You must have seen TV commercials featuring Charlie the tuna. StarKist has been running Charlie the tuna commercials continuously for over 50 years. In these commercials, Charlie keeps trying to get caught by tuna fishermen, but he never succeeds. At the end of every commercial, a fishhook is lowered with a note from StarKist saying ‘Sorry Charlie.’

Charlie the tuna commercials always seemed somewhat bizarre to me. Why would a fish want to get caught, killed, gutted, chopped up, cooked, and packed in a tin can?? I’m not a vegetarian, but I have no illusions about the animals I eat. I know they didn’t volunteer to become my dinner. Cows don’t ask McDonalds to turn them into hamburgers. Chickens don’t plead with KFC to turn them into nuggets. Why would a fish spend 50 years trying to be killed, chopped up, and canned? (This is the kind of question that philosophy majors at Cal spend a lot of time thinking about.)