The Cincinnati zoo backlash shows how democracy is just a step away from mob rule

Here’s a really heart warming story, about a young criminal and all-round bad guy who became a dad and turned his life around, working a regular job and looking after his four kids. Anyway, one day he decides to take his family to the zoo, perhaps thinking, what can go wrong? And, well, the rest is history.

It’s a shame about that gorilla, but I can’t see how the zoo could have done anything else in the situation, and the main thing is the boy is safe. Taking aside whether apes should be in zoos (I’d prefer they weren’t) and our hypocritical attitude to animals, it’s startling that almost 500,000 people signed a petition effectively calling for parents to lose custody of their 4-year-old boy, without even knowing the details of the incident they were so enraged about or having any expertise on the animal in question. The petition includes the words:

‘We believe that this negligence may be reflective of the child’s home situation.