All that dementia-inducing tofu seems to have gotten to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) campaign manager Ashley Byrne’s brain already. Every year the animal rights group stages a veggie-dog protest on Capitol Hill to express its anger at the annual celebration of National Hot Dog Day inside the halls of Congress. Only this year, PETA’s press release—and its Playboy-bunnies-serving-tofu-dogs stunt—came a week too early. So while PETA was trying to force its fake wieners on Washingtonians, there was no real hot-dog event going on inside the Capitol. 

Not everyone understood PETA’s blunder, however, The Washington CityPaper covered the event as though it were a real head-to-head face-off, issuing an apologetic retraction hours later when reality set in. 

How did this foot-long mess start? We’ll let a spokeswoman for the genuine Capitol Hill Hot Dog Lunch (which actually comes next Wednesday, PETA folks…) explain it: 

“A girl from PETA called me a while back, asking if we were going to be having the hot dog lunch this year. I asked what office she was calling from, and she kept saying, ‘my office, my office.’ Eventually I said, ‘you’re from PETA, right?’ and she sort of sheepishly said that she was. But she never asked what the date was. I think she got nervous and hung up. 

“You know, the funny thing about it is, every year we’re having this event that is jam-packed, and we are turning people away because hot dogs are so popular. And outside they have to have people in lettuce leaf bikinis trying to entice people to eat their food because everyone prefers hot dogs.”

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