Yesterday, we broke the news that France's first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, had written to PETA Senior Vice President Dan Mathews to assure him that although she wore fur back in her modeling days, she now refuses to wear even the smallest bits of fur.

thecaucus.blogs.nytimes / CC

Now, America's first lady, the fabulously fashionable Michelle Obama, has also declared via her press secretary that she, too, is fur-free. Here's the official statement: "Mrs. Obama does not wear fur."

Talk about some high-class first ladies!

Posted by Karin Bennett

Did you hear that? It was the collective sigh of relief from raccoons, foxes, and minks—as well as human fur foes everywhere. It turns out that France's first lady and international style icon Carla Bruni-Sarkozy refuses to wear fur.

marieclaire / CC

PETA Vice President Dan Mathews contacted Bruni-Sarkozy after seeing photos that showed her wearing what appeared to be real fur. She wrote back, "I do not wear, buy, or own fur …. Every designer who kindly lends me clothes for public appearances can tell you that I do not accept … fur pieces, even when they're only a small part of the outfit."

The first lady—who admitted to wearing fur during her modeling heyday—also made it clear that if the photos are recent, the fur is fake.

"By officially rejecting fur in the fashion capital of the world, this political and style idol will make people everywhere think about how old-fashioned and cruel it is," said Dan in a statement issued to the media.

With some free shoes from Stella McCartney, courtesy of PETA, on the way to Carla's doorstep, we're hoping she will swear off leather for good too.

Posted by Karin Bennett

nowilaymedowntosleep / CC

This morning, PETA Vice President Dan Mathews appeared on the Today show to talk about the court case involving Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Alert PETA Files readers will recall that Ringling has been sued by a coalition of animal protection groups over what they allege are violations of the Endangered Species Act. Namely, they're arguing that beating elephants with bullhooks and keeping them chained for hours or even days on end are no way to treat an endangered species.

Here's a little refresher: Over the course of the six-week trial, reams of evidence were trotted out to support reports that Ringling keeps elephants chained for an average of more than 26 hours at a time, sometimes for as many as 60 to 100 hours straight, and that elephants often suffer from bleeding wounds after being struck with bullhooks. Former Ringling employees testified about the horrors they witnessed while on Ringling's payroll, which included seeing an elephant who was violently beaten for a solid half hour.

The judge is still weighing his verdict, but in the meantime, Ringling is on trial in the court of public opinion. Kudos to Today for helping us expose Ringling for the sleazy animal-abusing con artist that it is.

Posted by Alisa Mullins

Still don't have a Halloween costume? Too tall to pass for a Trollsen Twin? Take a tip from PETA VP Dan Mathews: be the Colonel.

"Impersonating a scary guy like Colonel Sanders at Halloween is a great way to get a PETA point across at parties and become a frontrunner in costume contests," says Mathews, shown in the accompanying photos in his anti-KFC get-up. KFC is a total house of horrors after all—and our depictions of the colonel are terrifying enough to go along with Saw V. So, why not take advantage of KFC's hideousness and make a gloriously scary Halloween costume? All you need is a white suit and a bloody bucket!

Conveniently, printable versions are available for you to make your very own bucket of blood to accessorize your costume.

Yikes! Terrifying, no? It's a little scary how well Dan pulls that off … of course, he does have experience—no, not as a chicken torturer! In costumes and as a model! Sheesh.

Only eight days left until Halloween! Better get cracking with the corn syrup and red food coloring—you want to have enough blood, don't you?

Posted by Amanda Schinke

We're not the only ones who are severely frustrated about Giorgio Armani's failure to keep his word and remain fur-free! Sir Paul McCartney—pictured here with Giorgio at one of Stella McCartney's fashion shows—is the latest to respond to PETA's action alert.

© AP Images/Francois Mori

Sir Paul is adding his voice to a chorus of celebrities who are upset over Armani's penchant for rabbit pelts—celebrities such as the Andersons (Gillian and Pamela, no relation). These lovely ladies kicked off PETA's "Get Armani off Fur" campaign—Pam hosted a PETA launch event during Fashion Week in Italy, and Gillian narrated PETA's horrific rabbit fur farm exposé.

We hope that Sir Paul, Gillian, and Pam won't be the only famous voices to speak up against Armani's fur fixation. PETA Vice President Dan Mathews has written to many Armani-wearing stars, including Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Glenn Close, and Cate Blanchett, urging them to use their influence with the designer to get him to keep his fur-free pledge.

Oh yeah, and one other thing Dan did—remember that "Pinocchio Armani" ad? Well, Dan unveiled the new posters outside Armani's flagship store in Milan this week. Here he is with a local activist there—check out those giant rabbits!

Those big bunnies are just two blocks from Armani's store—I guess they'll be keeping an eye on him … and so will we! Stay tuned for more Armani news—and don't forget to take action!

Posted by Amanda Schinke

drew / CC

So, remember that blog from last week about PETA's frustration with Armani's broken promise not to use fur? Well don't worry, we haven't lost our steam! We've reached out to several celebs to ask them to stop wearing Armani until the designer goes cruelty-free—and now we've got our sights set on Glenn Close, who wore an Armani gown to the Emmys last week.

PETA Senior Vice President Dan Mathews fired off one of his killer letters again to Ms. Close after returning from a tense (to say the least) meeting in Milan, at which the Armani brass basically told him that they were quite reluctant to let go of their butchered-bunny designs. "Maybe Armani was inspired by Glenn Close's bunny-butchering character in 'Fatal Attraction,'" says Mathews. "Now that our talks are broken off, we're bringing the message to the stars who wear Armani that his clothes come with some unwanted baggage."

Here's the letter:

Glenn Close c/o Catherine Olim

Dear Glenn,

Greetings from PETA, where you have many fans. Congratulations on your Emmy win! Since you wore Giorgio Armani to the Emmy Awards, we are obliged to alert you to a distressing situation that has arisen with the company. We've been in talks with Armani for the past few years, asking the designer to drop fur. We showed his senior design team PETA's four-minute video—which documents how animals on fur farms are strangled, electrocuted, and skinned alive—and a few months later, Armani told Time Magazine that his meetings with PETA, "convinced me not to use fur." Unfortunately, he's gone back on his word; his new collections are full of fur and even include fur-trimmed coats for babies and kids.

We ask that you please use your considerable influence with Mr. Armani to urge him to keep his word and leave fur out of future collections. We also ask that you consider wearing fashions from some of the wonderful fur-free designers such as Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and Stella McCartney.

Thank you very much for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Dan Mathews
Vice President
PETA

Posted by Christine Doré

E!'s newest documentary series, Pam: Girl on the Loose, follows our favorite animal rights advocate, Pamela Anderson, around in her everyday adventures. We admit that it's our latest guilty pleasure.

Tonight, you can catch Pam and Dan Mathews, PETA's senior vice president, as they attend the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C. E! calls the episode "Crazy Bitch," but Pam and Dan fondly refer to it as "Washington or Bust" (Tuesday, August 19, 10:30 p.m. EST, E!, in syndication all week). This was Pam's first visit to D.C. since becoming a U.S. citizen and the same visit during which Pam hand-delivered a PETA report to Capitol Hill blasting animal testing. Pam says: "Being a citizen excites me not just because I can vote, but because I can crack the whip on Capitol Hill to defend animals."

The show's behind-the-scenes footage includes everything from Pam and Dan's planning their upcoming escapades during a camping trip to Dan discussing talking points from the bathtub before their appearance on Larry King Live.

Oh, Pam. You make our hearts happy.

Posting may be a little bit erratic today, as I’m trying to type up about 3 billion pages of notes from the South by Southwest Interactive Media Conference I attended last week. More on that later, but in the meantime, you may want to check out this awesome interview with PETA’s irreverent VP Dan Mathews, who’s about to embark on a nationwide tour in support of the paperback release of his book, Committed. Check the calendar on his myspace page if you want to catch one of his upcoming booksignings.

For all you Internet radio listeners out there, be sure to check out PETA VP Dan Mathews’ interview on Wake Up America this Monday at 9 a.m. If you’ve never experienced a Dan Mathews interview, you’re in for a treat. Dude is hilarious. Check out this site for more details.

James Carville and Mary Matalin

My roommate is big into political documentaries at the moment, and this weekend he rented a '93 documentary about Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, called "War Room", which I found myself mesmerized by. Two things really struck me about the film: The first were the similarities between the unorthodox way that campaign was run and the way things work here at PETA—the "no bad ideas" brainstorming sessions, the behind-the-scenes maneuvering for positive media coverage, and the quirky stunts to draw attention to an important issue (Clinton supporters even had a guy in a chicken suit sneak into the republican convention with a sign reading "Poultry Workers for Bush" on one side to fool security and "Chicken Bush Won't Debate" on the other for the TV cameras).

Dan Mathews

The second thing that really stood out about the movie was the sheer force of personality of James Carville, who brilliantly engineered Clinton's landslide victory over George Bush Part 1 in '92. There's a PETA connection here, too, since James and his wife Mary Matalin—a force to be reckoned with on the other side of the aisle—who met PETA VP Dan Mathews at a recent event in Las Vegas, are going to be hosting a party for Dan's new book, Committed, at their home in Virginia this Thursday. When asked what inspired them to help promote the book, Mary Matalin answered, "Good man, good book, good cause. Let's party!" Couldn't have said it better myself.

You can read more about the story here.

Word on the street is that fashion maven Tim Gunn is going to be introducing Dan Mathews at his New York booksigning for Committed: A Rabble-Rouser’s Memoir tonight. If you live in NYC, I highly recommend making the trek to the Chelsea Barnes and Noble at 7 p.m., as any evening with Dan is bound to be, um, interesting to say the least, if this pic from one of his runway takeovers in Milan is anything to go by:

The other dates of Dan’s whirlwind tour are on his MySpace page. Dude has been on MySpace for, like, five months and he already has almost 700 friends, which makes me feel a bit lame, given that my friend list has barely progressed beyond Tom and Princess Cuteyface in three years. Maybe I need to get into the book game.

One of the recent perks of being a PETA employee is access to advance chapters of the new book by PETA's globe-trotting VP, Dan Mathews. The book, entitled Committed: A Rabble-Rouser's Memoir, doesn't come out until April, but I've been enjoying the hell out of the little bits and pieces I've been able to coerce Dan into sending me. Here's an excerpt from his account of the inaugural tour of our vegetarian mascot, Chris P. Carrot:

With my feet in his clunky, white shoes, Mr. Carrot stands over seven feet tall. ... He holds a poster that reads “Eat Your Veggies-Not Your Friends” (we thought of going with “Eat Me” but thought again). Completing the ensemble is a pair of fluorescent orange panty hose, which, sadly, wouldn’t stretch to the top of my lanky legs. As PETA's campaigns chief, I don’t ask anybody to do anything I wouldn’t do myself. Since I cooked up this junket, it was my duty to give the flame-colored mascot a test drive in order to work out the kinks for future carrots. My comrade was recently hired campaigner Tracy Reiman, a chipper gal from Georgia, who I was training. On her first business trip, she had to rise at dawn to help her new boss morph into a reject from the land of H.R. Pufnstuf. Tracy also became the carrot’s official spokesperson; the voice I had developed for Chris P. Carrot, a hybrid of John Wayne and Pee Wee Herman, triggered panic-stricken shrieks and projectile tears from second graders, so we decided on the spot that the carrot should be mute. …

Our initial goal was simply to score equal time to tax funded talks in which the U.S. Department of Agriculture beguiles a captive audience of kids about how meat and milk is produced, using carefree materials such as the “Peace & Plenty Farm" coloring book. ... Students are not informed that the animals are kept in such cramped conditions that factory farmers routinely cut off their horns, slice off their beaks, and grind down their teeth to keep them from mutilating each other. When schools refused our offer of a more realistic classroom presentation, we announced that we’d bring the news to kids just off campus, courtesy of PETA’s zany decoy, Chris P. Carrot, whose blazing orange leaflets contained all the grim facts that were omitted from meat trade handouts. The story exploded throughout Cattle Country.

For many years I pushed campaigns which appealed to people’s intellect and compassion. But as cable TV and the Internet helped mold an escapist society hungrier for entertainment than education, serious topics began taking a backseat to scandal and sensation, and we at PETA had to dream up flashier ways to vie for people’s attention. … Although I lament the loss of serious public discourse, I’ve easily adjusted to the new rules because I am, at heart, a very silly person.

As a chubby adolescent too bashful to undress in the locker room, I couldn’t have predicted that I’d spearhead a campaign called “We’d Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur,” be hauled to jail nude on three continents. Or that I’d conduct business at a skinny-dipping party at the Playboy Mansion. Or that I’d impersonate a priest to crash a fashion show in Milan, don a cow costume to storm a cattleman’s convention in Denver, and argue whether Jesus was a vegetarian in the solemn office of the Archbishop of Turin. I’ve picked up the phone to get an angry earful from Madonna when I spoke out against her bullfighting-themed music videos. I’ve also picked up the phone to hear Sir Paul McCartney insist we take the rest of the day off when we successfully pressured McDonald’s to stop buying meat from slaughterhouses that fail USDA inspection.

There's a pretty fun series of interviews with Dan that's been making the rounds, which you can check out here. For what it's worth, our Legal Department wants me to warn you that (in no particular order) you will explode, your eyes will pop out, and your brain will boil in your head if you watch this, since it may have been put up on YouTube without permission. Enjoy!

I’ve talked before about my friend Dan Mathews, PETA’s fancypants VP, who spends his life jetting around the world getting celebs on board with our campaigns, disrupting fashion shows, and sometimes ending up in the slammer. Every time Dan gets home from a trip, he has another amazing story to tell.

One of Dan's best qualities is that no matter how serious the issue is that he’s working on, he never lets it get him down. He always finds a way to have fun and make our campaigns accessible to everyone. Dan once told me that the way he’s been able to keep working at his crazy pace for so many years is that his first thought when he wakes up every morning is not about work or politics or animal rights or anything like that—it's “How can I have fun today?” That's some pretty solid advice for anyone, and something I should probably try and remember next time I throw my alarm clock across the room at 6:30 a.m. (I'm not quite the morning person Dan Mathews is).

Anyway, the reason for this whole love fest is that Dan just finished writing his first book, Committed: A Rabble Rouser’s Memoir. The book isn’t out until April, but the buzz is already starting, as the crazy stories in it are starting to get leaked. I just saw this one about Chrissie Hynde getting arrested for protesting The Gap right after the company offered her $100,000 to use one of her songs in a commercial and Pam Anderson shooting this ad ... while she was six months pregnant:

Don’t think she looks six months pregnant? During the shoot, Pam told Dan, "Don’t worry. Nowadays, they can airbrush out a baby as easily as a birthmark." Priceless. The book is out April 17, and I'm actually really looking forward to it. If you're interested, you can pre-order that bad boy here.