This Fad Isn’t Worth a Wooden Nickel : Animal rights: Hollywood’s romance with the buffalo has the real thing--the bison--running for their lives.

The summer economy may have been sluggish in some sectors, but not in the bison business. The popularity of last winter’s “Dances With Wolves” has translated into a boom in buffalo robes, buffalo skulls (mounted and ready for hanging in your rec room) and related artifacts.

This comes as little surprise. Just about everyone who has seen Kevin Costner’s paean to the Great Plains experience would agree that the buffalo hunt was the dramatic high point of the picture. It was so real, people marvel. All the artifice at Hollywood’s disposal moved the thundering herd across the screen, and not one bison was injured, let alone killed.

Of course, the same cannot be said of the bison that yielded the robes and skulls made suddenly fashionable by the movie. These decorating accents do not derive from simulated kills. Presumably, purchasers are aware of this, if only dimly. Should this fashion trend continue, factories will soon be turning out fabulous buffalo fakes to satisfy the more squeamish among us.

“Come on, get real,” we say when someone wanders beyond the bounds of credibility. Yet we Americans seem to have a difficult time recognizing reality when we see it. As never before, the popular scene is dominated by such an inversion of real and make-believe that we almost take for granted that one is pretty much as good as the other. Indeed, in some cases, as when animal-rights activists trumpet “Real people wear fake fur,” artificiality claims moral precedence over the genuine article.

Ironically, the animal-rights movement is another major reason for the craving for buffalo paraphernalia. When the Fund for Animals decided to launch an all-out assault against the Montana buffalo hunt two years ago, the bison became an instant celebrity coast to coast. News stories uncritically quoted that animal protectionists’ claim that America’s “national symbol” was imperiled.

Never mind that the bison is far from facing extinction, that there are a number of complicated agricultural and economic factors involved, that this particular strategy for handling potentially diseased bison that wander seasonally beyond the boundary of Yellowstone Park is no true “hunt” in any meaningful sense of the term.

The anti-hunt protest turned out to be the best visibility enhancer and money-raiser the animal-activist movement ever saw. It became politically fashionable to oppose the killing of the Yellowstone bison.

One can only speculate how many people sympathize with the plight of the Yellowstone bison on the evening news, even as they thrill to the (make-believe) killing in Costner’s epic and place their orders for genuine buffalo robes.

And one can imagine the animal protectionists’ horror should it dawn on them that, thanks in no small part to their efforts to make the buffalo a media icon, more bison may be raised and slaughtered for their profitable hides than ever might have been shot for straying out of Yellowstone Park in winter.

Generations ago, T. S. Eliot lamented, “We had the experience but missed the meaning.” Today we seem as a culture to want the experience, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, with no awareness that it even has a meaning.

In this sense, the buffalo--huge, lumbering, not terribly intelligent and dangerous when aroused--may be our national symbol in a way not intended by the likes of the Fund for Animals. We celebrate a Nintendo war. We spend millions on animal rights even as human rights are rapidly eroding. We applaud the graphic depiction of an activity we claim to disapprove of, and proudly display its spoils in the form of a robe, a wall mount, maybe even some steaks in the freezer. All without getting our fingernails dirty.

When will we get real?