Cockfighting fans, foes claw it out  Oklahoma voters to decide
whether to end old practice  October 27, 2002|By Karen Brandon,
Tribune national correspondent.  BETHEL ACRES, Okla. — "If you
was a chicken, you'd want to be a game rooster," insisted Pokey
Stover Savage, her drawl as thick as cream gravy ladled on a
biscuit, as she explained her deeply held convictions on a major
political issue in Oklahoma.  Cockfighting is a pastime Savage
reveres, a practice 47 states outlaw, and a subject that has
ignited a political firestorm in the Sooner State, one of the
sport's last legal bastions.  "These roosters," continued
Savage, a cocker like her grandfather, father and late husband
before her, "they live the life of Riley. I just can't imagine
us not being able to fight roosters in Oklahoma."  Whether the
rest of Oklahoma agrees with her, or with animal-rights
activists, who call cockfighting "the very definition of animal
cruelty," and Republican Gov. Frank Keating, who calls the sport
"embarrassing to Oklahoma,