If you're inclined to react cynically to the grieving over the late Kentucky Derby champion Barbaro, you won't have much trouble. We eat meat, wear leather, use animal-tested health and beauty products—and mourn a horse? T. J. Simers said as much in the Los Angeles Times; so, too, did Barbaro, in a manner of speaking, as channeled by the Mighty MJD. But one oracle preceded them all: A late, fictional mobster.

The scene: The home of Ralph Cifaretto, a captain in Tony Soprano's crime organization. A horse they co-owned has died in a suspicious stable fire, and Tony is accusing Ralphie of setting the fire to cash in on a recently purchased insurance policy. Ralphie—in an episode that premiered three and a half years before Barbaro broke his leg at the Preakness—denies the charge but also says, basically, so what if I did?

Ralphie: "It's a fucking animal. It's a hundred grand apiece. My kid's in the fucking hospital. I don't hear you complaining when I bring you a nice fat envelope. You don't care where that comes from!" (It comes, of course, from human suffering, the mob's currency.) And more: "What are you, a vegetarian? You eat beef and sausage by the fucking carload." Tony, as if anticipating a popular line of Barbaro-lovers, retorts, "She was a beautiful, innocent creature. What'd she ever do to you?" He makes that retort as he's strangling Ralphie, so you might call it a rhetorical question. The boss, as always, gets the last word.

(Thanks to the tireless recappers at Television Without Pity for the quotes.)

Related in Gelf

•Frank DeFord would be very angry if Barabaro were eaten.