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Both can be equally demeaning and morally questionable to certain parts of the population but let's be real here, killing an "innocent animal" is much more controversial than what is shown on TV almost every night.

In a culture where steakhouses dot the roadsides, it seems odd to assert that killing an "innocent animal" is controversial at all. In some US locality where vegetarians make up the vast majority of the population, maybe, but does a place like that even exist?

I haven't seen the video; I'm just speaking to that one sentence, really.

Dumbo = innocent;

Elsie = delicious;

I don't understand your point. You're just restating the hypocrisy that randallsquared pointed out.

There's nothing hypocritical or even illogical about special casing every single species with varying levels of concern. At some point you have a set of purely irrational axioms about some qualities, be they kingdom, phylum, family, genus, species, or some other subjective criteria for what makes a living creature worthy of consideration when its life is in danger.

If you don't believe there's a rational basis to this consideration, it's hypocritical to criticize somebody else for having a different but no less valid set of qualities he considers.

Not at all. I'm criticizing you for your repeated misuse of the word hypocritical. (And your attempt to equate disagreement with your viewpoint to a failure of logic.) If you can't have a reasonable discussion without name calling, you don't belong here.

chc, humans call this humor or satire.

Really? You don't see how flying in a rich westerner into some poverty-stricken region of the developing world to carry out an endangered wild big-game trophy hunt might be more controversial than killing an animal farmed for food for its intended purpose? I don't buy it, and as someone with so much at stake, he should have known better.

Not sure if you read the article but Jacques specifically states there's a clear difference between a rich dude shooting the Elephant and a native Zimbabwean game warden doing it to protect his crops (which btw, there are many other ways of going about that than shooting it). The psychology behind the former doing it can be extremely powerful (and enraging) compared to the latter.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the elephant ends up dead either way. If the Zimbabwean government can monetize a practice that would otherwise cost them money (viz., protecting crops from elephants) and simultaneously a dude with excess money can get some recreational activity out of it, it seems like it's a win-win.

There obviously are some issues with this, e.g., if the government's only interest is moneymaking rather than proper wildlife husbandry, then they're incentivized short-term to sell the rights to kill every elephant around. But no one is going around complaining that there's insufficient evidence of proper husbandry here; rather, they're complaining because a big mammal that lots of us read about in storybooks as kids just got shot.

I'd be pissed if this were a case where they obviously baited the elephants or were just slaughtering the animals indiscriminately. This obviously isn't the case, though.

> Not sure if you read the article but Jacques specifically states there's a clear difference between a rich dude shooting the Elephant and a native Zimbabwean game warden doing it to protect his crops (which btw, there are many other ways of going about that than shooting it). The psychology behind the former doing it can be extremely powerful (and enraging) compared to the latter.

That's a great point. I mostly agree with the GP, but the symbolism of Parsons' actions is really powerful.

I'd assume this statement was more offensive to vegetarians than watching that video. I'd assume that b/c I am one.

So what if you're offended? That's no reason for the other side of a rational argument to change their argument in reaction to you being offended, so it's irrelevant.