"Skeet Don't Bleed"........Wolcott

Posted by James Wolcott

Andrew Sullivan quotes an eloquent chastisement from Matthew Scully, author of Dominion: The Power of Men, the Suffering of Animals, and a Call to Mercy, regarding the callous disregard demonstrated by Vice President Cheney.

"Birds are not skeet. They are living creatures, 'the fowl of the air,' and it is unkind and dishonorable to treat them this way. The sportsman shoots in jest, to paraphrase a saying, but the creature dies in earnest."

I saw a creature die in earnest earlier this afternoon on CNN. Rick Sanchez was filing a report on hunting protocol and safety, tramping through the woods with a pair of experienced hunters. At the end of the segment one of the hunters shot a quail, which fell from the air and landed in the grass, its wings thrashing. An animal died so that the segment could make its point. And it made me realize or re-realize that I don't have any respect even for "responsible" hunting, because the deaths it causes are still wanton and unnecessary, even if the carnage is less promiscuous than that of the canned hunts favored by Cheney, Scalia, and similar Davy Crocketts on male-bonding expeditions.

I can't remember where I read this but a few years ago there was a book about Hemingway in Africa reviewed in the British press. After a long quote from the book (perhaps taken from Hemingway's own words) about the dozens of the wild animals Hemingway and party had bagged on his most recent safari, the reviewer commented in succinct disgust, "What fucking waste." Yet the Hemingway mystique still stalks the oddest corridors, as Tom Watson observes, where the thrill of the kill is a rite of manhood that makes political junkies go as goosepimply as Seinfeld's Costanza when he got to 'hang' with a cool dude.

"The talking head Beltway media mouths are covering the pellet-sprayed tort reform episode in Texas as if it's a story from some exotic culture, little-known in these parts, but somehow authentic to the mythical heartland that - as well as know - actually stands for the real America, and elects manly Presidents besides. The ultimate moment came when Chris Matthews asked Sen. Alan Simpson (in the role of Cheney hunting pal) to define what a covey of quail looks like, and to explain life out on trail 'for guys like you and the Vice President.' Matthews manfully copped to shooting some skeet in his time, but admitted somewhat sheepishly that he'd never shot at animals, wearing that 'gosh, tell me about what real men do, Senator' grin as he probed the now-infamous blamfest with the Wyoming Republican.
http://www.jameswolcott.com/

No decent hunter I know would do what Cheney does. He has birds who have never flown in their lives, raised in cages, released for his shooting games in the hundreds. And he just lets them rot where they lay.

A decent hunter kills only what he is going to take home and eat.

If you are not a vegan, you kill by proxy when you eat meat. Some of us are willing to take responsibility for that.

PERIOD...eating meat is one thing; entertaining oneself by blasting away creatures is another

There is something seriously wrong with people who enjoy killing and inflicting pain on any other living being.

That guy has a way with words.