Interesting point. No, I wouldn’t be okay with that. I think the distinction is that I accept both hunting for recreation (if the meat is eaten, mostly–I’m more skeptical about trophy hunting) and I accept vets euthanizing strays as a profession, but I don’t accept vets euthanizing animals for recreation. That last category would freak me out. However, I can’t really see a rational cause for drawing that distinction, nor can I see a rational cause for being freaked out by a vet grinning over an appropriately euthanized stray animal; so I’d chalk it up to an irrational reaction on my part.
You haven’t shown that the pleasure has precipitated killing in inappropriate circumstances; nor have you shown that failing to smile after an appropriate kill prevents killing in inappropriate circumstances. I’m all for respecting animals when that respect actually leads to not killing them. I’m deeply skeptical that any respect that you show an animal that you deliberately killed has any non-woo significance.
It’s a jackass fuckin question. But I’ll answer it anyway: if a student asked me whether it was important to show respect to an animal they’d killed, and if I thought they could understand the distinction that’s currently escaping you, I’d say, no, respecting an animal that you’ve killed is meaningless. If you want to show respect to an animal, show it to the next animal you might consider killing, and show the respect by not killing it. But making sadface next to the animal–weeping for it, deeply sympathizing–is a meaningless act designed to assuage your own guilt, not do anything for the animal itself.
Hey wait… I thought you were a supporter of the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act and similar laws that have been enacted at the state level; am I mistaken?
I have to think about this one myself. Is empathy or altruism always rational? Some people do exhibit empathy towards animals that others consider irrational, but who is to say what the appropriate amount is, and at what point it becomes irrational?
Do you disagree that pleasure precipitates inappropriate killing? I thought you said as much in your first reply to me. I said nothing about smiling, in any case. And my point was about promoting respect of animals in advance as a deterrent to pleasure killing. I wasn’t getting that from your posts until now. After the animal is dead it might be a little late for respect, but in my opinion it’s creepy to lie next to a carcass and post it on the internet looking for attention. As I said, it’s not really a big achievement under the circumstances.
Why the gratuitous insults; I was really interested in what you’d tell the kiddos. That’s your monkey brain coming out.
I don’t think being sad after killing is meaningless, and I think (appropriate) guilt serves a purpose as well. True, it doesn’t help the animal that is already dead, but might prevent another kill in the future.
He has hundreds of thousands of followers. Gervais knew this would happen. Fuck him.
No. Gervais needs to shut the fuck up because he’s a raging hypocrite and because he knows through experience that stuff he tweets tends to go viral.
Okay, firstly Gervais was on the Daily Show in July and he’s put the weight back on. He has also personally endorsed fat shaming so to him I say “Har-de-Har, fatty fatty fat fat!” Secondly, I would have thought the three long paragraphs I wrote slamming online shaming without mentioning Gervais once would be a clue that I was both annoyed at Gervais in particular and at online shaming in general. If not, well…I am. Thirdly, while Gervais personal hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of many of his fellow shamers was part of the rant, it wasn’t 100% of the rant, and if this thread had to go down a tangent I’d prefer it was about online shaming generally rather than some bullshit about whether giraffes go about in herds of not. But I’m not the boss of the thread, so whatever.
The problem is that Gervais has seven and a half million twitter followers. When he tweets something contentious it becomes News, and he knows it because he’s done it before. Predictably, the story has been picked up by most of the UK’s national newspapers, by Perez Hilton, by perennial clickbait mill Gawker, and millions & millions other tweeters, all of whom have their own followers and so on, which is pretty weird when you consider that the “story” is essentially “Hunter Hunts Something”. When Gervais uses his twitter feed as a platform he knows he’s speaking to the world. He should be more responsible.
Actually, I wasn’t – I use Tapatalk as well as a traditional browser, and sometimes I find I miss sequential posts; after replying to one post I end up at the end of the thread and have to navigate backwards manually.
I imagine you’re mistaken about virtually every key fact in your life.
I have written extensively about the proper application of such laws. I am a supporter of them in the sense that I support giving actual effect to laws passed by the legislature. But there’s a distinction between this view and the view that such laws are wise public policy in the first place.
I’m not persuaded that they are. As it happens, they have been used as a double-edged sword, sometimes to (in my view) advance good public policy ends, and sometimes (again in my opinion) to retard good public policy.
I suspect you have confused my advocacy for a proper understanding and enforcement of a properly passed law with an advocacy for the existence of the law. I am not unalterably opposed to them, nor am I unalterably in favor. I think there’s a colorable case that they violate the First Amendment.
Now: having given this idiotic question far more attention than it deserves, what possible relevance does it have?
Ricky Gervais is a professional comedian which does make it difficult to entirely trust what he says. However for years, in interviews and on the internet he has espoused various causes including Gay Rights, Atheism and Animal Rights.
On the subject of Animal Rights he has spoken out repeatedly and campaigned against clinical trials and vivisection on animals, also other animal abuses and cruelties including hunting. He is, incidentally, a more or less non-meat eater who claims to aspire to becoming vegetarian. He acknowledges his own hypocrisy.
In 2013 he was named PETA’s “Person of the Year” and on the page announcing that ( Ricky Gervais Is PETA's Person of the Year | PETA ) are a selection of his internet messages which show he has plenty of previous on this subject.
I, for one, believe he is entirely sincere when he objects to these exercises in recreational hunting of exotic animals. He is no doubt using his fame to promote causes in believes in but… They are causes he believes in.
Until this post I had no idea Ricky Gervais’ head was so completely free of ass. Thanks. Seriously, it’s like he tweets for me. If I used Twitter, which I don’t.
I disagree on the whole hypocrisy angle but still one cool dude standing up for a very worthy cause without any obvious personal benefit.
I dislike the internet shaming that’s become popular in the past few years too. The other woman the OP mentions, the one who posted the mildly racist tweet, definitely did not deserve the shitstorm she found herself in. It was much more sickening than her stupid tweet.
This woman, though, is a professional hunter who boasts about kiling animals and makes a living from it. She still doesn’t deserve death threats and really, anyone who threatens to kill someone because they killed an animal needs to think longer about what they’re actually doing. She’s not an innocent victim like many of the other “shamed” people are though - she’s not a good choice for this rant.
FTR, Gervais has shared at least one other picture of a hunter grinning next to their kill, and that was a man. He may well have shared a lot more - it’s one of the things he does. I don’t think he deliberately set out to publish a photo of a woman rather than a man. Her gender is probably part of the reason for the extra criticism but that’s not his doing.
Nah, there is a logical reason for your feeling about the vet: they’re supposed to like animals and not want to kill them, only doing so when absolutely necessary. Would you trust your pet with a vet who seemed to enjoy killing animals? And not even for sport or food - I can see a vet being a hunter in their private life, maybe - but just enjoying killing them? Anyone who got pleasure - not a grim satisfaction from ending the animal’s suffering and doing what’s right, but grinning pleasure - out of sticking a needle in an animal (hence it not being for sport) would be someone you’d probably back away from, but in a vet it would be worrying on a professional basis.
Yeah, it’s not about showing respect to the animal, but about at least acting like someone who doesn’t think killing is great. It’s about the human more than the animal.
And grinning next to a slain animal also makes me less likely to believe that the killer did it purely because they had to, like this woman is claiming.
This lines up with my feelings on the subject pretty well. This woman isn’t some innocent whose private photos were plastered over the web after being stolen from cell phone. She thrives on the public adulation she receives from her hunting exploits. And good for her if she can make a living based on that. But it’s a two edges sword and there’s no reason that people, including celebrities, shouldn’t give their opinions as well.
As for Gervais knowing that his Twitter followers would behave this badly, I don’t buy that argument. This woman put herself out in the public eye for her own reasons. Gervais didn’t say anything over the line or that would encourage illegal behavior. It’s truly unfortunate that some people took things to that extreme, and we should blame the folks who are actually guilty of the acts.
She didn’t claim she had to do it, though. She was on a hunting trip, and she unabashedly hunts for fun, but also, as I understand it, for meat. She claimed that peculiar circumstances overrode her initial decision not to hunt a giraffe–circumstances that seem to be false, but given her initial plan not to hunt giraffe, circumstances that I don’t think she could have understood were false (MrDibble, since she didn’t plan to hunt giraffe, I’m not convinced she needed to be up on giraffe sociology).
If someone claims that nobody should take pleasure in hunting, well, okay–but we also don’t need to eat meat, and so it only seems consistent if you also claim that nobody should take pleasure in eating meat. Both meat-eating and hunting are luxury activities that modern humans engage in, at the expense of animals’ lives. Why one should be condemned, and the other condoned, is beyond me.
Her claim that she killed the giraffe because it was an outsider amounts to “had to,” IMO. Otherwise why would it have been mentioned? The implication is that it would have suffered some way or other had it not been mercifully killed by her.
She had internet access. Sporadic, probably, but enough for her to upload a picture. Enough for her to know as much about giraffes as someone on this thread searching giraffe+herd does.
If what Loach has posited is true - that only rich people could afford to hunt giraffes - then I would have expected her to say it herself. That makes me suspect it’s not the case.
