I’ve received a PM letting me know that Bricker has said something in response to me that is completely out of character for him and cruel even by Pit standards. Maybe that’s incorrrect, but, in case it is, I’m going to do you a favor and not read it.
Why? So I can say this. I’m sorry. I’ve long said that, if people do not really mean to offend, they will apologize. So that is what I am doing here. I let my frustrations with other things you have said build up, and I attacked your character rather than sticking with attacking what you were doing in this thread.
If I were to read what you said, and it is as horrible as the PM claimed, I would not be able to do this for a long time. Plus, if it’s that uncharacteristic, I don’t want it informing my view of you. Because, believe it or not, I respect you when you aren’t calling everyone ignorant for disagreeing with you. And you do put up with a lot of shit–something I can’t really do.
One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I hold grudges even when I don’t want to. I hated Fenris for much longer than was appropriate, for example. But, right now, I’m not mad at you. I got my frustration out, and it’s over, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not going to read something that will make me mad at you, that will make me want to deliberately annoy you and frustrate you due to my strong sense of justice.
Here’s hoping you take this apology in the spirit offered.
While I will still criticize you when I think you are wrong (morally or factually), I will not allow myself to hate you, and I will temper my responses now that I know they actually bother you. (This is why it pays to be genuine.)
Her justification for shooting the giraffe turns out to be entirely fabricated. Why would I believe the part where she says she had no plan to hunt a giraffe?
The reality is that she wanted a facebook picture of herself smiling with a dead giraffe, and she made that happen. When there were unforeseen consequences of that, she appears to have filled in more a more noble justification than the reality which is that she just wanted “likes” on a facebook picture.
Yeah, she’s ok with killing brown bear, black bear, shiras moose, alaskan moose, dall sheep, stone sheep, desert bighorn ram, rocky mountain bighorn ram, mule deer, whitetail deer, elk, mountain goat, antelope, arapawa ram, kudu, zebra, black wildebeest, springbuck, blesbuck, lynx, badger, and squirrel, but not giraffe. Not unless it’s suffering and she’s needed to save a village.
Although, come to think of it, she didn’t say why she didn’t plan to hunt giraffe. Too awkward to pose for a trophy shot?
The internet doesn’t hate hunting. A few whiny bitches on the internet do. For every death threat hunters get for posting pictures of their kills they get many more followers and friends.
It amazes me how whiny and clueless anti-hunters come across during these sorts of threads.
So what? He’s popular and has a platform for sharing his views. We should all be so lucky. Nothing in his comments said to hunt this woman down or start doxxing her or whatever. You just want to make this about someone we know because complaining about random idiots on the internet is less compelling than complaining about celebrities.
Which brings us back around to “hypocrisy”. She says she wouldn’t have dreamed of killing a giraffe and only killed this one because of the exceptional and noble circumstances. She makes pains to point out how THIS was an exceptional event that she otherwise wouldn’t have partaken in.
So she places giraffes as more deserving of staying alive than the list of other creatures she has hunted? How is this different than me being okay with killing flies but not butterflies, or cows but not zebras or chickens but not bald eagles? How is Gervais a hypocrite for eating meat while disapproving of killing a giraffe but she wasn’t a hypocrite for killing a goat but not a giraffe? The whole reason she was in Africa was to kill non-giraffe animals – isn’t that the exact same hypocrisy? Ranking one animal’s life above another’s? The only difference is that she’s less vocal about her hierarchy of which animals deserve to live or die and seems to set her bar differently than many other people.
I feel that my own apology rings hollow, because it virtually echoes the points you raised. Please don’t mistake a lack of original mea culpas for a lack of sincerity: I, too, posted what I did as the result of frustrations, and indeed not just with you, but with others in the thread, and I made you the recipient of vitriol that was indeed out of character, and was undeserved. (In fairness, I don’t agree it was out of bounds for the Pit, but it was certainly out of bounds for me, and I shouldn’t have posted it.)
I disagree with what you said, and because I was in the Pit, I let a venomous response substitute for a rebuttal. Some would argue that the Pit exists for that reason, but I have tried – not always successfully, I admit – to avoid that use of it.
So if you can see your way clear to accepting my apology, I certainly accept yours; mine was the greater offense.
Hell, I’m almost certain I’ve seen bear next to elk and ground camel meat at the local Mariano’s here in Chicago. (Mariano’s is a Wisconsin-based supermarket of the Roundy’s chain that has become quite popular in the local area over the last five years or so.)
This May, I plan on going turkey hunting when the season opens. In the areas where I hunt turkey, it’s possible that I might come across a bald eagle. There are some of them around here.
I don’t plan on shooting any bald eagles during my turkey hunt. Only turkeys.
Does this make me some kind of hypocrite? Does this in any way confuse you?
Explaining hunting to non-hunters sometimes feels like explaining long division to a two year old.
She said she “wouldn’t have dreamed” of killing a giraffe. Not that giraffes just happened to not be on that trip’s itinerary but that she , for whatever reason, found the very idea of hunting a giraffe unfathomable.
Quite a bit different from what you’re describing.
With that logic then it should be okay to go to a funeral and take a selfie by the coffin with the deceased. What, they don’t care, they’re dead. Why not get one last pic with grandma.
We don’t do that because it’s morbid. IMO, it’s morbid to take a photo smiling beside a dead animal that you just killed. Take a photo for posterity if that’s your thing, but don’t gloat about it.