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While I respect your opinions in support of Parsons, I'm going to have to disagree with you on a lot of your arguments. >Bob Parsons has always run his company
by cshenoy 16y ago
While I respect your opinions in support of Parsons, I'm going to have to disagree with you on a lot of your arguments.
>Bob Parsons has always run his company the way he wants, and he has particular freedom to do so since he has zero investors and is the sole owner
Parsons does have the freedom to do what he likes but there are consequences to those actions. No one is questioning his freedom to do what he chooses.
> He does certain things for shock value...
True but I think killing an elephant and then posting a video about it is a bit different than showing scantily clad women dancing on the hood of a convertible. 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.
> Slaughtering an elephant might offend some of your sensibilities, but hunting in Africa is wide spread and as long as the elephant is not endangered, I don't think your outrage has a leg to stand on.
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.
> There are much worse things going on in America's food industry then this.
Agreed. But that's missing the point.
> I can understand how this might offend vegetarians but even then, it's not like the animal was wasted.
I'd assume this statement was more offensive to vegetarians than watching that video. I'd assume that b/c I am one.
- randallsquared 16y agoBoth 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.
- adolph 16y agoDumbo = innocent; Elsie = delicious;
- chc 16y agoI don't understand your point. You're just restating the hypocrisy that randallsquared pointed out.
- lukeschlather 16y agoThere'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.
- chc 16y agoIf 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.
- lukeschlather 16y agoNot 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.
- drzaiusapelord 16y agochc, humans call this humor or satire.
- WiseWeasel 16y agoReally? 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.
- mccutchen 16y ago> 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.
- javert 16y agoI'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.
- kwantam 16y agoNot 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.