“Feel free to pay this murdering asshole a visit at his home at XXXXXXXXX.. Don’t forget to bring your hunting gear. Can’t make it then send some mail to him and his wife XXXXXX. She loves animal killers! His wife is one of the owners of XXXXXXXXX, a customs broker in North Dakota. His daughter is XXXXXX (Palmer) and she can be reached at her company XXXXXXXXX. He also has vacation home at XXXXXXXXX.”
—– “Is,” an attempted, but immediately banned, Ethics Alarms commenter to the post about Walter Palmer, the big game-hunting dentist who inadvertently ended up shooting a popular and well-known lion rather than a random, everyday, mount-his-head-on-the-wall lion, as if it makes any real difference at all. The X’s cover up personal information about the Palmers, as this vicious and anonymous creep attempted to use this blog to facilitate organized harassment and possibly violence.
Dr. Palmer’s office front…
It has been pointed out, fairly and accurately, that while people like Mia Farrow are trying to get Palmer killed—she tweeted out the same information I deleted above– because he was unlucky enough to be tricked into killing a lion-icon, the media is barely covering serial videos showing the dead-eyed callousness of the Planned Parenthood officials who facilitate and encourage the abortion, for any reason, of unborn human beings. The same sensitive, compassionate progressives who are trying to get Palmer murdered (PETA has stated that he should be hanged) are shrugging off human carnage that is exactly as legal as the activity that Walter Palmer thought he was engaging in. One old lion versus a million nascent human beings, trying to live. Thus does selective outrage approach madness.
Internet vigilantism is indistinguishable from other forms of mob violence in which single individuals, perhaps individually reasonable and ethical, are swept up into violent eruptions of passion, and surrender all moderation, consideration, prudence, fairness, sympathy, rationality—and of course The Golden Rule—in order to experience the unique joy of destroying another human being’s life. The law has not caught up with this vile and dangerous behavior yet, but it will: it will have to. A mantra here is that when ethics fail, the law steps in. Ethics is failing on the internet, whether it is the New Black Panthers’ hunting George Zimmerman and Spike Lee tweeting assistance to the hunters, or whether it is PETA espousing murder and Mia Farrow attempting to assist.
To state what should be obvious to the non-ideologically deranged: Palmer, if he broke the law, will face the law. His dental patients who choose their dentists by whether they approve of their dentist’s hobbies—you know, crazy people—will seek different care for their teeth. Dr. Palmer has–I hope—been thoroughly shamed by the publicity surrounding his botched hunt and cruel idea of fun, and if he is regarded by many as an asshole, as Ethics Alarms declared him, good. Obnoxious actions should have consequences. However, such consequences must be proportionate to the actions, and trying to facilitate harm to Palmer’s life, business and family members is far worse—more cruel, more unethical, more harmful—that shooting any lion, popular or not.
If you like, please explain that to dhappycampers@aol.com, the owner of which apparently wrote the comment above.* Ethics Alarms doesn’t publish the e-mails of commenters, but I take this one’s eagerness to publicize the contact information of Mr. Palmer as a waiver of that obligation on my part. I take his (her?) conduct to mean that sufficiently unethical conduct in the judgment of others eliminates one’s right to be left alone. I vehemently disagree, but those are his rules, not mine, and in this case, not to be regarded as precedentiary, I choose to adopt them. Similarly, I would not blame Lindsey Graham if he announced Donald Trump’s cell phone number, though I applaud him for not doing so.
If I misconstrued your intent, “Is,” I am so sorry.
* You can read why I believe this is fair, ethical and necessary here.
Ethics Alarms 
The poster of this vile comment apparently doesn’t understand that the legal definition of murder is the unlawful killing of a human being by a sane person. You can kill a lion, but you cannot murder one. My suspicion is that this nasty wacko is attempting to confuse people about the difference between the taking of a life of an animal vs a human being. Taken to the extreme since I occasionally fish, I ‘murder’ fish.
I partially disagree that choosing a dentist based on their hobbies is crazy. If I have a choice between Dentist A and Dentist B, and I know that Dentist A will use the money I pay to do things I don’t like while Dentist B will not, then it is rational for me to do business with B instead of A in order to avoid supporting activities I don’t like, and I don’t think it’s unethical in any way.
Summoning the angry hordes to destroy Dentist A, on the other hand, is unethical and irrational, and it saddens me to see this tactic used.
Thanks, Jack.
As tempting as it is, I will not be e-mailing “Is.”
The mob mentality inspired by this story is sickening.
It is at times like this that I must recite Jut’s Corollary to Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of good is for evil men to do nothing.”
I think I will decline your invitation.
-Jut
I hope the dentist who killed the lion finds an attorney (or team of attorneys) who finds a way to sue and collect from the anarchic bastards who are bent on ruining him, so that he can have the financial security to hunt from sunup to sunset for the rest of his life, in whatever legal game-hunting zone he can find on earth, from the roof of the most luxurious Hummer that can be built.
Or in the alternative, he could hire a private investigator to discover similarly uncool activity by the perpetrators with the most social media followers, then proceed to use that information to shame them. Believe me, such people are always hiding something in plain sight.
At some point, it will take a vicious beat-down of a popular shamer to begin to end this loathsome trend, and when I say vicious, I mean it – something like costing him/her their job, or marriage, or something fully responsive to the misery he/she caused, aided, or abetted.
Yes, it will take a person with big cojones and plenty of means, but one of these days … Pow! Right in the kisser.
People are equating this lion’s killing with murder. The volume of the protests and level of emotion is perplexing. I don’t agree with the lion being drawn out of its habitat to be killed…but….the viciousness, the screaming and the sobbing (newscasters and talk show hosts, people interviewed on TV) just strikes me as bizarre. No one in America knew who Cecil the lion was days ago, and now he’s a cause worth killing for. He was not our icon. It’s as if Lassie were killed. Anyone hearing about this would think it were awful, but the chest beating going on is just weird. I can’t quite articulate what I’m feeling here…the reaction to Cecil’s death is the same as if the American people had adored him for years. The display is there but the investment isn’t.
Nice distraction from ‘less crunchy’ methods of abortion.
I just noticed this on the door: #CatLivesMatter
The hell? Is this a joke? Are they really comparing cats to people? Is big game hunting as bad as police brutality? Will these people start training their housecats to say “Hands up, don’t shoot”?
Yes, they are, “I am Cecil’ signs have been sprouting up.
If Barack Obama had a son, it would look like Cecil.
Say, how sure are we that this Cecil was really African? I heard he was born in Hawaii. Has anyone seen his long-form birth certificate?
Paws up…
quit it. my stomach hurts.
Thanks for the multiple Coke Zero spews. I don’t know if it was ‘If Obama had a son’ or ‘Paws up’ that got me the worse. 🙂
If he had a cat it would look like Cecil. Wait, maybe Cecil WAS his cat growing up…
Thanks, now I have coffee all over my screen.
How do you email a flaming bag of dog shit?
We need a ‘like’ button.
Over my dead body. WordPress has one; this isn’t a popularity contest.
I know. It was just a way of expressing amusement at the post.
WARNING: IF YOU DO EMAIL “HAPPY CAMPER”, DO NOT DO SO FROM AN EMAIL ADDRESS YOU WISH TO USE IN FUTURE. THIS KIND OF IDIOT WILL RETALIATE AND MAY HAVE THE BRAINS TO KNOW HOW.
Yes, when dealing with the insane, or foaming at the mouth justice warriors, one needs a disposable email address. Learned that with rad-fems years ago and I recommend it.
Jack’s readers are not mean enough to really harm or upset Mr. Happy Camper. He’s going to get mostly polite, well-worded and logical explanations as to why he’s acting like a fool.
And polite, well-worded and logical explanations are unintelligible to people like him, so he the words will just look like confusing squiggles to his gelatinous brain.
There’s a petition to ask that the President allow Walter Palmer to be extradited to Zimbabwe, in part:
“We urge the Secretary Of State John Kerry and the Attorney General Loretta Lynch to fully cooperate with the Zimbabwe authorities and to extradite Walter Palmer promptly at the Zimbabwe government’s request.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/extradite-minnesotan-walter-james-palmer-face-justice-zimbabwe
It must be remembered that radical “animal rights” advocates (among whom PETA is prominent) proclaim that animals are equal or superior in comparison with human beings. Therefore, to kill an animal is murder. And, as human beings rape and pollute the planet, they are a cancer to be marginalized or stamped out. Really!! That’s the extent to which a number of these crazed, self-loathing people have gone. It gets worse, too. Some of them will form a circle around the stump of a cut down tree to weep, scream and generally perform a paganistic funeral service.
As for poor old “Cecil” (who named him that??). he would have probably died in the misery of advanced years if Dr. Palmer hadn’t happened by. That’s the reality of the wild. Just try to explain this to pampered tree huggers who can’t understand that their quiche and salad supper was alive once, too. Cabbage killers…
Yes. I was saddened by all the comments I saw saying that the Japanese deserved the 2011 quake in retribution for one town in Wakayama (nearly 600 miles away from the quake zone) killing dolphins. 15,891 people were killed, 2,500 are still missing and 230,000 were made homeless,but that’s their karma for dolphin killing, ‘those intelligent creatures!’.
A fully vegetarian lifestyle has its effects on the local wildlife. While it doesn’t necessitate the killing of cows or chickens, small animals are killed at a rate of 15 per hectare to raise vegetables (moles, rabbits, mice). This is not really discussed, though. They’re pretty invisible.
I do have to wonder, why those guides decided to let Dr. Palmer kill Cecil?
Surely they knew which lion it was.
They weren’t out to get Cecil. They just wanted the money.I doubt they paid any attention to which lion it was.
I see! I keep hearing about how well-known he was, but you’re right, at that distance they probably didn’t know.
That’s a legitimate question, Crella. Was Dr. Palmer part of a legitimate safari and in an area that permitted hunting? No one has said otherwise. The problem behind all this is the fact that it happened in Zimbabwe, one of the most corrupt and impoverished nations in Africa… which ain’t sayin’ a little!
No, the problem is that this guy likes to kill big animals for no good reason.
Maybe there was a good reason beyond a foreign hunter looking for a trophy. Only so many predators can be supported in any given area. If a government can cull those packs and earn money besides from licenses, it works to their advantage.
I remember manning our sail machine gun on a couple of occasions, when Greenpeace was harassing us. That was the only time in my life when I actually wanted to shoot people. Filthy hippy assholes. Stupidity like that really pisses me off.
If its just you and them- and in international waters- indulge yourself! The sea swallows many without a trace… and posterity will be grateful.
We had 16 ICBMs onboard. They were lucky our skipper was a patient guy. Here we are, getting ready to go underwater for the next 3 months to make sure the Russians didn’t nuke us into a glowing glass parking lot, for sub-burger-flipping pay, and we have to deal with this ignorance and ingratitude.
If I was in command of a boomer with at least sixteen thermonuclear warheads on board and some idiot tried to crowd me, it would be his last mistake in this world.
We had some crazy adventures on that thing. We even almost sunk it once . That is, not on purpose, and with the water on the inside too. That’s why, instead of a Blue and Gold crew, the Kamehameha had a Wet and Dry crew (we were the Wet crew).
I have a good buddy here in Houston who was also in submarines, Joe. Conventional ones! Guppies. They did some spy work in those things because a battery driven vessel is as quiet as it gets.
Ha! DBF! I would have loved being on an old Diesel.
He told me about some operations they performed in the Sea of Okhotsk that I probably shouldn’t even talk about!
You can’t beat a Diesel for sneaking around. They are the last word in quiet when on battery power.
That’s why they still build them. Germany has a line of subs for poorer nations that utilizes high capacity batteries and quiet gas turbine engines for surface propulsion or snorkel cruising. They’re a damn sight cheaper than nukes and require much less advanced logistics to keep them going.
But “Cecil’s” cubs will likely meet the teeth of a rival lion in the next few months, however miserable their father’s “advanced years” in the future might have been…
Did he have cubs?? If so- and if mama can’t defend them- then I see some good work for the animal activists in that direction!
It just perpetuates the cycle though…
No father figure in these cubs lives and they’re even more likely to run into a white guy with a weapon and be killed by them.
It makes them sound like kids growing up on the south side of Chicago!
Or those of an abusive stepdad.
Jack, I haven’t read the other post on this as my time is limited. I don’t like trophy hunting but looking at this from the dirt poor 3rd world utilitarian side, where is the empathy from our fellow citizens for the people who require rich American trophy hunters to come in just to survive. Or how about recognizing the impact these hunters have on conservation? I have spent time in several Africa countries and it changed how i evaluate poor and downtrodden. The link below captures the issue very well. It would be great if we could get these results without trophy hunting but the economics make it unlikely. Thoughts?
http://conservationmagazine.org/2014/01/can-trophy-hunting-reconciled-conservation/
Consequentialism. The trophy hunters just like killing things. Their act doesn’t become ethical because it may, in some cases, cause beneficial results by some calculations. A serial killer in an over-populated third-world ghetto can be given the same credit, no?
Sorry Jack, it is a given killing for just pleasure is unethical, I was looking more for an evaluation of our fellow citizens demanding 3rd world citizens go without a much needed resource when their main argument, population reduction of endangered animals, would actually increase if trophy hunting ended. Do utilitarian ethics factor, survival, for the 3rd world citizens?
Are you asking if we should prevent poachers from killing rhinos for horns and elephants for ivory and whales for scrimshaw,or, for that matter, from raising poppies for heroin when such measures stop poor people from earning a living? How is that different from arguing that its unethical to punish theft, since poor people steal? Doesn’t that involve an assumption that there are no legal, societally beneficial and environmentally responsible ways for these people to make a living?
No i am talking a hypothetically legal Zimbabwe hunt, hypothetically since it will be some time to find out if this one was.
I’ll bet Alizia would make that argument.