big game hunters

What’s Unethical About This Picture?

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

Maybe nothing.

Let’s see.

Is shooting a big, beautiful male lion who was minding his own business ethical?

The two lovebirds are Canadians Darren and Carolyn Carter, who like killing big, beautiful wild animals. They also are in the taxidermy business, so they create the “art” of preserved beautiful dead animals for those who also either enjoy killing them or who like having the stuffed dead creatures, or just their heads, as trophies or decoration.

It is fair to say that at this time in human culture in North America, simply killing big game for the thrill of it is considered cruel and wrong. The fact that the Carters are taxidermists gives them a little more ballast in a utilitarian argument. In general, killing anything just to kill it is unethical: it ends a life, and life has positive value. Killing an animal to eat it helps balance out the ethical considerations, as we regard human life as having higher value than animal or plant life. Killing a lion to save a human life—as in the situation where a lion is deliberately stalking and killing people, like the two “Tsavo Man-Eaters” responsible for the deaths of construction workers on the Kenya-Uganda Railway between March and December 1898 (dramatized in the film, “The Ghost and the Darkness”) would also be ethical.(Those lions are stuffed and on display in the Marshall Fields Museum in Chicago.)

If one doesn’t deny the value of taxidermy as art, furnishings or as museum exhibits for historical or educational purposes, then maybe the practice has  sufficient value to human life to sustain the argument that killing even a harmless lion to stuff it is ethically defensible. Personally and professionally, I find that to be a weak and rationalization-stuffed argument, but let’s give the Carters the benefit of the doubt for now.

The killing was legal. It was, however, the result also a so-called “canned hunt” in South Africa, where a company called Legelela Safaris arranges  opportunities to shoot magnificent wild animals for a fee. If it’s sport, it’s barely sport, and, of course, there are many, many sports that do not require killing anything. If one can do something without causing harm (like killing a living creature), it is unethical to deliberately do it while causing harm. Yes, the circumstances surrounding the kill are  ethically dubious at best.

What about that kiss? Continue reading →

Ethics Villain: No, Not Bloodthirsty 12-Year-Old Aryanna Gourdin, But Eli Gourdin, Her Irresponsible Father

/ Jack Marshall / 69 Comments

aryanna-gourdin

Aryanna Gourdin, 12, from the town of Cove, Utah, has attracted death threats on Facebook because of her page called “Braids and Bows,” an enthusiastic pro-hunting, pro-big game killing exposition featuring photos of the girl with recent victims and her enthusiastic prose about the joys of the kill.

She’s twelve. Her father (he apparently has sole custody) is the adult hunting fanatic in the family, and he has, as parents often do, passed along his dubious values to his daughter. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that while many people object to photos of mature hunters posing with magnificent creatures that have been slaughtered for sport, many more find images of angelic pre-teens beaming while holding the heart of a recently killed giraffe grotesque and sickening…as indeed it is. All manner of internet hate is being focused on  Eli Gourdin’s daughter, while he casually allows her to become a target.

Her notoriety and the controversy stirred up by photos like this..

Zebra kill

Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: Sabrina Corgatelli, Fick

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

sabrina_corgatelli2

Just as the Cecil the Lion kerfluffle began to disperse (as Republicans try to recruit a dentist to shoot Donald Trump), frequent Ethics Alarms commenter Ing scored a Comment of the Day on my follow-up post about in-your-face giraffe-killer Sabrina Sabatelli, who intentionally mocked the Cecil mourners.

I designated her a fick, someone who publicly revels in their unethical conduct. Ing demurs, and employs the three Niggardly Principles to make his argument. I’ll be back briefly at the end; in the meantime, I’ll add the Niggardly Principle definitions to his commentary so you don’t have to follow the link back and forth.

Here is Ing’s Comment of the Day on the post, Sabrina Corgatelli, Fick: Continue reading →

Sabrina Corgatelli, Fick

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

Sabrina_Corgatelli

Sabrina Corgatelli, a university accountant from McCammon, Idaho, is engaging in such blatantly fickish conduct that I am tempted to change the term “fick” to “corgatelli.” I won’t, because the conduct by the felicitously named Leroy Fick (in proudly declaring to the media in 2011 that he would continue to accept public assistance from Michigan despite winning the state lottery) had no defenders at all, while Corgatelli has thousands of fans who are evidently just as warped as she is. Thus Corgatelli is a fick—an individual who not only engages in unethical conduct but who publicly brags about it—and Leroy Fick avoids the fate of being labelled a corgatelli.

I just wanted to get that bit of terminology housekeeping out of the way at the outset. I must say, however, that at least fick Fick’s motives for his fickism are traditional and comprehensible: selfishness and greed. Corgatelli pays large sums of money to travel large distances in order to kill endangered species. If forced with a crossbow to my head to play Sophie’s Choice with one fick or the other, I’ll keep Leroy.

Corgatelli has set out to taunt critics of Cecil the Lion Killer Walter Palmer by posting  serial images of herself on  social media, posing triumphantly with her big game victims, sporting captions like this one, attached to the photo above: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month AND Comment Of The Day: Ethics Dunce: “Cecil The Lion Killer Walter Palmer…Or Any Big Game Hunter, Really”

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

“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...

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. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Cecil The Lion Killer Walter Palmer…Or Any Big Game Hunter, Really

/ Jack Marshall / 87 Comments

Walter James Palmer, a  Minnesota dentist,shot and killed the famous Cecil the lion with a bow and arrow. The death of the 13-year-old animal has caused an international uproar among conservationists because Cecil was well-known to visitors at the Zimbabwe nature reserve and enjoyed human contact. The lion was lured out of the national park and shot.

In a statement, Palmer said that the authorities had yet to contact him and added that he did not know the lion he had killed was a “local favorite.” “To my knowledge, everything about this trip was legal and properly handled and conducted,” he said. “I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite. I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt.”

Oh, so what? Why is it worse to kill a “local favorite” than to kill any wild animal just for—yechhh–the fun of it? Killing for sport is ethically indefensible, and killing these large, beautiful, and even endangered creatures is ugly, cruel and irresponsible.

After Cecil, the photos show Palmer with some of his other “trophies.” He must be so proud… Continue reading →