Selective Outrage Strikes Again: Texas Cheerleader/Huntress Turns Everyone Into Armchair Activists

Politics absolutely makes for strange bedfellows.

I’m relatively clear about my feelings towards guns, gun culture and many of the issues that surround it. I’m not a huge fan, and yet, I don’t feel as if we should take every gun from every hand. When I say, “we have to get the guns”, I actually don’t mean all of them…just most. Particularly the ones that end up out on the streets.

Part of gun culture is the world of hunting. Maybe it’s my Midwestern background, but I’m actually not anti-hunting, at all. While not an avid hunter, I have been on hunts, and I’ve enjoyed them. When I moved to the East Coast, I left my rifle behind, but not my opinion on the whole matter.

Once again, the Internet is crackling with outrage about 19-year-old Kendall Jones, a student and cheerleader at Texas Tech University. Kendall is like many all-American white girls from a big Texas family. She loves God, her family, her boyfriend…and she loves to hunt. Kendall isn’t just into hunting regular game like deer, she’s a big game hunter, and she’s gone around the world, hunting some of the largest preserves (more on that later) in Africa. Even worse, she has the nerve to be proud of it.

Of course, because the Internet disapproves of such things, because, y’know…Lion King.

I’ve had this theory, as I have many, but this one surrounds the idea that our love of animals, particularly large non-domesticated animals in the wild that would have no problem stomping you or eating you alive are somehow sacred creatures with souls because of cartoons. From The Jungle Book to The Lion King, studios like Disney converted the image of ferocious beasts into cuddly surrogate friends. Who wouldn’t want to hug Simba or have fun with Baloo?

 

So when the image of one of these creatures shows up dead, with a pretty little girl standing over it, somehow that’s simply unacceptable. All of a sudden, we have to petition to have Kendall banned from travelling abroad or even being on Facebook. Like any of these things would ever have a leg to stand on in a court of law.

Look, if you believe in animal rights, good for you. I suppose we all have to believe in something, but my problem is the naked hypocrisy that surrounds situations such as these. It’s times such as this that we must be honest with ourselves and each other about why we get outraged with some issues more than others. Do you have a problem with hunting in general, or do you have a problem with the image of attractive women hunting? Is the domain of hunting that of paunchy, unattractive rednecks? It must be, because there are literally hundreds of hunting expeditions a year, but it’s only been an issue when the hunter in question was an attractive woman. Case in point: Melissa Bachman, who faced similar opposition after she posted a photo of her posing with a lion she shot was posted on Facebook.

Now to be clear, both petitions had their genesis in South Africa, so I can see the opposition a South African would have to an American coming to their country to hunt, even though the economic impact that comes with hunting in Africa has proven very beneficial, generating yearly income in the hundreds of millions. In fact, a study published in the journal PLoS ONE makes the claim that allowing limited lion trophy hunting in Africa, rather than bans called for by numerous animal conservation and welfare groups, might better benefit the species as a whole.

In 2011, Environment Magazine published an article that stated,

“Hunting bans across Africa have been relatively ineffective in protecting wildlife, as they reduce the value of wild animals and therefore reduce local interest in protecting the animals. Since the establishment of the hunting ban in Kenya in 1977, the country has recorded a decline in number by 40 to 90 percent in most animal species.

Alternatively, hunting tourism has been extremely successful as it attaches an economic value to the wildlife and therefore encourages the cooperation of local people in conservation efforts for economic gain.”

The point here is that there are a number of viewpoints on the subject of big game hunting abroad, and these arguments for or against are far more complicated than taking out what seems to be misguided outrage on a girl who probably knows more about animal conservation on a first-hand basis than the sheer majority of those who “hope a gorgeous African animal takes its own revenge on [her] one day for all the beautiful souls [she] shot.”

One of the many arguments against Kendall is that she hunts for trophies, and maybe if she hunted for food, then it wouldn’t be as large an issue. Oh, well…I happened to stumble upon this photo here:

This is a photo of Kendall posing over an elephant she shot…with all the food going to the men and women who you see pictured along with her. They don’t look all that outraged, and they live there…so what’s YOUR problem?

That’s an honest question you must ask yourself, because it goes further to explain how manufactured outrage works. More often than not, outrage comes from a mixture of mob mentality and lack of overall knowledge on a certain topic. And even though the Internet offers a wealth of knowledge on any subject, this level of accessibility seems to only make us lazier and more reactionary to what we perceive as moral outrage.

Spend some time learning about the things you get so pissed off about. Stop falling over yourselves to demonize people because they do something you don’t. Most of you pissed off about Kendall Jones going to Africa to hunt will likely never go to Africa yourselves. Most of you rarely leave the confines of your own cities and towns, relying on media to tell you what the world looks like.

To put it simply, that’s bullshit and it’s that level of small-thinking that makes bleeding heart liberals no better than ball-busting selfish conservatives. Both sides are driven by outrage of their own choosing, and it makes one side just as bad and as hypocritical as the other.

Hate hunting? That’s fine. Want to save the animals? How about you do it from somewhere other than your computer desk or smartphone.

That’ll be a good start.