On Tuesday, the world lost its collective mind – whatever is left of it, anyway – when media discovered the identity of the killer of a Zimbabwean named Cecil. Cecil is a lion. Cecil, a lion, was by most accounts “one of Africa’s most famous lions.” Cecil, incredibly, was famous for being a lion, not for curing cancer, although you wouldn’t know that by the media coverage.
The man who shot Cecil, a lion, to death with a bow and arrows is Dr. Walter Palmer, a big game hunter who allegedly paid $55,000 for a big game permit. He hired a guide, who lured Cecil, a lion, out from a protected area, where Cecil, a lion, then met his end. Dr. Palmer released a statement about the killing of the lion:
I hired several professional guides, and they secured all proper permits. To my knowledge, everything about this trip was legal and properly handled and conducted. I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt. I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt. Again, I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion.
Authorities say that Palmer and his guides lured the lion out from the protected area deliberately to hunt it, then cut off its identifying tag. That’s gross.
The ridiculously disproportionate worldwide response is grosser.
The death of Mufasa has drawn an amount of scrutiny that can only be described as insane. The dentist is now in hiding after death threats. Those death dreams come from some of the world’s top celebrities. The execrable Piers Morgan, writing for The Daily Mail (UK), stated today:
I will sell tickets for $50,000 to anyone who wants to come with me and track down fat, greedy, selfish, murderous businessmen like Dr Palmer in their natural habit. We’d lure him out with bait – in his case I suggest the fresh blood of one of his victims would be very effective as it seems to turn him on so much – and once lured, we would all take a bow and fire a few arrows into his limbs to render him incapable of movement. Then we’d calmly walk over, skin him alive, cut his head from his neck, and took a bunch of photos of us all grinning inanely at his quivering flesh.
Dr. Palmer, it should be noted, is a human. Cecil is a lion. And Piers Morgan is a turd.
Other celebrities also grabbed their pitchforks for the now-biweekly sport of “let’s find a jackass doing something nasty somewhere on earth and ruin his life to make ourselves feel moral.” Jimmy Kimmel, the clod who gets paid to make funny faces on ABC, compared Palmer, who killed a lion, to Bill Cosby, who allegedly drugged and raped dozens of human women. This, to put it mildly, is not a valid analogy. (Notice that Kimmel would never compare Palmer to alleged rapist Bill Clinton, either.) Kimmel asked if Palmer needed to kill lions to “get an erection.” He then choked up on air over the death of the lion. Kimmel, it should be noted, is not a vegetarian, at least publicly. He is also not a morally intelligent human being.
E! Online ran a piece calling for Palmer’s death: “If it were possible, we’d revoke his status as an actual human being. … Personally, we wish someone would let these three loose in the jungle and see how they like being tracked for sport.” E! cheered people posting negative Yelp reviews on Palmer’s profile and shutting down his business. “Good job, Internet!” chortled the outlet.
Debra Messing tweeted that she wanted Palmer’s citizenship revoked. No word on her opinion on sanctuary cities in the aftermath of Kate Steinle’s murder.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), one of the most egregiously morally inverted groups on the planet, called for Palmer to be hung. They tweeted, “If, as reported, this dentist & guides lured #CeciltheLion out of the park with food so as to shoot him on private property because shooting #CeciltheLion in the park would have been illegal, he needs to be extradited, charged, &, preferably, hanged.” PETA had no comment on Jericho, the next lion in line after Cecil, who is expected to kill Cecil’s cubs to replace him in the pride line.
We eagerly await comment from President Obama, who will undoubtedly tell us that Cecil’s death moves us all and that if he had a lion king, it would have been Cecil.
Many of those particularly upset about the death of Cecil, a lion, are supremely upset over the fact that Jericho, the next lion in line, will presumably kill Cecil’s cubs. It may be the circle of life, but Jericho just can’t wait to be king, and our moral leaders can’t feel the love tonight. These same moral leaders are decidedly unconcerned about the dictator of Cecil’s home country, Robert Mugabe, who oversaw the violent theft of white-owned land and has imprisoned and tortured his political opponents. They had nothing to say about Mugabe starving animals, including lions, all over his country, for years; they certainly have nothing to say about the fact that trophy hunting actually forwards preservation in many African nations. They also have little to say about Zimbabwe’s humans, nearly one quarter of whom have been infected with HIV/AIDS, nearly 80 percent of whom are unemployed, 84 percent of whom risk contracting malaria, and most of whom will die under age 40.
The American media have spilled copious amounts of ink and spent enormous amounts of bandwidth ginning up the mob over the death of Cecil, a lion. Meanwhile, the major media rush to ignore the fact that Democrats now force American taxpayers to foot the bill for hundreds of thousands of murders of babies by organizations, including Planned Parenthood; the media believe that a dead lion ought to trump Planned Parenthood carving up murdered babies to sell their body parts, Mengele-style. Celebrities who weep over Cecil, a lion, cheer when women across the United States decide to suck their baby’s brains into a sink so that Planned Parenthood can distribute its kidneys for purposes of research.
The same celebrity class lamenting the death of Cecil, a lion, now stand alongside their beloved President Obama as he facilitates the deaths of thousands of Arabs and Jews in the Middle East by funding the leading terror regime on the planet, Iran, and paves the way for a consequence-free Iranian bomb, presumably to be used in the genocide of some six million Jews. Obama has presided over the rise of ISIS, which hacks the heads off babies, and the left have nothing to say about it. Boko Haram continues to abduct children for sex slavery and murder, and the White House continues to hashtag about it – no comment.
Cecil was 13 years old. So, too, was Anthony Diaz, killed in gang warfare in Chicago in February. You haven’t heard Anthony Diaz’s name, because he was a Hispanic kid killed for posting on Facebook. He wasn’t a lion. Neither are the seven people murdered in Chicago last weekend. Neither are the people who will be targeted in Los Angeles in a gang contest in which members seek to target 100 innocents for death in 100 days. And neither are people like Steinle, who will be victimized by illegal immigrants while the federal government seeks to stop anyone who wants to enforce immigration law.
But never mind. A nasty guy illegally killed a lion 9,000 miles away. By all means, let’s go nuts. After all, it makes the left feel good to weep ceaselessly over the illegal poaching of anthropomorphized wild beasts even as they facilitate evil against actual human beings all over the planet, including right here in the United States.
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.