Excellent op ed, The Bloody Rise of the Vote Hunter, by author Paul Theroux in The Guardian. Truly a must read.
All this talk about moose hunting! It is as though, because of the animal’s enormous size and imposing antlers, bringing one down is a heroic feat of marksmanship. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Henry David Thoreau wrote in The Maine Woods, killing these big, gentle, myopic creatures is more “like going out by night to some woodside pasture and shooting your neighbour’s horses”.
[…]
American politicians seldom take notice of American writers, especially the boldest ones, like Thoreau, whose every word is at odds with their grovelling and grandstanding, and their sanctimonious cant. Think of the average politician today and then reflect on how Thoreau had no time for organised religion, how he mocked clergymen, jeered at missionaries, warmongers and Bible-thumpers. He was a defender of John Brown and the rebellious spirit in American life, and especially a proponent of human rights. He hated the thought of the wilderness being opened to development; he wrote scathingly of lumberjacks and logging operations. He would have cheered the demonstrators and sign-carriers outside the Republican convention in St Paul. He would have mocked the people inside. He would have denounced the prison at Guantánamo. He wrote against injustice; he despised politicians and hunters.
[…]
There is hunting for sport, and hunting for the pot; and, of course, hunting for votes. The name of Teddy Roosevelt, the hunter, the moose skinner, was invoked just the other day at the Republican convention, in Fred Thompson’s praise of Governor Sarah Palin. This mother of five is now celebrated as a moose hunter and, more than that, as a moose skinner, moose eater – and perhaps hanger of moose-head trophies. As Governor Palin was delivering her acceptance speech, an immense colour photograph of Alaska was projected behind her on the giant screen, where in the twilit foreground a moose could be seen, placidly staring at its reflection in water. And on the following day, in the video that encapsulated her life, Palin was described as having risen early with her father on cold mornings in Wasilla to go moose hunting, to augment the family’s diet.Moose hunting is now seen as a possible Republican vote-getter, especially as the hunter in question is a slightly built and bespectacled mother of five. This casting against type presumably has the same effect on the public imagination as the revelation that defensive tackle Roosevelt Grier found relaxation in needlepoint.
(The Grumpy Vegan had to look up the reference to Roosevelt Grier and needlepoint. Learn more here.)
