Cheney, cont'd

Just a bit from the transcript of the FOX News interview with Cheney that I thought was interesting:

Question: Will it affect your attitude toward this pastime you so love in the future?

Cheney: I can't say that. You know, we canceled the Sunday hunt. I said, look I'm not -- we were scheduled to go out again on Sunday and I said I'm not going to go on Sunday, I want to focus on Harry. I'll have to think about it.

Question: Some organizations have said they hoped you would find a less violent pastime.

Cheney: Well, it's brought me great pleasure over the years. I love the people that I've hunted with and do hunt with; love the outdoors, it's part of my heritage, growing up in Wyoming. It's part of who I am. But as I say, the season is ending, I'm going to let some time pass over it and think about the future.

Just posting this because it asks something I hadn't even thought about.  I'm trying to imagine the reaction had he in fact gone hunting the next day, as scheduled.  "Yeah, shot him on Saturday, but I wanted to get back out there, try again, get some more birds."  I mean, having grown up in the city, I absolutely admit that I just don't understand hunting and it doesn't make any sense to me why anyone would want to go around shooting animals.  Intellectually, I recognize that people do this and enjoy it and if I'd been exposed to this as a normal part of life growing up I suppose I'd feel differently, but it just seems to make no sense why we'd want to be going around killing things.  I eat meat, I understand meat comes from animals, I understand those animals die and I eat them.  But there's something about shooting an animal yourself that's pretty unappealing to me.  I guess it's hypocritical for me to feel that way, but to eat meat.  I don't know.

Comments

[Matt Astle]

I come from a long line of hunters, including Wyoming natives, and I have shot a few animals myself, so I know what Cheney's talking about. There's something about the primal oneness with nature that hunters really enjoy. It's about being out there in the quiet wilderness looking for food like our primitive ancestors did. Hunters are usually among the biggest nature-lovers I know. They don't hunt so much for the thrill of the kill (it's not all THAT thrilling) as they do for the experience of the day in the fields or in the mountains.

Maybe the reason why I've decided I don't like to hunt is because I don't respect and love nature enough. I simply find hunting BORING. Sure, there's a couple of seconds of excitement when you see the animal you're after and take aim, but the rest of the very long day is just a tramp through the hills, and it gets monotonous really quick. But that tramp through the hills is the best part to people like Dick Cheney and my dad.

Of course, as any teenager from the West knows, the Number One thing to be thinking about when you're hunting is not how pretty the mountains are. It's safety safety safety. As we've seen in this episode, a miniscule lapse can have huge consequences. (Although in the Hunter Safety course I was required to take to get a hunting license, they never talked about how if you violate the rules of hunter safety the media will jump down your throat and you'll get front-page criticism for a week around the world.)

[PG]

One of my friends thinks that keeping animals to eat -- i.e. raising pigs, cattle, chickens, etc. -- is immoral because it demeans the animals and puts humans in a godlike position over them that we abuse. But hunting, especially with a bow-and-arrow or other relatively low-tech equipment, is OK because it puts us on the animals' level and in that sense is more genuinely "primitive."

[Yep]

Good post and comments JB. However, the animals you eat did not die, they were slaughtered. I went to culinary school prior to law school and let me tell you, if you are animal, it makes no difference whether you are getting shot by Tricky Dick Cheney in Texas or plugged in the head with a bolt gun in a slaughterhouse. Being a tasty animal sucks, so it goes.

[Sean]

I've sometimes felt it hypocritical for me to eat meat and be against the killing of animals. I feel they have the right to live, and I assume there are other ways to "experience the day."

I eat meat, because my not eating meat will not prevent any animals from being killed. Add to that the fact that I do like eating meat, and that's probaby why I continue to do so.

But I could never kill one myself.

[he who is known as sefton]

Maybe, you're wondering how come I landed on your blog. If so, you might want to apportion some of the blame to Evan Schaeffer's http://www.legalunderground.com, which by the bye has a rather neat blogroll.

Anyway, upon visiting your little nook in the vast galaxy of the Internet, I surmised you'd welcome some insight concerning President William Jefferson Clinton.

I, for one, can be easily persuaded that President Clinton introduced ... ah, maybe not in so many words ... "evolutionary economics". Acting within the constraints, imposed by this new economic discipline, the man made possible the hope that the nation's national debt could be discharged.

For more details, regarding this insight of mine, one needs only click on the hyperlink below:

http://hewhoisknownassefton.blogspot.com/2006/02/bubba-da-prez-intryode-evolutionary.html

toodles
....../
.he who is known as sefton

darn ol'paranoid me ... before depositing a comment here on your blog, I sent an e.mail to some 63 law school professors about the article, found at the other end of the above hyperlink.