Remember this: In the Narnia Chronicles, Aslan is tied on a mound, clipped and sacrificed in Edmund's stead. The children watch from afar as the White Witch mocks Aslan and slays him with her knife.
Recently, I read the exploits of Melissa Bachman's African lion hunt. This story is making the rounds, but I could swear this is not a new picture. There is also this lady that wants her banded from hunting in Africa ever again. 5000+signers...... Am I suffering Deja vu?
Let us look at the facts. Bachman entered Africa, went to the Maroi Conservancy, shot a lion during an African government approved legal lion hunt. Took some photos and posted on Twitter. Outrage ensued. Enter enraged African woman that wants Bachman banned from hunting in Africa. Petition ensues. Online drama commences. Bachman shuts down and goes into the Bachman Witness Protection program.
Here I say to you, in my personal opinion that I in no way share the same mentality of Bachman. I do not like or dislike Bachman. I don't condone or judge the way she lives her life which is her's to live for fair or foul. I do not ever desire to hunt African wildlife---ever. My life and hers are two totally different landscapes with different consequences. I see Bachman's life as entitled and excessive, but like Marilyn Monroe, she has built a hunting persona that is displayed to the world. Whether that is the real person; viewers will never know because she is after all a television personality. I don't understand why, as a woman, she gets more refuse than the men thrown at her.
Marilyn Monroe became entrapped in a persona of her own making to please the populace and made her way in Hollywood, at the expense of her life quality. This eventuated in her suicide due to the personal and public pressures from herself and other people. Bachman is no different. On one hand, she is tormenting herself, satisfying the reputation and relationships in the hunting community, trying to be strong and take it like a woman, fight for what she believes, and stand against a legion of people en masse that want to crush her for their belief and that she is a total, vile creature that kills, kills, kills. I bet if they had a wooden pyre and a match you'd see people stomping around crying, "Let the witch burn". This I find very disturbing. We are suppose to live in a civilized society, yet there are online words that indicate threat of bodily harm, rape, and aggression towards Bachman that is unprecedented. If I went by the posted words of others, they are guilty of something just as insane as what they accuse Bachman of doing. Both are in the wrong to some capacity yet are oblivious to the fault in the self, or others.
This is a good example of unintelligent drivel from a person that is looking for a few post hits.
http://bentrovatowhippingboy.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/an-open-letter-to-melissa-bachman/
What this person is typing is more like two steps from showing up at her house to sexually accost her or rape her dead body after a couple of people have made the rounds with her. Truly what is wrong with people? This and the behavior online of people shows in the deep recesses of peoples' hearts they feel vindicated at threatening another person even before there is a trial. Just on Peter Allison's Facebook page people are lining up on it saying they are going to or want to kill this woman. One woman has so many haters. Just one woman mind you not 100,000. 1: (some odds) is insanity by insanity standards yet there it is. The world police at its worst.
Our world has become nothing more than an online lynch mob aimed at ruining the life of one unimportant person that is the size of a flea on this huge world. Yes, Bachman in the eyes of the universe is a flea as is everyone else. Yet there are people that spend all day long trying to eradicate her like HIV with plenty of researching and online forays. I can only imagine that energy fueling some impoverished country. Threatening this lady into conforming is not what those that try to enforce this aggressive threatening behavior would want done to them. Yet they feel impervious to the implications of bad societal behavior because they feel justified. Must be nice to stand outside of the body and judge the acts of another when poor decisions and judgments are made every day by less than saintly people. Here I am not so much defending Bachman outright but don't throw stones at glass houses unless you are going to proclaim yourself the Second Coming and bring on the Rapture.
What is this trouble that follows Bachman?
The trouble with Bachman is she has the means to finance hunts, kills the animals then displays the footage as entertainment. This can be taken as a waste of life in order to make a show otherwise why are you taping it to show on television? Every move she makes is to support her employ and way of life but at what cost? Her problems come from the way in which she chooses to drive her constructed persona without consideration for how the public at large would receive the imagery or her attitude about the way she kills. It is never unheard of that a person can lose site of their audience especially when there is an unintended audience. When it comes to viewers that are totally against Bachman, there is a clear clash of worldview both on a personal, spiritual, and international scale.
I was conversing with an artist about his work and the work of a man he was enamored with. Both artists' work is considerably different in context, tone, and subject matter. The latter artist, I found to have rich colors, but very repulsive imagery that made me think painful hidden thoughts and fear from within my psyche. The artist I was speaking to used soft tonal colors with imagery that was slightly scary but displayed in a way to take away the fear. After all, art is made to bring out the emotion in your hidden consciousness or subconscious. It conveyed that for me, art could either be accepted or rejected based on the image the artists painted and the general mind of the viewer. The viewer will either cry that the work hits a chord in your soul, or run from it like a blazing building; never to look upon again.
This is the case with Bachman. If she were a work of art you would either have a happy crier or a shrieking banshee. Unfortunately, the banshee lived in Africa and couldn't live with the image of that dead lion. This also brings up the point that as children we see stories on television, read books, or make up things in our minds. The Chronicles of Narnia by now is an embedded set of images in the minds of people. As well as the symbolic image of a lion as a king on a banner, C.S. Lewis's metaphor for God, or a dying species. People that are not into hunting or have an aversion to it could possibly see Bachman as the White Witch looming over the dead body of a lion called Aslan on the mound while she mockingly smiles over the destruction of the beast which is the same as the image a reader could get from C. S. Lewis's book or the made for television movie back in the day. (Not the movie set currently). When Bachman killed that lion I don't think she could imagine that someone somewhere in the world could see the contrasting imagery of two separate events; one real, the other a bit of fiction but so eerily similar. Yet, the emotion of how the event is absorbed makes all the difference in the world to how the consequence will develop. Bachman is being turned into a cold-hearted pariah that kills for mindless killing sake, even if that may not be what she is in truth. There are people that would argue, "If it sqwaks like a chicken....." Last time I looked, Bachman doesn't have superpowers. She is a human being, with failings, and one day could change her whole worldview. No one knows if she might, in her old age, decide her perspective on the way she lived her life was right for her or wrong. That is Bachman's road.
I began to think of this situation and knew there were some truths about this.
Bachman was getting unprecedented advertising for her show and her life, Ergo, she does shut down all avenues to her and her websites upon public outrage every time she throws a flaming hunting cocktail via the trophy photo. These online trophy photos are displayed because the poster knows it is going to cause controversy and aims the attention at them. (Let us not forget how Miley Cyrus completely distracted the world from the Syrian debacle and the Blurred Lines of Alan Thicke's Beetlejuice pants). It is a truth when negative situations go down your colleagues act like they don't know you and the instigator hopes the shitstorm will blow over. (Sorry Russia...I cuss therefore I am.......very truthful.) In the long run, I don't see how this is going to hurt Bachman even though she was ousted off NatGeo for the Alaskan show. I am sure there are hunters out there wanting to hold her up on their shoulders while proclaiming she is the best example of what a female hunter should be. That is second to the women that are all but nude while holding a gun. Wait a minute? Maybe Bachman is second, because male hunters like the fantasy gun-toting huntress with the big bazingas and a piece of string up the crack. Hard call that one.
I considered the lone African animal activist on the grassy knoll.This Scarlett O'Hara type drama that unfolds via the animal activists does absolutely nothing for the animals. It just feeds more online wars, donation requests from hunting and animal activism so both sides can tell you how it feeds the economy. Hell this could be no more than a publicity stunt. I guess the one where the hunter shot the elephant on NBC wasn't working out so well so they moved on to a female. Bachman for some time has pissed people off and intends to do it. The lion is dead. There is a legion of animal activists feeling surges of power as they mount their online armies to fight against one lone woman.
I am more mystified by the behavior of all involved. If Bachman shoots an animal legally what is there to say? If you stop Bachman from going to Africa then everyone else that is going there to shoot an animal dead shouldn't be allowed on African soil. Is Bachman so important or threatening that as one woman, she must be punished or eradicated off the face of the African landscape. I guess for a hardcore extreme huntress there has to be a hard-assed animal activist with the idea to punish Bachman to the worst extreme possible--African Hunting Outcast. I conclude that the African lady against Bachman is of the same mentality; both want to exert control over the living and the dead.
As far as lions, I believe if you are going to conserve the species make a better plan. Spend time on that idea. Do the work and stop standing around an imaginary fire pissing on it with poor aim. People need to spend time on the things that matter that actually make a difference for the positive. If you don't want hunters killing lions, go to your government, speak to them, lobby, do what you have to do; spend time on that. Learn about conservation and get a job doing the work. Make the world a better place and become the thing that is right in the world. I do not believe in killing off numbers of animals to extinction. Nor do I believe that if you aren't going to put it in your mouth and eat it, don't kill it. I do believe that I can wake up in the morning and do something right like plant a bunch of trees, breed fish in a pond, raise froglets, understand my world, when people in the world don't understand me, and encourage more life than what I take. Being dirt poor will do that to you and the myth of the Welfare Queen is a blatant lie.
Don't waste time on one unimportant person when there are millions that deserve a foot up and not their face in the dirt. People cruising the internet looking for people to crush do not seem to be people out to uplift anyone. If you are tearing a person down that is all you are doing; tearing them down. You will not stop at one because people back up to the buffet of life and shove as much to eat in their little pie holes as they can stand, vomit, then shove some more.
5000+ people trying to stomp down one woman is not what is right in the world either. There are countries with people fighting disease, poverty, political, racial, and life injustices yet 5000+ people spend time trying to step on one piss ant.
I was thinking on this article as I walked down a dirt road today that seemed endless, but alone I tread. Sometimes you have to meditate and go it alone. The world is a cruel, hard place with lots of judges, and very little justice. On you must walk.
Written by: W. Harley Bloodworth
~Courtesy of the AOFH~
