Call Me Racist. I Don't Care Anymore

     For the past few months your faithful correspondent has been reading news accounts about poor, benighted "refugees" from North Africa and parts of the Middle East basically invading the shores of Europe. Usually these people have arrived in fairly large boats or small ships, and by the time the boat or ship is noticed it is about five to ten miles off the shores or Greece, Italy, Sicily, France or Spain. And, with no exception, the boat is out of fuel and the people have no food or water. Europeans, being the saps and nice people they are, usually pull the boats to shore, place the "refugees" in camps of some sort and the "refugees" escape the camps and try to get to the interior of Europe or to Great Britain; and then, the Europeans, being the saps and nice people they are, place the people into other camps, from which the "refugees" escape and try to blend into the neighborhoods of their cohorts in Birmingham or Paris or Tournai and are soon sucking off the government teat and demanding that the natives destroy their pig statues on the front lawn, or that bacon not be sold at the local Tesco because it's not halal. (Thank you the spirit of John Owen for helping me to write such a long sentence, but one that is much shorter than any of yours were).
     Now let us understand that this writer considers the only true refugees from the Middle East or North Africa to be Christian refugees. The others are economic refugees in the same way that Mexican or Central American illegal aliens are not looking for a sort of freedom or liberty, but they are looking to make money to send home. And be it known that this writer sympathizes with economic refugees. But the problems of their nations are their problems and not our problems. They have votes, they have guns, they can revolt. Their economic problem is not our problem and the economic problems of a crappy life in Libya or Syria is not Europe's problem.
     If the Europeans had any damn sense, once a boat of poor benighted Somalis or Syrians was spotted off the shores of a European nation were the Coast Guards of said nation would speed out to the boat, lash the boat to the Coast Guard ship and then start towing it back to where the boat came from while throwing bread and water to the people on the boat. And once within ten miles of the place of origin a ten gallon can of gas or diesel would be thrown to the boat and the boat cut loose.
     What the European elite (and the elite only think of their own well-being and not the well-being of their nations, as do the American elite; Hey! Cheap gardeners, nannies and maids) don't realize is that they are sowing the seeds of the destructions of their own nations. They seem to think that if they will identify themselves with the modern version of the sans-coulottes in they and their families will be spared the guillotine of Islamism while everyone else gets the chop before they do.
     Consider the fact that there are several European nations, as well as Great Britain, that have official state churches supported by the government; Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland. And that several other countries are considered by default to be Roman Catholic: Spain, France, Italy. With every entry of a Muslim, and these nations are all too eager to accept every Musselman that can stand, the nation becomes less Christian. Let's face the fact that most European nations are barely Christian. But there is, by the scent of an earlier Christian society, something that still influences those nations with a Christian ethos despite the nonsense of same sex marriage. Heretofore Europe has abandoned the Faith because of an evil Germanic and French existentialism. But the abandonment is to the aggressive Islam what an abandoned house is to a house wrecker: something to be knocked down and replaced by something worse.
     The real question is this: Is your nation worth being a nation? Is your culture worth saving? Life's often a rotten bitch sometimes and occasionally one has to do things that seem cruel or uncaring to survive. And sometimes the thing that seemed to be cruel and hard against another person is really the best thing for that person.
     But, hey! What does this writer know? He's just a racist white guy.

Wha?

     Be it known that your faithful correspondent and his lovely wife do love and appreciate antiquities. To us antiquities are physical remnants of times past. We often think as literature and music as the marks of a civilization, but, in fact, the physical remains of a civilization reflect the lives of the common man better than do literature or song. We have such works as Ovid reflecting a sort of Roman life, but Pompeii and its remains or the catacombs of Rome much better reflect the lives and concerns of the average Roman of the time.
     Having said that, let it be known that we here at Bloody Nib Manor value the lives of people over the preservation of antiquities.
     This week the UN and a couple of other historicists have pitched a bitch about ISIS destroying some antiquities in Palmyra. Heretofore these eggheads have been pretty silent about about the killings and rapes of innocent Christians, Yezhidis and Muslims prepretrated  by ISIS. In other words, they are more concerned about pieces of rock, stone, gold, silver and wood than they are about human lives. They are, in a sense, the worst of the Hebrews who built the Golden Calf (and if they did find the Golden Calf they would worship it). This bunch of egghead idiots are more concerned about a statue being destroyed than the lives of many people being destroyed. In a real world, and not a world infected with academicism, these fools would be sent to an island far, far away where they can practice their mental masturbation without having the rest of us listen to their nonsense. They say that you are killing the world by firing up a Camel straight while they are saving the world by saving a bloody statue while a Christian girl is raped and then killed by a barbarian.
     God help us all for putting up with this nonsense.

Free Speech

     We here at Bloody Nib Manor often find ourselves pondering (when we aren't verbally abusing the maids or kicking the gardeners in the bum) what Progressives mean when they say that they are Progressive. What are they Progressing from? What are they Progressing to? And do they mean that while they are on this journey of Progresseivism does that mean that they expect us to Progress with them? Good luck on that, comrade.
     After, when not cleaning his elephant rifle or sleeping off a VSOP indulgence, your faithful correspondent has given some thought to this matter. The only answer that he can give is that Progressives are progressing from freedom to totalitarianism. In other words, a march from 2015 to 1984 or from Jolity Farm to Animal Farm.
     Consider the matter of freedom of speech. One can not even use the word "midget" without some height deprived person jumping up in an attempt to punch one in the button. One wonders when old re-runs of McHale's Navy will be banned because the sailors on the program used the word "nip" instead of Japanese or John Wayne's WW II movies being banned because of the use of the word "Jap."
     It's all silly and stupid and a brouhaha created by people who have nothing better with their lives than bitch about what other people say or think. These people, in a real world where men and women worked for livings instead of sat at desks and pretended to be "thinkers", would be working in coal mines, machine shops, at drafting tables or at sewing machines instead of sitting around and trying to figure out a new bitch to pitch about. Luxury creates one of two things; a defense of luxury or a denigration of luxury because of some sort of misplaced identification with the unwashed masses. The latter really aren't interested in bringing up the polis. They'd rather pull down the uppers. After all, it's easier, as evinced by ISIS, Red China and Soviet Russia, that it's much easier to pull down that build.
     The Progressive leisure class wants a My Little Pony world. And they are more than willing to have you sacrifice your rights in order for them to have their silly dream. The Progressives want not only your money and time, they want your words and thoughts. And they will lie cheat and steal to be "honest" and "compassionate."
      Read this:
     http://www.wsj.com/articles/even-speech-we-hate-should-be-free-1440165276

Men In Hats -- Why Should Men Wear Hats

     Any of those readers who are not long time readers of The Bloody Nib may find themselves wondering about last Sunday's post about the fedora hat and ask themselves why would Lord Nib write about something as minor and, in fact, old fashioned, as men's hats while most of the time his writes about political and cultural issues. Hats seem so, for want of a better phrase, out of it.
     But long time readers are aware that this writer and all the inhabitants of Bloody Nib Manor are conservative and value tradition. The cat still plays with balls of yarn and sniffs catnip instead of doing YouTube things such as building Lego castles or attacking coyotes.
     So the question is: why hats? Specifically, why men in hats?
     This writer is of the opinion that outside the house or office or church a man should wear a hat. There are three main reasons.
     The first is protection. In areas where there is snow and freezing men where hats to keep their noggins warm. In very sunny climates men wear hats to keep the sun off their faces. Nowadays, in climates between the two extremes men have lot the habit of wearing a hat for some strange reason. But the fact of the matter is that in any climate a hat offers protection. A mild climate is mild for only short-lived organisms. It is not mild for humans. A 72 degree day at the beach is as oppressive to one's body as a 100 degree day in the desert. Living in a neighborhood in which many Chinese and Korean senior citizens live this writer has noticed that the Asian seniors always where hats or caps while outside and they look much younger than their Hispanic cohorts, who do not wear hats. Wearing a hat (a real hat and not a cap or a visor) offers protection against premature aging of the skin by the sun and from skin cancer from over-exposure to the sun.
      The second is public self-identification. The hat one chooses, if one has chosen one's hat wisely, reflects one's personality. A homburg identifies one as a swell. A trilby identifies one as a rakish swell. A fedora identifies one as a serious man. A pork pie identifies one as a bit of a goof. A cowboy identifies one as either an adventurer, a South westerner or a poser. An eight panel cap meant that one was a working man or a golfer. A straw boater or panama hat means that it's summer. A beret means one identifies one as an outsider. Baseball caps, are to the the hat wearer, an anathema; baseball caps should be limited to baseball players or waist gunners on World War Two bombers. Navy sailors, in the past, wore either Dixie cup caps or flat caps, Marines and soldiers wore either garrison or overseas caps. Convicts wore flat, stripped skullcaps. One's dress, in a sense, identifies oneself, or as one would like to present oneself as, and since people usually look at one's mug, the hat over the mug is the first thing one sees. The important thing is that the serious hat wearer should always keep in mind that the man wears the hat or the cap. The man, while choosing the hat to reflect his personality, is not a slave to the hat. The hat doesn't wear the man. A hat doesn't make the man. An Hasidic Jew wearing a black Stetson with a Montana crown will never be a Yiddish cowboy unless he leaves Brooklyn and goes to Wyoming, mounts a horse and rounds up some cattle. And a Baptist Texan boy, despite wearing a black Bosolino fedora will never be mistaken for a member of the Tribe. Your hat should be you. Not what you want to be. What you want to be comes from within and works out; not from what's on your noggin and hoping that it works in.
     Thirdly is tradition. For thousands of years men have worn hats for the above two reasons. Greek and Roman freed slaves wore liberty caps to identify themselves as free men. Slaves weren't allowed to wear hats or caps unless they were working in the fields on hot days. Hats separated one's public life from one's private life. When the Quakers, upon meeting Charles II, refused to take off their hats before him because they felt that removing one's hat was only a thing to be done at home or in church. The tricorn is identified with the American Revolution, the bicorn with the British navy during the age of sail. Up until the late 1950s a hat was a part of a man's wardrobe. This writer's grandfather wore an eight panel cap for many years, his father spent a lot of money, for him, for a fedora, as a young man. And both of these men lived for many years in southern California where many people think that hats are silliness.. But these people often come down with skin cancer on their ears or are mistaken for a boxboy at a supermarket when they are a lawyer at the supermarket.
     Concerning women's hats? Who knows? Chinese and Korean women in the area near Bloody Nib Manor favor huge visors, while Japanese women prefer straw hats with large brims. Hispanic women seem not to wear hats. And white trash women seem to like baseball caps for some reason. This writer has always thought a portrait hat, whether straw or felt, very nice for any woman.

Men in Hats -- Fedora Edition

     When one thinks of a hard-boiled detective, a soft-boiled detective, a gangster, a plain-clothes cop between the '20s and the '50s, a well-dressed middle class man or man on the skids one often thinks of the fedora topping the noggin of the man. Occasionally the eight-paneled cap (to be addressed in another post) comes to mind, but the fedora is the iconic hat for the period of time from the 1920s to the middle of the 20th century. It was the man's man hat that showed that the wearer was not a man to be messed with because he may have a sap in his back pocket or a pair of fists that had callused knuckles caused by the contact of hand to face.
     Oddly, the fedora, like the trilby, was named after a work of fiction and first popularized by a woman. Trilby was a character in the novel Trilby by George DuMaurier. When the novel was made into a stage play the actress playing Trilby wore a hat that is the basis of the current trilby hat. The fedora hat was first worn by the actress Sarah Bernhardt while performing in a play entitled Fedora. It was a very new thing in the 1890s when the most popular felt hat worn among those outside the working class were the top hat, the bowler and the Homburg.
     So what is a fedora? Basically, it's a felt hat (either fur felt or junk felt) with a a crown of about 4 1/2 tall with a black grosgrain hatband of about 1 1/2 wide, and a brim about 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 wide. The typical American style has a teardrop shaped dent on the top, a pinch in the from and the front of the brimmed snapped down and the back snapped up. Typically Americans and Italians wear fedoras well and the English wear them badly. The typical Englishman wore the hat with the brim flat all around as if they were still wearing a boater. The American style had a bit of snap to it. It was, at one time, to America what the Digger hat was to Australians -- a source of national pride for some and embarrassment to others.
     To this writer there are only three colors of fedora that are proper (ignoring Hasidic Jews, which will be addressed later in this post). Those colors are gray, dark gray and olive. The brown fedora worn by Indiana Jones in the pulp movies is a freak that has gained some popularity in culture. But it really is not good as a color because about the only clothes it can be worn with and look decent  are work clothes and a brown suit. Grey, dark grey and olive go with anything from a camp shirt and jeans to a Brooks Brothers suit. The hat in those colors is infinitely adaptable. The hat is almost a chameleon. It makes a sinister man look more sinister and a kind man look more kind, a tough guy look tough and a mild man look tough.
     Modern Hasidic Jewish men often wear black fedoras, but Hasidic men usually wear black suits and the color of the hat is more an expression of their faith than of personality or fashion. A black fedora is a somber thing almost like the Victorian undertaker's veiled silk hat.
     Over the years since the 1950s various hat makers have come out with fedoras ranging in color from snow white to sapphire blue, ruby red, emerald green (which usually comes out a few weeks before St. Patrick's Day) and anything in between. It would not surprise this writer if a hat maker has not come out with a rainbow colored fedora for the homosexual contingent. And in recent years various fashion houses catering to the hoi-polloi have tried to make the fedora popular by having under-dressed, overly worked out young men wearing fashions that seem to come from the imaginations of a typhoid fevered adolescent wear fedoras of silly colors and often not fedoras at all -- just trilbys called fedoras.
     And that is where the fashionistas make their mistake. In fact, that is wear all modern hat makers make their mistake. They imply that the hat makes the man or completes the man. They imply that the hat wears the man, when, in fact, the man wears and makes the hat. A mild man may wear a snap brimmed fedora and look tough, but by wearing the hat the mild man does not become a tough guy but shows the world that he has an inner toughness that has always been there.
    Be it known that this writer has never owned a fedora. He's still awaiting the day when he can afford to buy one that will last his lifetime. But his father, the late Baron, owned a fedora, and despite the fact that he was the kindest and gentlest man imaginable, he looked like a tough guy when he wore it; and he could be a very tough guy when crossed.
      So, if you're a man, consider yourself in a fedora. Maybe even buy a Borsolino if you've got the money. You have to look at your mug in a mirror and your personality and decided if you're fedora material. You may be a natural trilby or porkpie wearer. If you're a woman, despite the Bernhardt thing, a fedora really isn't for you unless you're working at a dig in the Valley of the Kings.

What's With This Guy?

     As those of you who have met your faithful correspondent are well aware, we here at Bloody Nib Manor tend toward the conservative end of the political spectrum. This does not mean that Republicans are automatically welcomed at the Manor while Democrats are thrown off the porch and the dogs set after the rascals (the dogs are often set on Republicans, too), but it does mean that tradition in both lifestyle and governance mean something within these hallowed walls; novelty is a game for the silly young who usually come to their senses when they find themselves paying for hats for the horses that pull gypsy caravans or are expected to allow squatters live in the billiards room.
     This writer did not watch or listen to the two debates of those aspiring to become the Republican candidate for President of this great nation. It is much too soon to pay attention to this nonsense. In a sensible world all this nonsense would not start until about April of 2016. But thanks to the odious Bill Clinton campaigning has become a year-round and year after year activity among the political class. They are always campaigning, even when they get elected to the office that they have fooled their constituents to vote themselves into. They want not only political office, they want the love of the voters. They explain, dissemble, pose, preen and lie to win love because to them love means votes and votes means that they have a job that really has no true responsibility to any one person or small group of people. They can't be fired without much difficulty because if the voter loves them they are in like Flynn.
     But yours is knowledgeable about Donald Trump. How can one not be. The man is a wet robot megaphone touting his greatness. In the movie Austen Powers there was a character named Mini-Me. Donald Trump is Maxi-Me. One wonders if, when he wakes up in the morning and after brushing and gargling he sings out, "Me-me-me" like an opera singer finding the note, or perhaps pretending to be a comic Mexican by saying, "Aye-aye-aye."
      The man is, to be much cruder than your faithful correspondent would like to be, "an ass-clown." He's rich. But being rich doesn't equate with wisdom. He pretends to be a sort of a "man of the people" despite the fact that he was born wealthy. He claims to have come back from bankruptcy without acknowledging that the wealthy, because of their reputations, come back from bankruptcy much more easily than a working man can. Trump has shown no sense of service to the nation or the society before he decided that he wanted to be king; and the word "king" is the correct word. He doesn't want to be president. He wants to be king. He wants to be a king before the institution of the Magna Carta, a Shogun, a Czar or a Caeser. He wants to dictate and have others jump in the same way that his factota jump at his various businesses when he passes gas. He seems to think that running a nation based on the Constitution is akin to running a business based on owning slums, casinos and building self-aggrandizing buildings that really have no real use for the real world.
     Trump has said a lot of things that have resonated with the populace i.e., illegal immigration. But any idiot can say the same things. This writer has heard the same gas from his barber or at the local pub years ago. Does that mean that this writer would support his barber or the neighboring drunk in their runs for president? Well, actually, he might since these men were humble hard-working men who understood the Constitution better than their elected representatives and wanted the best for the nation. But Donald Trump wants the best for Donald Trump. He really doesn't care about we here at the Manor or you or anyone else. He cares about himself and getting publicity for himself. His politics in the past has been as crazy as a (please excuse the vulgarity) a shit-house rat -- he's been a conservative, a reactionary, a liberal and a radical. And it's all based on which way he sees the wind blowing. He's a big wet finger stuck in the wind trying to be the wind. We forgets the Biblical saying that "the wind listeth where is blowing." We tries to make the wind blow toward him. If, tomorrow, a pol came out that most Americans said that they loved illegal immigration because they got their lawns mowed cheap, hotel service was cheap because of cheap maids and that aluminum wheels were cheap because of illegal immigrant machine operators, Donald Trump would have a couple named Jaqui (pronounced "Yakee") and Ishmael on the dais with him touting the value that illegal immigrants have for the nation.
     So why is Donald Trump pretending to run for President? Who knows? Maybe it's some sort of father issue. Maybe he really is so delusional that he thinks that the United States is a business. Maybe it's because he wants to think that the nation loves him instead of thinking that he's a jerk. Maybe it's because his ego of the sort that Zeus would envy. Just keep in mind this: the man is an echo of popularism and has the same substance of an echo shouted into a canyon.
     And if this fool keeps up with his foolishness to the point of running on a third party ticket the next president will have to thank him for getting elected. And Trump will laugh all the way to the bank.
     Aw, to hell, with it. It's Miller time.

Who You Callin' Honky, Cracker?

       The recent emphasis on race in America has done this great nation no good. It has made things worse. Very worse.
      The "dialogue" on race in the media and the Internet makes the same mistake as psychology; that talking about a "problem" will solve the "problem" when, in fact, it usually makes it worse. Talk therapy is valuable -- for the psychologist, who gets paid a lot of money per hour of "work" and really has no interest in "curing" his or her patient. For no one else is talk therapy valuable. The patient becomes an incessant talker of his or her problems with any damn one and the source of the patient's "problems" are constantly barraged by demands that the person admit that he or she is just a big jerk and who has ruined the "patient's" life by not giving him or her an extra Jello cup in the summer of 1984. And once that the source of emotional and psychological pain finally grudgingly admits (just to shut up the "patient") that yes, the "patient" didn't get an extra Jello cup on a summer's day in 1984, then starts the barrage of questions, "Why?" And if the answer is, "Because you were a rotten brat that day" or "You were late to the picnic" or "You stole Suzie's Jello cup." And then the "patient's" questions become nothing but "Why, why why" until the source of pain says, "I just didn't like you much then. But I like you now. So, shut the hell up." And then a relationship between the "patient" and the "source", which was friendly, or at least civil, before the shrink got involved, turns into a "patient" who is angry over past sins and always will be so and a "source" that is exasperated and eventually hostile towards the "patient" because he or she is just damn tired and really wants nothing to do with the "patient."
     This writer admits that it's a bad analogy, but your faithful correspondent is not a professional writer and thinker, but he thinks that the analogy works.
     Now, consider extending the analogy a bit. The "patient" has a friend who may be a member of your family or clan. This friend has heard the bitches of the "patient." All of a sudden the friend is attacking you in worse terms than the patient. The only way you can satisfy this friend is to fall on your sword after willing your fortune to the "patient" along with a bit to the friend. In other words, you've become a really bad guy (or gal) and you begin to think that all the world hates you except for maybe your mother and crazy aunt.
     This is much the situation, with all this "race dialogue". A person of European ancestry is held in contempt and and expected to feel guilt for the sins of one's ancestors against black people even if one's ancestors did not come to the shores of this blessed country 1880, fifteen years after slavery was abolished. A Jew living in Brooklyn whose ancestors came to the U.S. from a Polish shetl is held to the same sense of responsibility for the slavery of black people as is the descendant of a slave owner in the South. It's odd, because neither of them owned slaves, but for some reason they are expected to feel guilty for something that their ancestors had done or not done. They are supposed to feel guilty, to put it short, because they aren't black or Hispanic. And the worst finger waggers are other European-Americans, whether Christian or Jewish. The sense of guilt that the race mongers have made them feel grows exponentially in their hearts to the point that they hate their own and they are more problematic than the initial complainers in that one finds one's self fighting on two fronts, one of which is part of one's own community. If one says that the fellow travelers are "race traitors" one is labelled with the name, once again, of "racist." If one ignores them one is accused of "shutting down" the conversation. What can one do? Arguing results in "Why? Why? Why?" Ignoring the bitching results in being passive-aggressive.
     One, as an American of European ancestry, finds one's self, in the same position as Japan today. In previous posts this writer has posited that Japan is to Asia what England is to Europe; both part and not part of a larger continent. And Japan, like England and European-Americans find themselves blamed and condemned for things that happened long ago and the present generation is supposed to reperate and apologize for things that they have had nothing to do with. All three are supposed to ignore bad behaviour by minorities as a payment for "past sins."
     The only thing one can say in response for Europeans and European-Americans can do to fight the charges of the evil of the whiteys have done over the years is to demand that those who are saying that those descended from a people originated from west of the Caucus Mountains and north of the Med is to say, "Okay. We're bad. We're really bad and stone evil. And since we're so bad and evil you should probably stop using anything that we've discovered or invented because those things will probably corrupt you. Get rid of your car. Trash your TV and cell phone and computer. Don't have your kids vaccinated. Throw out your guns and gas heaters and water systems. Quit keeping your money in the bank. All those things are European or European-American things and thus, no good. We'll keep all those things for ourselves because they're bad. Good luck, brother." And the same should go in spades for the fellow travelers. After all, they want to be "down with the people."

Just Out Of Time

      Have you ever woken up one morning, looked around and thought to yourself, "I don't know where I am or when I am"? Of course, the previous question is predicated on the premise that one has not spent too much time with Jack Daniels or Buddy Weiser the previous night.
     Your faithful correspondent has found himself waking up in the state described above (not the hangover state, but the cold sober falling asleep and awakening) more and more these days.
     Let us take, for instance the latest Twitter, Facebook and media outrage de jour: the bad hunter dentist and the lion Cecil. From what yours has read, the dentist was a bad hunter because 1.) with his bow and arrow he was not able to kill off the lion and had to shoot the thing. And 2.) because, while he was on "safari" he really had to have the lion basically chased into his range instead of going into the lion's territory. He was, in a sense, hunting in Africa at a place, as illegal as it may have been, that was pretty much similar to places in the U.S. where deer are raised and penned in fenced off area and then are "hunted" by from lairs set up by the owners of the property. The "hunters" are not so much hunting as they are target shooting.
     Be it known that yours has never been a hunter. The only animal he ever killed, to his knowledge, was an English sparrow off a telephone line with a BB gun. He felt bad for that for several days and went back to shooting green army men figurines. But this writer has never been against hunting of animals. The late Baron, when a boy and young man, because of financial circumstances, was forced to hunt for food for his family; squirrel, quail, possum, deer and rabbit. He was proud of his marksmanship and his skill. During World War Two his specialty was hunting and fighting men. After the War he'd had enough of hunting and put his rifle away to be a self protection device. When your faithful correspondent, after hearing many tales of the Baron's prowess as a Nimrod, asked the Baron, "Why don't you hunt anymore?" he replied, "I got tired of killing things. I got a soft heart after the War." But he never was against hunting.
     This writer remembers when on a Saturday or Sunday night on broadcast television (before cable television) that the Nibs would watch "adventure" programs. Some of the programs would feature travels to then exotic lands like China, Tibet, India and Polynesia, as well as Iceland and Malta. Others featured hunting and fishing. It was normal to watch television on a weekend and see a man hunt a lion, a leopard, a wolf, and elephant or a rhino (this writer could never understand hunting a rhino because rhinos, while looking fierce, are actually pretty harmless. Hippos kill more people than lions and/or leopards annually, and no one really hunts hippos, though they should to save human life). It was just part of life. Hunting was just something did and it was accepted.
     One read accounts of Theodore Roosevelt's safari in Africa and saw photographs of TR posing with his kill. One read Hemingway's hunting stories. It was no big deal. TR was the manly president who was also a conservationist. Hemingway was the manly writer and was very popular during his time and for many years afterwards. Fitzgerald, compared to Hemingway, looked like a courtier of Louis XIV; a city boy in a nation of country boys.
     Now the city boys have taken over. In fact, the sissy boys have, in a sense, have taken over. The media and much of the loud Internet really don't understand hunting culture. Consider the fact that if one went to a news stand and looked at the magazine rack among the magazines directed to the male audience would be magazines such as Sports Afield, Field and Stream, Hunting and Deer Hunting. Now one would be hard pressed to find these magazines on the news stand because they've been replaced by "lad's mags", workout magazines and "adventure" magazine such as "Outside" (which seems to be eco-friendly adventures).
     Does this writer advocate the senseless slaughter of wild animals for fun or proving one is a man? Of course not. Neither did the 19th century writer H. Rider Haggard who wrote, among other novels, King Solomon's Mines. In the novel the narrator describes the killing of many elephants for their ivory. After the description he states, "We got sick of the killing" despite the fact that ivory was money and the protagonist just throws down his rifle and walks away while the native bearers strip the elephants of their ivory.
     What we have in this whole Cecil the Lion thing versus the Evil Dentist is a change in the culture; a change in the American culture. Now anything that is not human that has hair or fur or feathers are sacrosanct and every wild animal is Bambi  and every man with a gun or bow and arrow is evil. Davy Crockett killed a bear with a knife and was a hero back in the day. Now guy manages to kill a lion is suddenly the Antichrist.
     If most people pitching a bitch about the dentist/bad hunter saw how their beef, pork and chicken were processed they'd gag, at the least. But they don't and they prefer it that way because they want to be able to eat a nice sirloin or pork tenderloin while thinking that a bad shot dentist is a creep because he wanted a trophy head of a lion while they're chowing down on Ol' Bossy or Babe because they're hungry for some meat.
     And the whole controversy is idiocy simply because those making the most noise about a guy killing a lion haven't said a word about ISIS killing Christians and Yezidhis for no other reason than because those people are not Muslims. The complaining class complain about the dentist paying $50,000 to kill a lion, but they don't complain about Christian and Yezidhi girls and women being sold to ISIS fighters for as little as $20.00. To the liberal complaining crowd the life of one horny lion is more important than the lives of people who are just trying to live their lives peacefully
     In other words, the life of one old lion is more important than the killings and rapes of many Christians, Yezidhis and innocent Muslims according to the media and the Internet.
     Ain't life grand?