A pathetic spectacle
Bob Rogers of Maumelle is certainly a man's man. If you missed last Sunday's sports section, you would know what this true outdoorsman is made of. Bob took a "safari" trip to Africa after bidding for the right to kill an impala, springbok, and a wildebeest for $750. He then sprung for an extra $2,800 to slaughter a greater kudu, $450 for a black springbok, and $300 for a warthog.
Here's how a true hunter operates on these "safaris." He hires a professional hunter to guide him in a vehicle into an area where these creatures have been lured with water and food. The professional hunter then spots the animals with his binoculars and sets up Bob and people like him for the kill. What a true test of manhood. If you missed the pictures last Sunday of a triumphant Bob standing over the beautiful creatures he bravely slaughtered, it was something to behold. The article also stated, "If you want to shoot a white rhino, the trophy fee is $75,000." Perhaps a collection could be taken up for Bob as apparently the price goes up the more manly the creature being killed is.
Thank you, Bryan Hendricks and the entire Democrat-Gazette sports staff, for glorifying this pathetic spectacle last weekend.
ANTHONY LLOYD
Hot Springs
Hunting better death
I love to read hunting stories in your paper--duck hunting in south Arkansas, or hunting in Africa. I cannot afford a duck lease or an African hunt, but thank goodness some can.
Those hunts employ dozens of poor folks, and those African animals were going to die anyway--and a quick death by a bullet is way better than being eaten alive by a lion or hyena.
EDWARD CHEVALLIER
Horseshoe Bend
Haranguing the Fed
It should be no surprise that someone who finances his business empire with debt would be haranguing the Federal Reserve about zero or even negative interest rates.
The Federal Reserve is independent and apolitical. Cynics might come up with several reasons for the president to push for zero interest rates, none of which have anything to do with the economy.
ANABELLE STEELMAN
Fayetteville
Not what affects us
Why are the cable channels so mesmerized by President Trump's ridiculous tweets? It's his policies that affect us. He will continue the ridiculous tweets as long as they are the "tweet of the day," and as long as the media spends days talking about them over and over. Some people will believe a lie when they hear it over and over, and we know he lies.
The people the president appoints are in charge of his administration. This is what affects us; not his hyper tweets. The media should be telling us about his policies. We get it about his immigration policy (immigrant people are not human beings to him or possibly anyone who agrees with him), but tell us what his educational and environmental policies are.
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the president is trying to do a lot of damage to the nation's resources. It has his administration in court, battle after battle. Our natural resources are going south and some people are wealthy because of it. (I believe anyone who sucks a natural resource out of the ground and mining owes the people of that state, or states, a share of the profits.)
The president has been into a lot of things that affect us other than the tweets we hear on cable television.
MILLIE FOREE
Bella Vista
A long lobbying arm
Your recent feature, "Pages from the Past," in which you include replicas of pages of the Arkansas Gazette in past years, is greatly appreciated by students of history. Your reproduction of the May 24, 1934, issue of the Gazette was accompanied by an introduction which highlighted the description of the killing of the famous outlaw duo Bonnie and Clyde on that day's front page.
Despite the titillating description of that famous shootout, your editor may have overlooked an equally important article just a few columns away on that front page.
That article reported a speech made by Assistant Attorney General Joseph B. Keenan to the General Federation of Women's Clubs in Hot Springs on May 23, 1934. In that speech, Keenan lamented the "lobbying and deluge of telegrams" by the National Riflemen's Association to kill a bill in Congress "to enforce identification of purchasers of firearms."
The article continues, "'It seems as though the National Riflemen's Association is more powerful than any other organization,' Mr. Keenan declared with indignation 'and I'm asking this question--Who is running this country?'" He went on to cite statistics showing that the United States, with 7,000 homicides by firearms each year, had a much higher percentage of firearm deaths than other nations.
Some things never seem to change. One has to ask, with gun deaths currently around 40,000 each year, what role has the over 85 years of bullying, heavy-handed lobbying tactics of the NRA played in creating our violent, gun-saturated society and culture and the new norm of weekly mass shootings?
DAVID WILSON
Fayetteville
Repulsive slaughter
I couldn't agree more with Nancy Fredenburgh's comments regarding the story of a Maumelle resident who slaughtered five large animals on an African safari.
The act of the "hunter," hideous and cowardly though it was, became more repulsive by the attempt of the columnist to justify and normalize the act by comparing the relative costs of other such hunts as if to say, oh, it's OK to needlessly kill exotic animals, it doesn't even cost that much!
How fragile must the egos of these heroes be if eradication of defenseless animals makes them feel good about themselves? Animals can't fight back; they rely on instinct and evasion.
Small wonder we have almost-weekly mass shootings. Hunter and murderer--the psychopathology looks familiar.
JERRY LOWERY
Little Rock
Editorial on 09/15/2019