Unheralded

TONY J BENDER: That’s Life — Liberals Are Gunning For Your Freedom

I’ve about had it with snowflakes and it’s barely December. I saw on Fox News that the #MeToo movement is trying to stamp out romance.

What’s under assault is the revered seasonal classic, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” A Cleveland radio station took the song off the air under pressure from radicals in pink hats because it’s about a guy trying to convince a woman not to walk home in a raging blizzard so he can keep her warm with alcohol. (When Bill Cosby wrote the song, Uber wasn’t an option.)

It’s weird that this sensitivity is emanating from Cleveland of all places but it’s weirder still that no one but Tucker Carlsen understands that the guy in the song is legit trying to save the woman’s life. This may be connected to the War on Christmas, but I’m not a 100 percent sure. I think it’s like Jesus dying for our sins except in this case the man wants to sin to save the woman from dying.

The attacks on freedom don’t end there. Now, do-gooders are up in arms because a 12-year-old Fargo girl used deadly force to defend America against the conspiratorially underreported wildebeest invasion. The 600-pound animal was dispatched in South Africa. We have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.

Forget the national defense implications, any trophy hunter will tell you this is about showing respect for the animal by killing it. Correction: The correct term is “harvesting.” And if you accidentally shoot your guide, it’s “collateral damage.”

Pro-animal-lifers make it sound like this wasn’t a challenge — like you’re machine-gunning Shetland ponies at a petting zoo or tracking a wounded buffalo from one end of the corral to the other during an authentic Old West hunt in western North Dakota. Corral hunting is more complicated than it sounds. For one thing, when you frame the photo of the buffalo and the city-slicker wearing his neatly pressed camouflage attire from L.L. Bean, you have make sure the feed bunk isn’t visible.

This was different. Man (OK, girl) against beest. Life and death. But mostly death. This animal was respectfully wounded, first by an arrow, and then humanly finished off two hours later, with a rifle. The hunt took place at a game preserve, although the preservation part of the equation didn’t come into play for this particular wildebeest.

Experts like Ted Nugent, who has hunted everything but the Viet Cong, will tell you there are two kinds of hunters — trophy hunters who just decapitate the victim and hang the head on the wall of the den like the Trump Boys do, which is OK, and hunters who actually eat the meat, which makes it even more OK. On this count, I feel that Jeffrey Dahmer was unfairly maligned. They didn’t actually ship the meat back to Fargo, but they did eat wildebeest for dinner. Tastes like chicken.

Regretfully, hunting has become a political statement. If I see a guy open carry an AR-15 into Taco Bell I’m thinking, “Trump supporter.” I’m also checking the bathroom stall for wildebeests just in case he’s there for some reason other than making sure they remember the guacamole.

I’m a gun owner despite Obama’s best efforts to seize them, but some might say that I’m not a real hunter, which would be true — not because I’m a liberal, though. I’m just bad at it. I hunt the way Mike McFeely fishes. He’s out there drowning worms. I’m sightseeing. I’ve killed more deer with my pickup than I have with Grandpa’s 30-30. And when the wildebeests get here, I’ll run them over, too.

© Tony Bender, 2018




One thought on “TONY J BENDER: That’s Life — Liberals Are Gunning For Your Freedom”

  • Jackie Brodshaug December 4, 2018 at 11:49 am

    Great column. I love it.

    Reply

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