Do We Care More About a Dead Lion, or Dead
Children?
By Joe Clifford
July 31, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
- What a strange and frightening world we live
in. We shed crocodile tears for “Cecil”, the preserve lion of
Zimbabwe who was killed by a sport hunter in a very unsportsmanlike
way. It got the attention of all the media outlets, and we even had
one late night comedian in tears for our friendly lion Cecil.
Meanwhile not a whimper, care, or tear, for the little baby who was
burned alive in his home as Israeli settlers set fire to his home
this week. We all know Cecil’s name, but no one knows the name of
the dead baby. We shed not a tear for 135 civilians including 75
children of Palestine, killed in what Amnesty International called,
“a day of carnage”, after its investigation of the vicious Israeli
attack on Gaza in 2014. Not one tear.
It was the great former War correspondent for the NY Times, Chris
Hedges, who said: "I have never before watched soldiers entice
children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport", as he
described Israeli soldiers kill children. No tears. Not even worthy
of mainstream media’s attention.
Who cares about the mess the US has made in the Middle East by
bombing everyone and killing well over one million people in Iraq.
Who cries for the 650,000 innocent Iraqi children who died because
of the brutally imposed US sanctions on Iraq? Certainly Madam
Albright, the then Secretary of State, did not shed a tear when
asked if the deaths of 650,000 children was worth it. She casually
answered, with not even a trace of one tear, “Yes it is worth it”.
Any tears for the 194 Iraqis who were killed yesterday? Nah; not
even worth media coverage, let alone tears. But Cecil’s death is
another thing.
Either we are a very strange people with very confused human
emotions and priorities, or mainstream media focuses on superficial
things to divert our attention from the real issues of the day. For
the sake of mankind; I hope it is the latter.
Joe Clifford lives in Rhode
Island
Why We Care More About The Death Of A Lion Than
A Thousand Dead Children
By Rebecca Greig
July 31, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"IBT"
- Do you prefer pets to people? Even, or especially, when those
people are your family? Does your adoration of our furry-footed
friends extend to animals big and small, the fierce and the docile,
the wild and the tame?
You’re not alone.
Recent research
suggests that people are twice as likely to give money to save a
dog than help a dying child.
Cecil the lion is no
exception. The unlawful killing of the big game animal in a Zimbabwe
safari park led to worldwide
condemnation.
Jimmy Kimmel, a prominent U.S. talk show host,
just about
cried on TV.
Cecil’s killer, a Minnesota dentist with a
whiter-than-white smile, is reportedly in
hiding after his identity was revealed. Dr. Walter Palmer’s Yelp
review page has since been flooded with furious
threats.
"Nothing in this world would give me greater
pleasure than to see your head mounted on a wall, your carcass
defiled, degraded and paraded as you did to Cecil and near countless
other animals," wrote one person.
The death of a lion, especially one that has been
killed illegally, is unwelcome and unfortunate, but is it a tragedy?
One person
dies from armed conflict every minute - the number of deaths
from road accidents is double that. Every day around the world an
estimated
21,000 children die from the consequences of poverty -- that’s
one child dying every second from hunger, preventable diseases and
other related causes.
Four million newborns are dying in their first
month of life and half a million women die every year from
childbirth and pregnancy-related complications. Since Syria’s civil
war began four years ago,
more than 220,000 people have died.
The death of Cecil has captured the public
imagination in a way that thousands of dead Syrians hasn't. Why do
we care more about the death of a lion than a stampede of shootings,
stabbings, gang-rapes and torture?
Is it, to use Joseph Stalin's oft-quoted
phrase, that, “one death is a tragedy, one million is a
statistic?”
Or is it something more?
Humans can watch news of whole families
obliterated in times of war, and put the thought to one side as they
go to eat dinner. But if a beloved pet dies or a partner goes off
with someone else tears and recrimination can last for months.
There’s a logic to this way of thinking.
People can only cope with so much suffering, the
rationale goes. We are most affected by those close to us, stories
we can relate to, animals who ask nothing more of us than food and
affection.
But there may be another factor at play.
It wasn’t just any old lion that died -- it was
Cecil — a man among lions,
distinctively maned, and the subject of an Oxford University
study. A safari park official called him “an icon,” but he was
more than that -- he was a celebrity.
Every year, Americans
kill 360 lions -- a Cecil every day -- where are the tears for
them? Where is the outrage?
Cecil has a name. He cannot be forgotten unlike
those other, nameless, lions.
Dr. Palmer, a long-time hunting enthusiast, did
not regret killing a lion but he regretted killing Cecil.
Speaking to the Star Tribune, Dr. Palmer said, “I had no idea
that the lion I took was a known, local favorite.”
This is the heart of the problem - if you’re
killed, it helps to be a celebrity, whether human or beast.
For the rest -- the three-quarters of a million
black men
incarcerated in the U.S, the tens of thousands of
child brides in Bangladesh, the 3000 African children dying
daily of malaria -- suffering goes mostly unnoted and unheard.
