When Sarah Palin first arrived on the national scene I sent out a DawnWatch alert making it clear that DawnWatch is not partisan. Regardless of common views and even of legislative voting tendencies, animal advocacy is not an issue of the left. Some of the strongest animal advocates in government have been Republicans and some of our greatest adversaries have been Democrats. Further, for the sake of the animals, we must avoid claiming animal advocacy as a Democratic issue. The animals need a lot more than fifty percent of the public on their side.
In the last election, however, it was hard not to notice the difference between the presidential tickets. Barack Obama was the only presidential candidate in recent memory willing to say that he did not hunt -- without any reference to fond childhood memories of the pasttime. As the newly elected president, Obama has chosen Cass Sunstein, an outspoken proponent of animal rights, as his regulatory czar, and thereby shown significantly more comfort with the issue than we have seen in the past from US presidents. On the opposing ticket, Sarah Palin was known for her enthusiastic participation in and support of any kind of hunting -- support that went as far as proposing that polar bears be taken off the endangered species list and hunted.
My suggestion at the time was not that the animal advocacy movement focus on slamming Sarah Palin and therefore the Republican ticket, but that we be grateful that for the first time ever, a candidate's hunting habits had become a controversy. That controversy gave us a platform from which to speak on behalf of the animals -- and at the time it was the most widely watched platform in the world.
The aerial hunting of wolves is not new, and neither is opposition to it from the Defenders of Wildlife. That group realized, however, that some of the media attention on Sarah Palin could be channeled onto the issue. Sarah Palin is still very much on the scene and is still an excellent magnet for media attention, which can be drawn to any aspect of animal cruelty that she supports. And the aerial hunting of wolves has not stopped -- it is being stepped up. So Defenders of Wildlife has just released a new video, narrated by actress Ashley Judd, slamming Sarah Palin for her support of the program -- and, voila, Ashley Judd and the president of Defenders of Wildlife were on Larry King Live last night, Friday February 6, discussing the new clip. You'll find the Larry King Live segment, which opens with that video, on Youtube in two parts at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TB2nxydFLw
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXKlzOLGv6Q&feature=related
You'll hear some great points from Judd and some support of Palin's wolf hunts from Jack Hannah. (Anybody who has read Thanking the Monkey knows not to be surprised when Jack Hannah speaks against the animals.)
What does concern me about the focus on aerial hunting is the suggestion that it is somehow worse than other non subsistence hunting. Unfortunately most people who accept hunting as a traditional American "sport" are unaware of the extraordinarily high wounding rates; a hunter will often injure but not immedialy kill or catch up with the animal, who is left to wander through the forest with a gunshot wound that may be excruciating. Research on bowhunting, for example, has shown wound rates as high as fifty percent, yet there has been little outcry against it. And oddly, a pivotal point used to set aerial hunting, particularly over snow, apart from other hunting -- the inability of the clearly visible animal to escape -- could be the very thing that makes the method at least somewhat less ultimately cruel. What is wonderful, however, is that thanks to Sarah Palin, this issue has captured the attention of the media. And regardless of what type of hunting is being discussed we a
re finally seeing, widespread, the message that animal suffering matters. It is a relatively new message on the mass media front. The Larry King segment, in which Ashley Judd and the head of Defenders of Wildlife were invited to discuss aerial wolf hunting, fortified that message.
Please thank Larry King for the segment. It is vital that the producers of news shows learn that the public wants these issues covered -- regardless of the involvement of controversial politicians and movie stars.
Larry King Live takes comments at:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form5.lkl.comment.html?12
Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com . You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)
Please go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com to read reviews and see a fun celeb-studded video, and an NBC news piece on Karen Dawn's new book, "Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals," which was chosen by the Washington Post as one of the "Best Books of 2008."