INSULTS CLOSER TO HOME

You hunt because you’re a psychopath who likes killing things; it’s as simple as that!

You take the lives of other sentient creatures because you lack empathy and enjoy the thrill of killing.

You have a small penis resulting in doubts about your masculinity, thus you own big guns in compensation.

Then there’s my personal favourite, “real men shoot with cameras!” 

It seems even in this progressive era in which we're constantly told it’s wrong to impose gender stereotypes, or to call into question another’s character with thinly veiled homophobic taunts, it’s quite alright to do so as long as one’s hatred for the individual is deeply enough entrenched.

Journalist and author Peter Fitzsimons

In a February 2015 article in the Herald, columnist Peter Fitzsimons indulged his penchant for self-righteous outrage, claiming he’d been unable to draw hunters out on Twitter to justify their activities to him.

In his article, Fitzsimons levelled the usual ignorant accusations and belittling stereotypical insults at hunters and their motivations, such that one might expect to hear from any drunken barfly.

However, like the many angry people who support Fitzsimons’ pontificate, he gave absolutely no indication, whatsoever, that his motivation for engaging hunters on Twitter was the pursuit of respectful inquiry or intellectual debate.

What angered Fitzsimons was hunters’ refusal to make themselves the targets of puerile insult and ridicule for his personal amusement and professional gain.

He was angered because hunters saw nothing productive in giving oxygen to an aggressor who sought only to make a public spectacle of his ignorance and disdain.

He is not alone in his belief that ill-informed abuse equates somehow to reason and that the higher one’s platform and the louder one hurls insults, the more correct and noble one is.

So why have I chosen to focus on Fitzsimons, you ask...or perhaps you don’t - pfft?

After all, he’s just another angry middle-aged man whose opinions are given voice so his lack of restraint and simplistic tirades might sate the insatiable popular appetite for media witch-hunts.

It’s not as if he doesn’t give us fair warning of his penchant for righteous fury. He does, after all, wear a red cloth about his brain and as many will know attaching a red rag to an extremity has long been the traditional method of identifying a random threat to public safety.

No, his views on hunting are neither original nor, in and of themselves, any more offensive than those of his media colleagues. However, his authorship of various books exploring Australian military history adds an interesting dimension to his proudly avowed contempt for people who enjoy the hunters’ pursuits.

“So let's talk about hunters and let's talk about miserable bastards who get their jollies by stalking and killing defenceless animals. But I repeat myself” is an example of both his contempt for hunters and his willingness to rip-off the quotes of notable authors such as Mark Twain when stumped for original inspiration himself.

Later, in the same article, he claims “killing wild animals is in fact, appalling” and that being a hunter is something worthy of a public apology, which might just about win the reformed hunter a provisional indulgence under the Fitzsimons’ popular pontificate.

The notion of killing wild animals “makes me sick to the stomach” he waxes predictable, later drawing a parallel between hunting animals and the rape of women. 

On many other occasions Fitzsimons has spoken of his abiding contempt for the sorts of men who would participate in the practice of hunting “innocent wild animals” for enjoyment, making it very clear hunters are not the folks he’d be caught dead consorting with.

Yes, he loathes and detests the likes of those who hunt alrighty and he’s proud to say so, but here’s the rub...

Until very recently, hunting was a longstanding Aussie traditional and perfectly acceptable male occupation, enjoyed by almost every rural resident and not a few city-slickers too. Including those we know collectively as Anzacs, many thousands of whom were, apparently, miserable bastards who make Fitzsimons sick; men who get their jollies doing the appalling things he loathes, and gutless cowards akin to rapists etc.

It strikes me as odd that so many in the community can so easily and proudly take to social media and the press, expressing unmitigated contempt for the hunters of today, apparently unconcerned that what motivates us, is what motivated the men of yesteryear, among them their uncles, grandfathers and great-grandfather ad infinitum.

If what motivates us is hatred, a psychopathic lack of empathy, cowardice, blood lust, the thrill of killing for killing’s sake, small penises and our dark inner-rapists, surely they’re all defects that motivated pop, perhaps even nanna and a beloved uncle Bob or two also.

Born in the early 1960s, Fitzsimons is the 7th and last child of northern NSW citrus farmers. Hunting was common in the era, especially among men on the land who hunted for  both practical purposes and recreation. 

Who knows, perhaps Fitzsimons is himself the product of the very "miserable bastards" he finds so contemptible?   

It’s all too easy to forget that hunting is not some recently emerged ‘curse’ besetting an otherwise civilised society and that few Australians can claim to come from four generations of proud city-raised stock that enjoyed neither the opportunity nor the inclination to hunt.

It is all too easy to forget that if today’s hunters are motivated by latent perversions and murderous instincts, our fathers, grandfathers and uncles were the perverts and murderers of yesteryear.

Perhaps some people actually believe this is the case...perhaps they are comfortable levelling vile, irrational and self-serving accusations at their antecedents? 

Or perhaps folk should pause a moment to reflect on the impact their unrestrained, vengeful and highly offensive tirades may have on people who are not strangers to them at all. 

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now....

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