Maybe these baboons have heard of A.A. Gill. Photo: Tambako the Jaguar
And all because he just wanted to get a sense of “what it would be like to kill someone.”
The latest Twit-storm kicked off in Britain today when high-profile restaurant and television critic A.A. Gill decided to devote half his Sunday Times column to his experience of shooting a baboon while on safari in Tanzania.
Why? “To get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone,” of course.
In the column, which ran on Sunday, October 25, Gill recounts in full, Technicolor detail how he shot the baboon from a mere 250 yards while hunting in “a truck full of guns and other blokes.” He explains how he felt the urge to be “a recreational primate killer” – then went ahead and shot the animal through the lung. “You see it in all those films,” he writes, “guns and bodies, barely a close-up of reflection or doubt. What does it really feel like to shoot someone, or someone’s close relative?”
Inevitably, the column prompted outrage from animal rights groups. Steve Taylor, of the League Against Cruel Sports, called the act “morally completely indefensible”; Claire Bass, who undoubtedly has the perfect surname for wildlife manager at the World Society for the Protection of Animals, said: “It’s hard to say what’s sadder – the unnecessary death of a healthy baboon or that [Gill] has so little regard for the life of another creature. The vast majority of visitors to the Serengeti have a fantastic time shooting with cameras, not guns. We condemn the killing and the crude portrayal of it as ‘entertainment’ in Gill’s column.”
The RSPCA also condemned Gill’s actions but allegedly could not act against him because the shooting took place beyond its UK jurisdiction. As Steve Taylor also commented in The Guardian, “If he wants to know what it’s like to shoot a human, he should take aim at his own leg.”
“If he wants to know what it’s like to shoot a human, he should take aim at his own leg.”
Strangely, Gill has found some support. Commentators have pointed out that the baboons are classed as vermin by some in Tanzania. Oh. Right. So perhaps Gill was merely doing the locals a favour and saving their crops? What a benevolent soul – maybe we should be thanking him. But wait. Safari parks are not farmsteads and the closest Gill has ever gotten to vermin control is keeping himself in check – which he doesn’t tend to do very often as we’ll see.
Others have said only non-vegetarians should be permitted to express outrage. Well, I’m no vegetarian but I don’t go around performing drive-bys on cow sheds or kicking my way through chicken farms with scythes strapped to my ankles. You don’t have to be a bio-ethicist to know that there’s a difference between killing for food and killing for fun.
No.
Gill is right up there with those other contemptible imbeciles, fox-hunters. In fact he admitted as much in his article: “baboon isn’t good to eat, unless you’re a leopard. The feeble argument of culling and control is much the same as for foxes: a veil for naughty fun.”
“Naughty fun.” I thought taking your partner to a sex show or raiding your parents’ drinks cabinet when you were 13 was “naughty fun,” not riding around in a truck wasting defenseless wildlife with big guns. If that’s naughty fun, what’s insensate and needless animal slaughter?
Restaurant critic/baboon killer, A.A. Gill.
There’s that and then there’s the smugness.
Gill knows full well he’s done something obnoxious – “it can’t be mitigated”- and with his savvy understanding of the media knows it’s going to get him talked about. Sentences like “I took him just below the armpit. He slumped and slid sideways,” or “They die hard, baboons. But not this one. A soft-nosed .357 blew his lungs out,” are built to provoke, and sure enough he’s found himself a ‘trending topic’ on Twitter and the subject of a slew of outraged articles like this one.
No surprise then that Gill is no stranger to controversy.
Dressing up an ugly superiority complex as caustic humour he has described chef Gordon Ramsay as “a wonderful chef, just a really second-rate human being”; the Welsh as “loquacious dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls.” And Albanians, to Gill, are “short and ferret-faced, with the unisex stumpy, slightly bowed legs of Shetland ponies.”
All of which could be quite witty if it didn’t come from a man with a heart dark enough to want to know “what it might be like to kill someone.” What next? Sex with a praying mantis so he can “get a sense of what it might be like to procreate with someone”? One can only hope.
Community Connection:
Are your travels contributing to animal cruelty? Read From Elephant Tourism to ELephant Voluntourism, one of the many articles about animals in our archives.
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That is despicable. Even as a vegan, non-vegetarians and vegs alike should feel outrage at this senseless and moronic killing. I doubt there was a “recreational primate” urge to kill; instead, I could bet it had all to do with stroking a bloated ego and igniting press for himself.
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Playing the devil’s advocate here: I think Gill wrote a remarkable piece on a horrific activity. While he mention’s “naughty fun”, I detect a hint of cynicism; after all, he wrote “I examined his fingernails with the same surprise and awe I did when my children were born.” As a father, drawing a physiological tie between something he shot and his own progeny elicits a powerful degree of emotion. It also opens up a fascinating world of introspection (hateful and otherwise). In a way, he has drawn a great deal of positive from something stupid and senseless (much like many of the greatest short stories in the history of American literature…but I digress…)
He is, thank God, honest about the uselessness of shooting ANYTHING in this day and age. By contrast, your average hunting/NRA-member TV show host will glorify every little death as some sort of contribution to the world’s safety/the morality of mankind/national security/the nutrition of their spouse/children; this, right before thumping their chest and pissing on the carpet to notify others about their property ownership.
On an individual level, I abhor the thought of unnecessary death (I grew up and live in the land of rifle deer hunting, with many friends who hunt, yet I, personally, have never pulled the trigger on a living thing). However, Gill approaches this topic with a combined eloquence and disassociation that makes it almost a service to his readers. Gill is, quite simply, in a different position than most of us–he can approach things as a form of “public” thought experiment, provided they are legal.
If I were to attack anything, I would attack a country that allows rich white men to meander across their borders and shoot anything they pretty much want. Hell, you can kill whitetail deer/black bear/turkeys/foxes/etc., in Wisconsin, but if you do it outside of season the DNR will take your car, confiscate your weapons, fine you in the TENS of thousands–and they are VERY proactive in this endeavor.
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Olivebeard. interesting that you think blowing away a defenseless baboon is justification for a piece of (allegedly) potent writing. Presumably the holocaust was also a Good Thing because it similarly “opened up a fascinating world of introspection (hateful and otherwise)”? Hm, I thought not. Your statements are astute but (to me) illogical. Let me ask you this: if A A Gill is such an eloquent writer, why couldn’t he imagine the scenario instead of enacting it?
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PS – I totally agree with you about the NRA and also that the countries which allow this to happen being equally to blame.
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He wanted a sense of “what it would be like to kill someone”? Umm…does this not send off warning bells in anyone else’s head?
I really, really hope there is such a thing as bad press.
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Sullivan: “holocaust” and “Hitler” parallels seem highly cliche’ in such arguments, but I’ll bite.
What I would argue is this: IF Restaurant Critic A. A.Gill had systemically murdered millions of Jews, Gypsies and enemy combatants in a convoluted plot to create a “pure” race AND he wrote a deep, moving, introspective work about exactly how he feels during the process, THEN I would conclude that maybe we would be best to learn something about human nature through those writings.
(I would argue that such lessons about the holocaust have already happened–lessons that were not learned prior to WWII and thus cost millions of lives)
Finally, let me answer your question with a question: Would you expect a virgin, possessing brilliantly eloquent writing skills, to accurately describe sex? Surely a “good” writer can watch a few YouTube videos and “imagine” that, no?
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Beardolive: If we’re saying “can subjective experience strengthen narrative impact in the hands of a good writer” then it goes without saying that this can often be the case. However, story-tellers and fiction writers have been doing an equally dynamic job of fabrication for as long as we’ve been able to string sentences together.
But the corollary of what you’re suggesting in this thread is that it is worth pursuing an evil / morally reprehensible act in the interests of reflecting upon it afterwards, and therefore ‘deepening’ the human experience. This is simply false logic. You have your ends and your means confused.
Yes we can learn from terrible experiences. And it is possibly good to do so. But alas that does not justify the act (or acts) in the first place, for if the terrible deed hadn’t happened, then we would obviously not NEED to reflect or learn from it.
And by the way, I wouldn’t necessarily expect a virgin to give me an “accurate” description of sex. But I might nonetheless enjoy or be inspired by his or her description of it. And who knows, I might even prefer it.
If you meant this as a meaningful analogy, it’s redundant since having sex is not a crime comparable to killing a defenseless animal in cold blood; plus “the virgin” would be writing from a victim’s point of view, not a perpetrator’s. A more accurate analogy would be whether I would expect a rapist to accurately describe his (or her but mostly his since most rapists are statistically men) assault of an innocent victim. And the answer would be the same as my initial response to the Gill incident: I’d rather they imagined it than acted it out.
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Sorry, “would-be rapist”
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(PPS – I appreciate your comments on this post, they have been thought provoking even if I don’t agree with all of them. Are you a regular visitor to Matador?)
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Gill’s just earned my respect.
My dad was a game hunter in the ’50’s and he taught me to kill baboons when I was 12,since then I must have shot about 60-70 of them and its riotous fun each time.
Baboons lurch around often after shot,kind of like a bad actor in a b movie.
Then they thrash around before they expire and look like curly from the three stooges spinning around on the floor.God put man in charge of the lesser beings,and as father explained to me,we have lord and dominion over them
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