Thursday, 30 July 2009

Sarah Palin, Hollywood, wolves


This is from a pro-Palin site, on Wednesday:

Well, folks - here is a Palin Prediction that took only three days to come true:

$arah Palin, quitspeech on Sunday: do what’s right for Alaska when the pressure mounts, because you’re going to see anti-hunting, anti-second amendment circuses from Hollywood and here’s how they do it. They use these delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets...

Huffington Post, also on Wednesday:

Sens. Diane Feinstein of California and Ben Cardin or Maryland introduced legislation that would explicitly prohibit hunters from shooting and killing wildlife from aircraft.

Delicate, tiny, very talented US Senate starlet Diane Feinstein and action hero Sen. Ben Cardin have mounted a Hollywood circus against hunting and the second amendment...

Yes, Palin fans' perceptions are sooo accurate!

Now, seriously, I found an interesting article by Jill Missal, entitled "The Legend of the Wolf: A Trip to Hollywood".

One passage refers to a film made in 1983, Never Cry Wolf:

Never Cry Wolf (1983, Carroll Ballard), the well-known adaptation of Farley Mowat's entertaining novel, was by far the most sympathetic wolf movie I watched. The movie's main character, a young, inexperienced biologist, is sent to the Alaskan bush to determine if wolves are responsible for the decline of a caribou herd. The biologist observes a small pack of wolves and soon learns to understand their behavior and structure of their society. He sees them as a family (especially after they have pups), but the movie does not sugar coat the facts of the wolves' carnivorous behavior. They are shown hunting caribou and other animals, but never in a way that makes them look irrationally vicious...

Small correction: the plot takes place in Canada, not in Alaska, although it doesn't alter the findings of the biologist or the relevance of such findings regarding the issue in question.

The discussion about wolves an their predatory behaviour appears to have started at least 25 years ago. The author of the article explores the impact of Hollywood on the public perception of the wolf as a bloodthirsty, vicious enemy and how it achieved its bad reputation.

The Board of Game, appointed by $arah Palin, has strong links to commercial and trophy hunting organisations, as highlighted here.

$arah Palin's "Hollywood needs to know, we eat, therefore we hunt" soundbite doesn't reflect the truth. The predator control schemes in Alaska have very little to do with subsistence hunting, it's all about special interests groups.

If anybody is fond of mounting a circus, I would say it's the quitter ex-governor herself. There are: the Family Circus, the Evangelical Circus, the Letterman Circus, to name a few... all bearing $arah's fingerprints all over.
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