The Most Dangerous Game

This week, a tale of hunt and ruthless slaughter gained international attention. A dentist from Minnesota and a locally adored lion from Zimbabwe became victims on two sides of one arduous circumstance.

55-year-old Minnesota dentist Dr. Walter J. Palmer hunted and killed Cecil the Lion, a grown male lion who resided in the area of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, and was a participant in studies conducted by Cambridge University.

Palmer had paid more than $50,000 to participate on a guided hunt of big game in Zimbabwe, led by two local hunters. The hunters reportedly lured Cecil out of the area of the Hwange National Park, where Palmer shot the lion with a crossbow. Upon recovering the lion's body, the hunters attempted to destroy the GPS navigational device attached to Cecil for Cambridge research purposes. Cecil suffered but lived for hours longer. When he eventually died, he was skinned and beheaded by the hunters.

These are the facts of the circumstances surrounding the senseless slaughter of Cecil the Lion. Palmer has acknowledged these facts, and the two other hunters are currently on trial in Hwange.

Now let us consider the aftermath.

Palmer returned to his home and dental practice carrying the weight of international scorn. Positive Yelp reviews for his business have been overcome by a wave of abhorrent comments and criticisms of his hunting pastime. His office voicemail is rife with messages, none of which are from patients to schedule appointments. He has since shut down his practice and begun referring patients to other dentists in the area.

On a wall outside his office, an artist has painted a mural of Cecil the Lion as a reminder of Palmer’s deeds. Outside his door, a memorial to Cecil, complete with stuffed toys, flowers and notes has been erected. Online, celebrities and civilians alike are making their hatred of Palmer openly understood. Tweets are flying, newscasters constantly updating the story. 55 years of Palmer’s personal life and business success have been diminished to a single despicable act. An act that may have been, in part, accidental. So I ask, do we memorialize the dead at the expense of the living? Do we breathe life into Cecil's demise by killing Palmer's character?

Palmer insists that he had no knowledge that the lion he was about to kill was one so valued by the local and scholarly communities. Does that make it right? No, but is he the first person to enjoy hunting big game? Or is he the first to enjoy it, and make a mistake, in the frighteningly quick and critical globalized social network? I do not condone Palmer's actions. However, I ardently believe in the importance of forgiving a mistake. Perhaps his mistake was one of many evils, including the desire to heedlessly slaughter a wild animal for sport. Nevertheless, I beg the question of whether his entire character is, or should be, defined by one interest or action.

Palmer’s quandary reminds me of other stories of international mishap that resulted in the rapid annihilation of identities. Recall Justine Sacco’s admittedly offensive tweet a few months back. She sent her tweet out to her meager 170 followers directly before boarding an 11-hour flight to Cape Town, South Africa. As she flew, so did the current of social demise. By the time she landed, she had gained international attention, had lost her job and respected name, and became one of the most known and hated people in America, complete with her own hashtag; #hasjustinelandedyet.

What Justine said was despicable and offensive. It was racially charged and rude. But does this mean that she never deserves to move on from that comment, or that mistake?

Let’s step even further back in time, to a decade when this sort of social judgment really caught fire. Let’s observe an early victim of a socially driven lose-lose crime. Monica Lewinsky. The sex scandal involving then-intern Monica Lewinsky and then-President Bill Clinton broke in 1998, nearly 20 years ago.

This morning on the news, the woman who brought the scandal to light, Linda Tripp, reportedly commented on Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy. That’s how she was described on the news this morning, "Monica Lewinsky's former confidant, who brough the scandal to light." The Lewinsky scandal still defines her. The Lewinsky scandal still coils around Monica’s individual identity. Why? Society said so. The People declared Monica’s behavior lewd, which it was, but was it what should define the course of the rest of her life? Recently, Lewinsky was featured in a Vanity Fair piece in which she confronted America’s Culture of Humiliation. She says,

“We have created, to borrow a term from historian Nicolaus Mills, a ‘culture of humiliation’ that not only encourages and revels in Schadenfreude but also rewards those who humiliate others, from the ranks of the paparazzi to the gossip bloggers, the late-night comedians, and the Web ‘entrepreneurs’ who profit from clandestine videos.”

Can anyone deny the validity in this statement? Just this week, Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue featured almost five full minutes of scornful humor directed at Walter Palmer. He categorized the hatred felt for Palmer as equivalent to feelings about Bill Cosby following rape allegations.

In March of this year, Lewinsky gave a TED Talk entitled "The Price of Shame." She describes herself as "patient zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously." If anything has changed since her experience, it is that the "almost" has ceased to exist, and that the inverse proportion of reputation loss to social recognition is flash quick. The public is shrewd, and eager to pounce while the issue is hot blooded and breathing right in front of them, while it's still relevant.

Walter Palmer’s big-game criticism brings light not only to discussions of animal cruelty and the hunt, but should turn our attention to another hunt as well. The predatory nature of online social judgment. Cloaked by digital anonymity, armed with opinion and speech, we survey the digital landscape, observing, ready at any moment to attack. As Richard Connell once wrote, man is the most dangerous game. The hunt in Palmer’s case required a crossbow. As prey, Palmer experiences the agony of a weapon omnipotent enough to kill his character; social media.