The GreatShootout: Iain Lee in the Crossfire

Written 17 July, 2006: This afternoon, I was listening to the "3 and 1/2 hour, 3 to 6:30, Iain Lee Afternoon Wireless Show," on LBC 97.3, London as is my habit. (Sky Channel 0177 or on the net at: www.lbc973.co.uk ) A man had called in and said that he enjoyed hunting animals and shooting them. Subsequently, one of the wackiest women I have heard on air in a long time phoned in. She said she wished that man would die. I was downstairs, listening to Iain on Sky Channel 0177, while I prepared a late lunch. Iain valiantly tried to engage the woman, Val, in rational discussion. She said nothing living should be killed, but didn't see any contradiction between that and wishing a man dead.
I desperately wanted a part of this and wolfed down my ramen noodles and raced back upstairs to try to phone in. Iain went to the news break holding the woman over to continue the discussion after the news. Great! This gave me a chance to call in to Agent Chris, Iain's producer, and wait for his call back. I was so excited, when Chris answered, I couldn't think of his name, for a minute. I said, "Can I talk to Iain and this wacky woman?" He said he would call me back, in his usual pleasant and insincere way. I was a little bit suspicious that he didn't even ask me what I was going to say, but thought, maybe I have called the show enough now that he doesn't think he needs to quiz me first.
I wanted to be on air with Iain and Val, so I could debate her. This was a great radio moment and I wanted to contribute and try and make it even greater. I have a particular dislike for these people who think animal life is more valuable than human life, of course forgetting that humans are animals, too. As I waited for Chris to call back, Iain came out of the news break and continued talking with Val. Other people were put on with them and the original guy, Andy even called back. No call to me. At one point, my phone rang, but when I picked it up and said, "hello," the person on the other end disconnected. Val had stated on air that she wouldn't kill an ant and that everything alive should not be killed. I wanted to ask her if she cleaned at all, because that kills germs, which are alive. Does she not eat, because plants AND animals are alive. Sadly, it was not to be. Chris never called back.
Eventually, Val conceded that she eats meat, but somehow tries to eat her cake and have it to, as Ayn Rand used to say, and ignore the fact that all the meat she eats comes from animals that are killed. We are descended from hunter/gatherers. I would love to transport the Vals of this world to a prehistoric community, where they would have to hunt to survive and see how long they last. To Iain's credit, despite practicing vegetarianism, he spotted the logical flaws in Val's warped reasoning. He wasn't hostile toward Andy, the hunter. Iain even admitted that he thought firing a gun might be exciting. As someone who has owned and fired firearms, let me assure you, Iain, it is. One caller tried to reason with Val that animals attack and kill each other, in the wild, so they aren't following her policy. They do it a lot more cruelly than humans do, too, I might add...red in tooth and claw.
Hunting seems much more highly regarded in America, with its more recent frontier traditions, than it is here, in England, where the tree hugging crowd seems to be running rampant. For those of you in America who might not know, recently, traditional British Fox Hunting was outlawed. Something thought of as quintessentially English, like the fox hunt, has fallen to the Socialist overlords in the House of Commons, and their courting of the fuzzy, tree hugging crowd, and young people who are not educated about where we come from. We are the sons and daughters of hunters and that's not something to be ashamed of.