Hunting humans for sport is OK by me

I’ve spent the last few days as a drooling husk, brain-fried by one too many end-of-semester… I’ve spent the last few days as a drooling husk, brain-fried by one too many end-of-semester PowerPoint presentations crammed full of zooming graphics rather than, like, content.

It’s hard to think in this state of slack-jawed stupor, let alone write. Times like this, when the words won’t come, I turn to my Cabinet of Inspiration. Inside are a large bottle of rum and a stack of Powerpuff Girls DVDs. Yes, Maureen Dowd and I share a secret, and that secret is this: Our columns are fueled entirely by cartoons and alcohol.

So I put in the first DVD and began to drink. I kept drinking, growing more eloquent with each shot, and a column idea began to form.

As I watched the girls zoom around Townsville, a question formed in my head: Would I ever kill a man for sport?

It’s something humankind has asked since the dawn of 1994, which saw the release of Surviving the Game, a movie in which rich businessmen hunt Ice-T. Of course, he turned the tables on those fat cats – I’m talking about Ice-T here – but one poorly chosen test case doesn’t scuttle the whole concept. It’s a simple, compelling idea: Hunting is fun and people are fun, so how could hunting people not be doubly fun?

In fact, it’s been suggested – by me, to myself – that many of society’s ills could be solved by the sport hunting of death-row inmates. The proposal goes something like this: The government rents out Ted Nugent’s 340-acre Sunrize [sic] Acres ranch and populates it with free-range convicts. Rich CEOs buy a license to hunt what I call “the most dangerous game,” doling out whatever version of capital punishment they see fit. Fox buys the television rights and turns the season into a high-stakes version of Survivor. The Nuge’ could even host the show – like John Madden, he makes up in exuberance what he lacks in coherence.

This idea is attractive for many reasons. First, it allows CEOs to purchase immunity from the law. And we’d all know it, instead of being in that weird gray-area where people ask, “Hey, don’t laws, like, apply to rich people, too?” They’d have badges. Licenses to kill, if you will.

We’d take their money and use it to offset all the ill-advised tax cuts recently made. Why, if we had enough inmates, we might not have to run at a budget deficit for the next decade. And believe me, we’ve got enough inmates.

In the shorter term, we’d be able to simplify our legal system. Right now there’s way too much time and taxpayer dollars spent on actually proving someone guilty before execution. Why are we so hung up on these details? I’ll tell you how it should work: If you “survive the game,” you’re innocent! Booyah, pardon for you. Make sure you buy a souvenir T-shirt before you go; those help support the war effort. Having answered the death penalty question, we can go after the real criminals: Dope smokers who line al Qaeda’s pockets with every dime bag they purchase.

The most persuasive argument, though, is the simplest one: We’d finally see the return of Must-See TV. Seriously, if you thought RAW was WAR, wait until you see “Hunting Dudes with the Nuge’!” When you read that, do so in a Randy Savage voice, with the opening chords of “Cat Scratch Fever” playing the background. It’d be the greatest thing since 1969, when they invented sliced bread while walking on the moon.

But it’ll never work. There’s one seemingly insurmountable hurdle to this utopian future: Apparently killing people – especially challenged people – is wrong.

I’ll keep working on that one.

Jesse Hicks is a columnist for The Pitt News. He can be reached at jhicks@pittnews.com.