CEO Kills Elephant, Posts Video Online.

This is becoming one of the most talked about animal stories of 2011.

GoDaddy.com CEO, Bob Parsons, has posted a video on his personal blog that shows him shooting and killing an elephant in Africa. He says in the video “of everything I do, this is the most rewarding.”

The video shows Parsons chatting with the locals before he blasts an elephant to death with a giant gun.  The video is disturbing and much of it is set to score of AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells.

Parsons claims he kills elephants every year for the benefit of local African villagers who have some of their crops eaten by elephants. He claims the only elephants he kills are those considered “problem elephants.” TIME magazine notes that there are certainly non-lethal solutions to “problem elephants” such as using chili or tobacco on the fields to make animals find the food unappetizing. 

I feel for the farmers of Africa but I also know that rich white American men are looking for any excuse to go live out their “wild African safari” fantasy. Disguising your desire to kill an elephant as a humanitarian mission is a backwards way to prove you have compassion and a weak attempt to prove your masculinity.