Alligators in the sewers of the LA Times.

Roger McCulloch sucks, too, and the LA Times has hit the bottom of the barrel.

I picked up pen to paper today, dear readers, to share an article in last Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, the first section. (I’m a week later reading it, cause of a seriously good party LA Observed threw that weekend.)

Roger McCulloch skipped a grizzly bear hunt in Alaska to drive 18 hours to Florida with one mission: shoot an alligator with bow and arrow. McCulloch’s trophy room is full…

“I love gator hunting,” said McCulloch, who owns a Logan, Ohio construction business. “It’s just the rush of it. I’ve hunted everything — caribou, bear, elk. Gators are tough critters.”

Special rules govern the bagging of gators. Hunters are not allowed to use guns. Instead, they may use a pole, spear, bow and arrow, or rod and reel to catch the animal, then use a bang stick — a pole with an explosive charge on the end — to dispatch it point-blank before bringing it into a boat.

This year, the state is offering 6,260 permits at $270 each, entitling a holder to kill two gators. Last year, hunters harvested 7,844. Gators as small as 18 inches can be taken, but most hunters want a trophy.

Stafford produced a bang stick with a .44 Magnum charge, but before he could press the trigger, the gator’s jaws closed around it. Somehow the guide extracted the bang stick and dispatched the animal in the head.

When the gator went limp, the three men hauled it aboard and taped its jaws shut, and then Stafford severed its spinal cord.

“You feel better now you hit one?” Stafford asked.

McCulloch nodded. “I was starting to get upset.”

The American alligator once was endangered but has rebounded, said Steve Stiegler, a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

“Overall, the statewide alligator population is very healthy,” he said. “It’s a natural resource we can make use of that’s renewable.”

I include the grisly details here (more there) so you can appreciate how INAPPROPRIATE this is for someone’s Sunday read. And how very…regional this is. Just perfect for Southern rednecks!

It’s written by Susan Cocking, of the Miami Herald. Maybe this is considered important journalism in Miami, detailing the extended torture of an animal killed for a guy’s trophy room, but it’s really hate journalism, and it’s sad that the Times couldn’t find anything more important to include in the Sunday paper. And is the Times really that out of step with Los Angeles, most who are NOT hunters, and the Green movement all over the country? They even name the article Happy Hunting!! It’s astonishing.

Hunting is such a mystery to me. McCulloch is a wimp, not picking a man his own size, but animals, for which he needs a guide, a variety of weapons, none of which the animal has, and most importantly, a bigger brain. Or maybe just a small wienie and a big ego.

Also, notice the words harvested, and taken, which I bolded in the quote. Hunter don’t use the word kill – they pretend they are doing something positive, something like work, something close to nature, instead of the opposite of life – death. Fish and Wildlife are the biggest killers in every state, of course – their purpose is always to kill, eradicate, and help hunters of all stripes. They are the most repulsive group in government.

Los Angeles Times, we don’t have alligators here, though we may have bang sticks. And when you need to go to the bayou or coal mine territory to get your news, you’re not international, you’re funny. But not in a good way.

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This is the first post I’ve written about the Times in quite a while. No wonder, when I was pitching my editorial cartoons to them each week! But once I realized that they only use one or two cartoons per week, and always the same guys… hope was gone.

They do have a collection of 3 cartoons each Sunday. However, as I have complained many times in my Op-Ed Cartoon Blog, it’s edited by a cartoonist who lives in…Lexington, Kentucky. That’s right. An international paper like the Times, with the 4th biggest circulation in the country, decides to step down and use Joel Pett, who has never lived here, to choose cartoons for the LA Times. When I told this to an editor at the Orange County Register, she was shocked! It’s simply bad journalism.