NEWS: GoDaddy CEO Posts Video of His Vacation Hunting Elephants in Zimbabwe

CULTURE: GoDaddy CEO Posts Video of His Vacation Hunting Elephants in Zimbabwe

by Alana Joy

The CEO of GoDaddy, Bob Parsons, has posted a video of his vacation in Zimbabwe online. Normally not something that would cause controversy, it's the slaughter of an innocent elephant being glorified that has the internet in an uproar. The video opens with "For the second year in a row, I spent ten days hunting problem elephant in Zimbabwe."

The video below contains scenes of graphic violence against animals. Viewer discretion is advised.



Parsons, accompanied by local tour guides, shows where crops have been trampled by these "problem elephant" on his self-proclaimed "humanitarian" expedition. "Many die each year from starvation and one of the problems they have is the elephants, of which there are thousands and thousands, that trash many of their fields destroying the crops. Of everything I do this is the most rewarding. This video shows one typical night and day." This is how he rationalizes what comes next...


Parsons and his team take cover in the brush awaiting nightfall, hoping the "problem" creatures return. Three elephants arrive late into the night, two of which manage to escape. Bob Parsons fires, then fires again, describing the shots as "hitting home". Next we see multiple photos of Parsons with a satisfied smile on his face, leaning against the body of the dead creature, rifle digging into it's head.

"Early the next morning, hungry villages butcher the elephant." is the next title that appears, as we fade into the horrific sight of the animal being ripped to shreds and ACDC's "Hell's Bells" plays as the soundtrack. "Mayhem" then ensues as villagers turn desperate, foraging for their share of the meat, attacking the carcass en masse.

PETA has closed their account with GoDaddy and "urges everyone to follow suit". A quote from their post:

Parsons tells the LA Times, "I'm not ashamed of what I did. All these people that are complaining that this shouldn't happen, that these people who are starving to death otherwise shouldn't eat these elephants, you probably see them driving through at McDonald's or cutting a steak."

If you are with GoDaddy for your domains and would like an alternative, Namecheap.com is making it easy:

SuicideGirlsBlog.com proudly does business with MediaTemple and NetworkSolutions.

I bet he will say something like "a bullet is cheaper than a fence".

Not sure why the video didn't import: it wasn't YouTube so that might be the issue. For those who want to suffer watching the atrocity, the video is on the original blog post here:

http://suicidegirlsblog.com/blog/godaddy-ceo-posts-video-of-his-vacation-hunting-elephants-in-zimbabwe/

People are starving in Zimbabwe more because their dictator, Robert Mugabe, took the land away from the farmers who had been working it for years (and knew what they were doing) and gave it to his political backers (who didn't know the first thing about farming). Elephants don't really have much to do with it.

I wonder how much of Parson's tourist dollars found their way into Mugabe's pockets. Something tells me playing jet-setter big game hunter comes at a high price tag, including plenty of bribes.

Excellent points. It's doubtful that any tourist would have the kind of access he was given. I wouldn't be surprised if you're right on about that.

i want to know what acdc has to say.

Sadly, there are web sites that you can look up for safari hunts. Any animal is going to cost you like 10-12k to kill and have it stuffed. An elephant is probably going to cost about as much as a new BMW.

The whole problem elephant thing might be true for the farmers but you could relocate the animal at a cheaper cost than having it stuffed I would imagine.

In fact, some people go for the cheaper safaris where you sneak up on a rhino and pop it in the ass with a tranquilizer dart from a high powered rifle. Then the tourist goes and gets their picture taken with the poor rhino who once again wakes up wondering if it was abducted by aliens for the umpteenth time.

If these were really problem elephants that the locals felt like they had to kill for their own safety, would they just be standing around waiting for some rich outsider to fly in and save them? Thank GOODNESS that millionaire with the 50 caliber stopped by when he did!

*emphatic applause*

OMG. Parsons is on CNN right now and making an ass of himself. He is totally portraying himself as the heroic white guy who is saving the poor impoverished Africans from starvation and the evil crop trampling elephants. Apparently, he did not pay any money to shoot the elephant. I think its disgusting that the villagers were wearing Go Daddy hats while they were desperately waiting their turn for a piece of bush meat. Parsons sounds furious in this interview. He is surely regretting his dickheaded move to post the video. He makes no admission to hunting for sport. He is clinging to the claim that he is killing in the name of charity. What a tool. I think this is one of those PR hits that is never fully repaired.

I wonder how many celebrities will continue to make the Go Daddy commercials. The commercials were edgy and cool but the fact that the CEO will always be known as the redneck elephant killer will probably undo all of that.

Go Daddy commercials are "edgy and cool?"

In the same way that hunting elephants is "edgy and cool", yes.

It's strange, GoDaddy is usually so classy.

eh i said edgy and cool because i think thats the way they are perceived by most or at least what they're going for. my opinion is eh not really. danica patrick? who cares.

I've always found the entire "GoDaddy Girl" campaign offensive and anti-feminist.

like i said, i wrote edgy and cool because thats what the commercials were aiming to be. i think they were pretty lame imho

I concur.

Is there a reason for outrage in this case beyond the act of sport hunting? I see that in Zimbabwe, elephants are listed under CITES appendix II, which basically means they're on the watchlist for being put on the watchlist for being endangered.

Are the elephants designated as "problem" because they are destructive to farms/danger to people, or if they are "problem" because the herd is larger than the land can sustain. Even with numbers of elephants low, there are periodic, government run cullings when herds grow too large.

Of course "too large" is related to the small amount of range left to elephants after human development/farming takes over the land.

Yeah... To me, though, that's like getting mad at someone for giving money to a homeless guy instead of to a homeless shelter. Sorta. The analogy isn't perfect.

What I don't understand is how this dude thought this was a good idea. Not the elephant hunting, necessarily, but the publicizing. Shouting on YouTube "I shot an elephant! I'm helping!" is just not going to win anybody any friends, ever. I mean, that's some straight up Charlie Sheen shit right there.

Because instantly you-tubing everything has become a cultural phenomenon. Think of all those kids who got in trouble for recording their friends beating someone, then posting the vid on Youtube.

We have become collectively dumber.

It's offensive because he's trying to claim a wicked, ego driven act was a noble act, and it's obvious at a glance. I can believe that he really thinks he's doing good, but only because he's so out of touch that he has a skewed notion of what good is. Because at the end of the day, everyone thinks they're doing good. Even Pol Pot went to his grave thinking he was helping and someday people would understand. That self-satisfied delusion makes it all the more disgusting.

It's obvious that the killings were unnecessary: If the locals were really in fear of the elephants, they wouldn't be waiting for an outsider to fly in and handle it for them.

It's obvious that killing elephants is a straight up bad idea: They're near endangered, and most places that have strong laws make it a crime to even possess any part of an elephant to discourage their killing.

It's obvious that the killings were carried out in a careless, inhumane manner, looking only for sport and bragging rights, not for the animal's suffering: The video makes a production of how the hunters have to creep through absolute darkness to get a shot on the elephants, then once they do, and Parsons takes the first shot, the elephants charge! Danger! A cavalcade of rifle fire erupts and the elephants turn away, two escaping. It's all very macho. It's also fucking stupid, inhumane, and unbelievable.

How many shots did the two elephants that escaped each take before they turned, that they're not going to suffer from, perhaps dying of infection weeks later? Why did it take a storm of bullets to put down a single elephant? We have guns and bullets that will kill an elephant in a single shot. And you have all the time in the world to line up the shot: We have night vision technology and scoped rifles. The elephants were ignoring the hunters up until the shots. The hunters had all the time they needed to make an instantaneous, painless kill of each elephant, if that was really what they were after. There's no excuse.

And then there's the footage at the end, where Parsons makes a production of the hungry locals who show up from villages around to swarm for the meat he has so generously provided. What a demeaning display. It's like he wants to catch people at their worst, swarming like animals over a carcass. There's no effort to butcher the animal properly to avoid waste. We've just got a swarm of people clawing for all they can get before it's gone. There's no care to hand out the meat in a fair and civilized manner. Parsons has just created a spectacle of starving villagers, greedily clawing at a corpse. It's not as if his team didn't have the manpower to do it the right way.

In short, there's not a single step of the process that doesn't make a lie of the premise that Parsons care was to help the local situation. Oh, I'm sure he got some satisfaction out of his belief that he's helping, but it's all so ham-handed and oriented around the macho display that it's disgusting. If Parsons had one whit of ethics for hunting, or for what's really going on with the people of Zimbabwe, there wasn't a thing he would have done the way it was shown in this video. This isn't a display of a man who's driven by the need to help. It's a man who wants to shoot the biggest thing he can without respect for the life of the animal or the people he's making a show of helping. And that's what I find disgusting.

Fair enough, though I have two exceptions--first, demanding that hunters make one-shot instant kills is just unrealistic; second, the villagers probably don't kill the elephants themselves because they can't afford the permit.