Everyone is up in arms over the murder of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe.

Facebook is convulsed with fury. Twitter is in a tizzy. Jimmy Kimmel got choked up on national TV.

Minneapolis-area dentist Walter Palmer, who killed Cecil on a trophy hunt, has now gone into hiding, fearing for his life. He’s closed his dental practice. TV cameras are camping out on his doorstep. Protest marches are being organized against him.

Read:Want to shoot your own African Lion? It’ll cost you

Nothing could be more hideous than some rich Westerner murdering a defenseless animal for no good reason, right? Animals, as Mia Farrow pointed out on Twitter, are not trophies.

Protests Erupt Over Killing of Cecil the Lion

Sure. I happen to agree with all of the above. But I just wanted to add one little thing.

Spare me. Please. Spare me the overweening, gigantic, appalling, ridiculous, farcical and sanctimonious hypocrisy.

“ There are more than 20,000 species worldwide at risk of extinction, and where is the outrage about them? ”

Killing animals for no good reason is an outrage? Really?

How’s that steak? Had any good lobster this summer? What about some finger-lickin’-good chicken or some baby back ribs?

Have you ever seen the inside of a slaughterhouse?

I like Jimmy Kimmel, but advertisers on his network DIS, -2.50% include pretty much every national chain restaurant and food company.

Within 24 hours of Kimmel getting upset on national TV, nearly a million people had gone on YouTube to share the moment.

Meanwhile, a video showing chickens being tortured at a U.S. chicken-processing plant was uploaded several weeks ago. Only a fraction as many have bothered to watch it.

But, hey, that’s different, right?

I come to this neither with clean hands nor any claim to perfection. Until last year I ate meat. For some time I had become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of living creatures being killed so I could eat them. Then I paid a visit to a farm and found myself petting a disabled newborn lamb. (I’m sorry if this sounds utterly ridiculous. It is utterly ridiculous. But that’s how it happened.) Afterward I asked myself: How in hell could I ever eat lamb chops again?

Like many “vegetarians,” I still make occasional exceptions for fish, although less and less often. I question how self-aware a fish really is. But feel free to yell at me if you wish.

When I was growing up, our family at one point kept pigs. We named them all — from “Little Pig” to “Big Pig” to “Sneaker-Eater,” who would, as his name implies, nibble at the toes of your sneaker if you put them against the fence. It didn’t stop us from eating the bacon and ham when the time came. I view things differently now.

It’s easy to claim the case of Cecil the lion is “totally different” from the case of all the millions of defenseless animals we kill every year for food. (The phrases “totally different” and “completely different” —as in “Oh, but that’s totally different” — always crop up when hypocrites are trying to defend themselves against the charge of hypocrisy.)

Yes, lions are at risk of extinction, while cows, pigs and sheep aren’t. But the death of a single lion is hardly material in this regard. There are more than 20,000 species worldwide at risk of extinction, and where is the outrage about them? (Oh, and cattle farming is threatening the entire planet with extinction.)

U.S. dentist accused of killing beloved lion

Others say that at least we eat the other animals we kill. Yes, indeed. But we don’t have to. And if Walter Palmer had eaten Cecil, would that have been OK?

Others point out that Cecil took many hours to die. No kidding. I share your outrage. But, then, the cruelty to animals in slaughterhouses, and in many industrial farms, is no joke, either. Lobsters get boiled alive. How ’bout that?

My favorite objection in this instance is that Cecil was a really popular, well-known lion on his game preserve in Zimbabwe. Palmer actually apologized for killing an animal that was a “known, local favorite.”

Um, what? Would it be OK if he was unpopular, or unknown? Do all the cows and lambs being sent to the slaughterhouse deserve their fate?

Nobody can fight the thundering herd of human hysteria when it gets into full stampede, and no one is going to stop this one, either. It will have to run itself out over the next few weeks. Every TV presenter who wants to copy Jimmy Kimmel is going to be chopping onions furiously in the commercial breaks to get the waterworks flowing.

If all this leads to some good, so much the better. But if it is just a short-lived and pointless festival of sanctimony, we might as well just skip it.

If Palmer is smart, he’ll stay in hiding and say absolutely nothing for the next month or two. Nothing he says or does will help him until this blows over. I hope he never hunts another animal again. But, then, I hope everyone else will stop pointlessly killing animals, as well. Fat chance, alas.

Enjoy your hamburger.