He killed it for sport, the rest is an excuse. If he were concerned about the community food supply he could have donated food. Anyone who hires "booth babes" for spokespeople and is a fan of 24 (a show I used to work for) hunts because he enjoys it. Bob Parsons does not spend thousands of dollars to kill elephants for humanitarian reasons.
Well I think you'd be hard pressed to find a hunter in the US that hunts only for the food gained. Maybe spending 70,000 dollars is sick, but I would hardly call those who hunt for "sport" sick. I myself have never hunted, but I imagine it satisfies some urge in those who do it.
Do you really think there were a bunch of villagers sitting in Africa, saying to themselves "our crops are being destroyed by this elephant, and we are so hungry—if only a rich American could fly halfway around the world to shoot an elephant for us?"
If you watched the original un-cut video, you would've seen the hungry villagers in Godaddy T-shirts and Caps skinning and chopping the elephant. That was disgusting. He thought of making it as a campaign, but when it backfired, they edited the video,
I don't think killing an elephant away from any village or crops proves that the elephant isn't a nuisance for that village, or that it routinely destroys the crops.
It also sounds reasonable that you can pay the local authorities in Zimbabwe to get the privilege to fulfill your own great white hunter dreams by shooting a problematic elephant.
I personally think how much of the video is spent justifying it is quite pathetic, and can also see how others might be offended by the great white hunter style.
I don't think it's quite as one sided as you propose.