[TV] Duck Dynasty - Page 6

On December 21 2013 12:00 Joedaddy wrote:


Agreed~ its beyond reason how they can deem Phil as unacceptable for their network with all the smut and inappropriateness out there. But hey, sin don't make sense, ya know?

On December 20 2013 11:31 cLAN.Anax wrote:
Phil's response via spokesperson:

On December 21 2013 16:22 Sermokala wrote:
Well the season coming this spring is going to have phil in it. he wasn't suspended from the show he was suspended from filming. Which if anything is going to racket up the views for the spring season. They got their first big start from this jimmy kimmel thing where a guy canceled on the show beacuse of duck dynasty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fkjZSb0J_E

they made this in reaction.

On December 21 2013 16:51 tshi wrote:

Well they can do a similar 'Calling Device' for homosexuals, I guess, but that wouldn't work very well with everyone I think. I just heard about these guys like 2 days ago and it all seemed really funny. I can imagine having really staunch Christians on a TV show is the kiss of death for some shows. There was this thing with mel gibson where he had to like, defend his dad because his dad was getting heat for saying the holocaust didnt happen. :S

Robertson’s interview reads as a commentary almost without malice, imbued with a matter-of-fact, this-is-just-the-way-I-see-it kind of Southern folksiness. To me, that is part of the problem. You don’t have to operate with a malicious spirit to do tremendous harm. Insensitivity and ignorance are sufficient. In fact, intolerance that is disarming is the most dangerous kind. It can masquerade as morality.

A&E, which airs “Duck Dynasty,” moved quickly to suspend Robertson, as his comments engaged the political culture wars, with liberals condemning him and conservatives — including Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a possible presidential candidate — rushing to his defense.

Let me first say that Robertson has a constitutionally protected right to voice his opinion and A&E has a corporate right to decide if his views are consistent with its corporate ethos. No one has a constitutional right to a reality show. I have no opinion on the suspension. That’s A&E’s call.

In fact, I don’t want to focus on the employment repercussions of what Robertson said, but on the content of it. In particular, I want to focus on a passage on race from the interview, in which Robertson says:

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field. ...They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’ — not a word! ...Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

While this is possible, it is highly improbable. Robertson is 67 years old, born into the Jim Crow South. Only a man blind and naïve to the suffering of others could have existed there and not recognized that there was a rampant culture of violence against blacks, with incidents and signs large and small, at every turn, on full display. Whether he personally saw interpersonal mistreatment of them is irrelevant.

Louisiana helped to establish the architecture for Jim Crow. First, there were the Black Codes that sought to control interactions between blacks and whites and constrain black freedom. The Jim Crow Encyclopedia even points out that in one Louisiana town, Opelousas, “freedmen needed the permission of their employers to enter town.”

Then, in 1890, the State Legislature passed the Separate Car Act, which stipulated that all railway companies in the state “shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races” in their coaches. The landmark Plessy v. Ferguson case was a Louisiana case challenging that law. The United States Supreme Court upheld the law, a ruling that provided the underpinning for state-sponsored racial segregation, and Jim Crow laws spread.

Robertson’s comments conjure the insidious mythology of historical Southern fiction, that of contented slave and benevolent master, of the oppressed and the oppressors gleefully abiding the oppression, happily accepting their wildly variant social stations. This mythology posits that there were two waves of ruination for Southern culture, the Civil War and the civil rights movement, that made blacks get upset and things go downhill.

Robertson’s comments also display a staggering ignorance about the place and meaning of song in African-American suffering. As for the singing of the blues in particular, the jazz musician Amina Claudine Myers points out in an essay that the blues was heard in the late 1800s and “came from the second generation of slaves, Black work songs, shouts and field hollers, which originated from African call-and-response singing.” Work songs, the blues and spirituals were not easily separated.

Furthermore, Robertson doesn’t seem to acknowledge the possibility that black workers he encountered possessed the most minimal social sophistication and survival skills necessary to not confess dissatisfaction to a white person on a cotton farm (no matter how “trashy” that white person might think himself).

It’s impossible to know if Robertson recognizes the historical resonance and logical improbability of his comments. But that’s not an excuse.

What's most bothersome about this debate is the manner in which the conservative Christian population has jumped to Robertson's defense. They have not only turned him into a martyr, they've also managed to spin things in a way that they portray themselves as some kind of oppressed minority. Never mind that organized Christianity is probably the largest and most powerful force in this country. It is certainly one of the richest. Yet if you listen to Robertson's defenders, you get the idea that Christians are being bullied by the NAACP, GLAAD, A&E, the government, the "liberals," the media, etc. etc. It has become the three-card monte of the right wing. Somebody blurts out something horribly offensive to people who are genuinely oppressed. The people who are offended voice their opposition. The people doing the offending -- and the oppressing -- get up in arms over it and turn themselves into the victims. And it works. A large slice of America actually buys into this. It's sickening and more than a little depressing.

During Sunday’s speech, he defended himself, saying he was simply quoting from the Bible and even went so far as to say Jesus could save gay people.

‘I love all men and women. I am a lover of humanity, not a hater,’ he added.

The 67-year-old has been slammed by gay rights groups since his interview in January’s issue of GQ magazine was made public last week.

He was quoted as saying: 'It seems like, to me, a vagina - as a man - would be more desirable than a man’s anus.

'That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.'

But despite the criticism Robertson has faced, his family and local community have come to his defense and stood firmly behind him. [...]

He said: ‘I have been immoral, drunk, high. I ran with the wicked people for 28 years and I have run with the Jesus people since and the contrast is astounding.

‘I tell people, "You are a sinner, we all are. Do you want to hear my story before I give you the bottom line on your story?"

On December 23 2013 12:51 Yoav wrote:
I still think the most incredible thing about this story is that the anti-gay thing was cited as the reason for suspension, when the anti-black thing was so much worse.

But, on the gay thing, he didn't just say it was sinful. That's a common opinion among conservative Christians, though main-line Christians may disagree. What he said was that, to define sin, you start with homosexuality and "go out from there." His other examples were all sexual offences too. The definition of sin in any kind of Christianity, conservative, liberal, you name it, is a violation of the twin laws of love (e.g. Matt. 22.36-40). Violating the golden rule (Matt. 7.12) would also be an acceptable answer, and it amounts to the same thing.

Seriously though, the race comments were scary shit.

On December 23 2013 14:38 Bigtony wrote:


Grammatically, linguistically, and theologically he isn't saying that at all. You have to want him to mean that for him to mean that and ignore everything else he says in the article. He is unabashedly saying that acting on homosexual attraction is sin, which by itself is enough to get most people up in arms.