I've been busy and haven't really chimed in on the whole "Duck Dynasty" mess because (a) I don't watch the show and (b) the whole thing isn't a Constitutional battle as people are making it out to be. Robertson has every right to say what he did, and A&E has every right to enforce their own restriction on what their employees say. Likewise the American public has every right to tell A&E and that they're bumbling buffoons-- as their mostly crappy lineup clearly shows-- and that they are currently cutting off their nose to spite their face.
Roberton, or whoever arranged the interview that causing this flap, was foolish to allow himself to be interviewed by GQ. It's clear that the magazine only wanted to deride him, make him seems a hypocrite, and show him as a foolish backwoods idiot-- a view that the Leftist elite hold of all Americans not living in the upscale sections of New York, Chicago, L.A. San Francisco, D.C and the Eastern seaboard.
Yet, as Pat Archbold at the National Catholic Register aptly points out, holding the Robertsons and their friends up to ridicule has been the point of the show from the very beginning.
From Pat Archbold's piece (h/t Donald Douglas at American Power):
To understand the why, we have to go back to the beginning. Duck Dynasty is not the show that they wanted, it is the show that got away from them.
It seems what the producers intended and what A&E envisioned with the show is much different than the show that they ended up with, but they didn't do anything about it because it was so wildly popular and so wildly profitable. But even with all the money, they have never really been comfortable with what happened.
This is what happened. The whole idea of the show was to parade these nouveau riche Christian hillbillies around so that we could laugh at them. "Look at them," we were supposed to say. "Look how backward they are! Look what they believe! Can you believe they really live this way and believe this stuff? See how they don't fit in? HAHAHA"
When the producers saw the way the show was shaping up, different than they envisioned it, they tried to change course. They tried to get the Robertson's to tone down their Christianity, but to their eternal credit they refused. They tried to add fake cussin' to the show by inserting bleeps where no cussword was uttered. At best, they wanted to make the Robertson's look like crass buffoons. At worst they wanted them to look like hypocrites.
They desperately wanted us to laugh at the Robertsons. Instead, we loved them.
A&E wanted us to point fingers at them and laugh at them. But something else happened entirely. Millions upon millions of people tuned in, not to laugh at them, but to laugh with them.
And then we pointed at them. We pointed at them and said things like, "I wish my family was more like them. I wish we prayed together as a family. I wish we were together like the Robertsons."
By the time this all happened, A&E had a conundrum. They knew who the Robertsons were and what they believe and they still held it in disdain. But they really liked the money. Really liked the money. So they lived with it.
But the progressives whose bank accounts were not growing fatter because of these backward rubes were never inclined to look the other way. They hate the show and they really hate the response to the show. They want it destroyed.
Many magazines and interviewers have tried to get the Robertsons to trip up so they could pounce. When Phil backed the Christian viewpoint on homosexuality and added some personal asides about how he just couldn't understand it, they had their moment.
I suspect that the folks at A&E, who always disliked the positive Christian message in the show of which Phil is the primary proponent, saw their chance. They want to keep the cash but dial down the Christianity. With Phil out, perhaps they could get the show they always wanted.
I suspect that the Robertsons are more principled than that and A&E will end up disappointed on many levels. The Roberstons are who they are and I suspect the money means a great deal more to A&E than it does to them.
It will be interesting to see whether A&E likes the money more than they hate the Christianity. I wouldn't be surprised if the hate wins.
The real story is how much the Left hates people like the Robertsons. They hate them with a white-hot intensity that is matched only by their conviction that their Marx-based beliefs (which are always atheistic-- no matter what ill-informed or foolish theists might think or say) taught to them by college professors, Hollywood, trendy writers, magazines, and the talking heads of news shows is the "Truth." Yes, capital T.
Indeed Leftist thought, which was responsible for the majority and the certainly the bloodiest of the 20th Century genocides, demands this hatred. Marxist thought demands genocide, a wiping clean of competing political, ethical, and economic thought through murder.
And genocide, of course, can only be accomplished with an intense hatred of those butchered. It's a hatred borne of disdain toward the victim, often buoyed by jealousy, and absolved by the "hope" that the world will be a better place once the victims have been expunged from the Earth.
Now, I'm not suggesting that the Robertsons will be killed by A&E or that America will soon be awash in blood.
What I am saying is that the Left's very political essence is based in hatred, envy, a demand for conformity, and an egotistical disdain for those who hold differing views. Keep this in mind in the coming debates regarding ObamaCare and Obama's coming regulatory nightmares. Watch as hard working Americans, the seriously ill, the religious (exempting Muslims, of course), and the elderly become demonized.
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