Thursday, December 19, 2013

Duck Dynasty targeted by Tolerance Police: Phil Robertson fired by yuppies at A&E

Liberals are always talking about how they stand for the little guy. The normal American. The folks back home. But when someone finally finds an authentic, salt of the earth, real life, down home American and puts him on TV, all of sudden he opens his mouth and ruins everything.

Far from being the dreamy liberal ideal of the politically obedient, union-loving, fuel-efficient car-driving Democrat with a "ΟΎe۞ist" sticker on her bumper who controls the population of her family, the normal American turns out to be a gun-toting, duck hunting, camouflage-wearing, Bible-toting redneck.

With a prodigious beard.

If liberals got out more they would know this. But they have a singular penchant for deceiving themselves on such things.

So one day the liberals get their wish and the Robertsons, a country family that lives in rural Louisiana and that struck financial gold by inventing a popular duck whistle, was ensconced on A&E and given its own reality show. But instead of the liberal idea of what such people should be like, they turn out to consist of a whole extended family of bearded men who like to fish and hunt and women who cook and help their men do what they like to do. And most disappointing of all, they go to church and quote the Scriptures.

And they're hugely popular. Duck Dynasty is A&E's most popular show. Ever. Not only that, but according to TV by the Numbers, its fourth season premier episode attracted 11.8 million viewers, making it "the number one nonfiction series telecast in cable history."

How could this have happened? What went wrong? How could a show featuring a bunch of socially conservative, duck shooting, religious rednecks be this big?

But there's something even worse than that. Something so unthinkable, so outrageous, so outlandishly awful, so perniciously ... pernicious that it's hard to imagine it could have happened in this day and age. It turns out that the head of this pickup truck-driving, socially conservative, church-going family ... disagrees with homosexuality.

Who could have seen this coming?

And so the liberals did what they always do when someone disagrees with them on the issue of homosexuality: They blow their Diversity whistles and put out an all points bulletin to find and punish the offender.

So now the Tolerance Police have busted Phil Robertson, the father on the show, for allegedly "homophobic" statements he made which are not even remotely offensive except to liberals who want to show off their Politically Correct merit badges to their similarly closed-minded friends at the weekly neighborhood meeting of the Diversity Patrol.

Why should we be surprised that one of the few shows on television that is not only inventive and truly funny, but manifestly wholesome, would be targeted by the liberals increasingly tiresome Tolerance Enforcement Unit?

The advocates of Tolerance have got to be among the most intolerant people on the face of the earth. They spout the virtues of Diversity out of one side of their mouths while out of the other they're shouting orders to their cultural storm troopers.

Someone needs to stand up to these people and the Robertson family is ideally suited to do it.

I hope the family calls A&E executives out to their trailer (or whatever is--it looks like a trailer), sits them down and says,
Listen up Mr. Yuppie TV executives: Reinstate the old man or we're pulling the plug on the show that's helping to fund your multi-million dollar golden parachutes. We're already rich from making duck calls and so we don't need your Politically Correct Hollywood cash--not like you need our family to lead your ratings. Now go back to your fancy offices for a day or two and think it over. You can put Pops back on the show--or go back to your regularly scheduled and ratings-challenged line-up of trashy TV. Now git, before we feed you to the alligators!
What was it Phil Robertson said that prompted the directive from Ideological Uniformity Headquarters (undoubtedly located in some hoity toity, designer drug-infested New York high rise)? What did he say that caused Volvos nationwide to swerve into the next lane when broadcast from the car radio (tuned to NPR)? What words, so horrifying to the ears of Guilty White Liberals, did the old man utter?

Here is what Robertson said, with some censoring because this is a family blog (sort of):
Everything is blurred on what's right and what's wrong… Sin becomes fine. Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men. 
... Don't be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won't inherit the kingdom of God. Don't deceive yourself. It's not right. 
... It seems like, to me, a ******—as a man—would be more desirable than a man's ****. 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.
Now there's no doubt that this is going to raise the hair on the back of the necks of the brie and white wine crowd. And the mention of actual bodily orifices, so acceptable to Hollywood under any other circumstance, was probably not a good idea. But you know what? If the people living in fancy urban townhouses and flats in Greenwich Village got out of their blue state and into the much redder country, they'd find out, if they actually talked to people at the local diner, that this sentiment wouldn't be that terribly unusual.

Robertson's remarks were one part Bible and one part Louisiana back country candor.

What's he saying? First, that he doesn't think homosexuality is moral according to his religious beliefs. And second, that he thinks what homosexuals do is kind of icky.

This is what gets you fired from your job in the land of the free and the home of the brave? Seriously?

Precisely which one of these two things is illegal? If neither, then which of the two is unethical--and by what moral standard derived from what divine or human source are they to be considered offensive? He's not allowed to have a religiously-grounded belief that homosexuality is wrong? He's not allowed to think that certain orifices are uniquely reproductive and others uniquely digestive and that treating one like the other is not only unpleasant to think about and in violation of the fairly obvious dictates of hygiene and biology, but in violation of the dictates of his religion?

If they're not illegal and not unethical, then what are they? Impolite? You get fired for being impolite in Hollywood?

Come again?

In fact, it would be interesting to find out how much offensive language and gratuitous violence is shown on the very network (or other networks owned by the same company) that fired Phil Robertson because it thought that his religious beliefs were beyond the pale.

People who have these religiously-based sentiments are insulted every day on American television as a matter of course. But if you say the least little thing in opposition to the Politically Correct view of gay sex, you're out of there. When was the last time Bill Maher was fired for offending religious people? In fact, the least offensive part of Maher's show is more offensive to more people than the most offensive thing Phil Robertson said.

Where are the Thought Police to set him straight? Where are the network executives to knock on his dressing room door and tell him to hit the road?

If any conservative network did anything remotely like what A&E did to Robertson in the interest of stifling a an opinion in favor of the views he is against, there would wailing and gnashing of teeth and cries of "censorship!" But when a liberal network does it to a conservative it's just a simple matter of cultural hygiene.

When social conservatives express offence at what they see or hear on TV, the same liberals who have now silenced Phil Robertson are told, "Then don't watch it." If the same liberals who are always giving conservatives this advice don't like what Robertson said, THEN DON'T WATCH THE SHOW.

Are you listening liberals? Just turn it off. You wont' like it anyway. The family is too normal for you. There's no scantily clad women. There's no sleeping around. There's nobody cooking meth. Just lots of facial hair and guns. Isn't this the kind of thing that you have nightmares about?

Oh, and if you watch, you will have to endure them saying grace before dinner. Trust me. I'm tellin' you: Just don't do it.

And LGBT advocates and your sympathizers, can we talk?

This business of forming the cultural equivalent of a lynch mob every time someone says something publicly that you disagree with is going to start getting real old real fast. This is the kind of thing that people tolerate for a while and then slowly start to see as mean-spirited and petty.

You talk a blue streak about tolerance and diversity. You ought to try to practice it some time. If you did, everyone would be happy, happy, happy!

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

A few years ago, a woman got fired from her factory job because she attached an Al Gore campaign sticker to the bumper of her car. What's happening to Phil is a lot like what happened to the Dixie Chicks. Just different sides of the same coin.

Bryan V said...

Let's get something straight. Phil Robertson did not have his views stifled. He was not censored. He has every right to say whatever he pleases, and, in fact, that is just what he did. As a result, he did not suffer any imprimatur, or government sanction. That is free speech. On the other hand, A&E owns the cameras, surely they have the right to dispose of their property as they will? Or does Phil Robertson have some special entitlement that affords him a national stage at all times? Does he possess special rights that trump those of others, that require them to broadcast his images and words at all times? Do you believe in the sanctity of property rights, or not?

Martin Cothran said...

Bryan V,

Good try. But I didn't say what was done to Robertson was censorship.

I said that it would have been called censorship had the same action been taken against some liberal icon.

The issue is not whether Phil Robertson's firing was censorship or not. The issue is the unadulterated hypocrisy of liberals who champion tolerance and diversity when it militates in their favor but abandon those very principles when they're faced with views that differ from their own.

I never questioned A&E's legal right to do what they did. But the beautiful this about all this is that the yuppies running the network are now paying for it.

Anonymous said...

LOL the yuppies at A&E? You should try looking at what your heroes looked like before the show:

http://www.today.com/entertainment/beards-duck-dynasty-stars-are-unrecognizable-8C11411204

Which is to say, the country club millionaires that they are.

Old Rebel said...

The term "tolerance," like "racism," is a term invented by leftists. Both are used to condemn anyone who opposes the leftist agenda.

So Tim Wise can wish for the death of whites, and the Congressional Black Caucus can openly exclude anyone who isn't black -- all in the name of fighting "racism."

Martin Cothran said...

Anonymous,

Yeah. And you should see my high school pictures: Hair down to my shoulders.

Maybe they had liberal political leanings too at some point in the past. Everyone has skeletons in their closet.

Lee said...

Hear hear, Martin!

Amazing, isn't it, how moralistic those folks who claim to believe in no objective morality can be.

Art said...

Um, a "normal American" is going to someone who is like most other Americans, and will hail from places where most Americans live. Closer to a resident of Queens than a swamp-dweller from the bayous.

It's rather ironic that Martin's view of the "normal American" is rather similar to the opinion one would find on, say, the streets of Xi'an. Where "American" means Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, and other icons created by (gasp) Hollywood.

Martin Cothran said...

Art,

I'm fine with calling someone from Queens a "normal American." Someone from Queens is probably going to be a lot closer in attitude to a swamp dweller a thousand miles away that he is to someone living in a townhouse in Central Park just a few miles away.

Art said...

I'm inclined to take Martin's silence regarding Robertson's other comments (about how happy blacks were in the pre-civil rights era) as a gauge of the value Martin actually places on freedom. I guess it shouldn't be surprising that theocrats such as Martin and most conservatives believe that freedom and one's constitutional rights are of lesser value than a dirt floor, wooden cot, leaky roof, and one square meal per day.

I know, I know - dog bites man and all that ...

Martin Cothran said...

Art,

I was discussing why they were fired. Why would that be a consideration?

Art said...

Um, maybe because the comments about the pre-civil rights era are one reason why Robertson has been suspendd?

Martin Cothran said...

Art,

Where does A&E's statement say anything about this?

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