“The Duck And Jackass Dynasty”: Has It Become Acceptable Again For An American Politician To Embrace Unashamed Bigotry?
I got the gist of the “Duck Dynasty” thing after my first and only viewing: bunch of rural jackasses who somehow struck it rich get brought into our living rooms to be laughed at by the rest of us aristocrats.
Well, all right. When the archetype first appeared on television via the “Beverly Hillbillies” it was also enormously popular, but also taken as an illustration of how TV was living down to its condemnation by FCC Chairman Newton Minow as a “vast wasteland.”
In any event, A&E knew what it was doing when it put these people on the air, so its show of indignation in “suspending” one of them for speaking out against gays and the aspirations of African Americans falls a little flat.
What’s truly ghastly, however, is the reaction of a couple of political figures. Sarah Palin‘s opinion isn’t worth the eleven words I’ve just written to dismiss it. But Bobby Jindal still holds down office as the governor of Louisiana. That raises the question: Has it become acceptable again for an American politician to embrace unashamed bigotry?
In the old days, news that public funds (via the Louisiana state film and television incentive program) had helped finance racism and gay-bashing of the variety espoused by Phil Robertson, the outspoken duck dynast, would have presented a moral dilemma and created a political embarrassment for a governor. Most self-respecting political leaders would have run away from association with such views; that’s the essence, after all, of the “leadership” part of the equation.
Not for Jindal. His only public statement on the matter thus far has praised Robertson as a member of a family of “great citizens of the State of Louisiana.” He defends Robertson’s views on the “it’s a free country” principle, which as a debating point generally gets dropped by most people before the fourth grade. “Everyone is entitled to express their views,” he says.
In Jindal’s seven-sentence statement, not a word of defense for gay people so crudely mocked by Robertson. Not a word to remind us that the life of black sharecroppers in Louisiana’s Jim Crow era was not “godly” or “happy.”
In January of this year, Jindal lectured his fellow Republicans on the need to “stop being the stupid party.” Remember? He talked about how the Republican brand had been damaged by its candidates’ “offensive and bizarre comments.” That was supposed to represent the launch of a new GOP outreach to communities that had been excluded by Republican doctrine, including the gay and minority communities.
But that was eleven months ago. Now, according to Jindal, Republicans are supposed to embrace offensive and bizarre comments. The party’s transformation into a marginal and regional movement thus continues. Jindal has made himself the biggest jackass in the story, and his career as a national political figure the thing to be laughed at.
By: Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, December 21, 2013
“It’s Instructive Whose Sticking Up For The Worse”: There Are Two Americas, And One Is Better Than The Other
Matt Lewis writes of the controversy over Duck Dynasty that “There really are two Americas” and that the divide over the show “has as much to do with class and geography and culture and attitude as it does with religion.”
That’s true.
Specifically, there’s one America where comparing homosexuality to bestiality is considered acceptable, and another where it is rude and offensive.
In one America, it’s OK to say this of gays and lesbians: “They’re full of murder, envy, strife, hatred. They are insolent, arrogant, God-haters. They are heartless, they are faithless, they are senseless, they are ruthless. They invent ways of doing evil.” In the other America, you’re not supposed to say that.
There’s one America where it’s OK to say this about black people in the Jim Crow-era South: “Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.” There’s another America where that statement is considered to reflect ignorance and insensitivity.
In one America, it’s OK to attribute the Pearl Harbor attacks to Shinto Buddhists’ failure to accept Jesus. In the other America, that is not OK.
There are two Americas, one of which is better than the other. And it’s instructive who’s sticking up for the worse America.
The conservative politicians who are complaining that Phil Robertson’s firing flies in the face of “free speech” are generally smart enough to understand that Robertson doesn’t actually have a legal right to be on A&E. When Sarah Palin and her cohorts talk about the importance of “free speech,” they mean something much more specific: That the sorts of things that Robertson said are not the sorts of things a private employer should want to fire someone for saying. That they are, or ought to be, within the bounds of social acceptability.
But they’re wrong. The other America — the America I live in — has this one right. Racist and anti-gay comments and comments disparaging of religious minorities are rude and unacceptable and might cost you your job. It’s not OK to say that gay people are “full of murder.”
I will add one caveat, in the vein of Andrew Sullivan’s comments. The things Phil Robertson said should get you fired from most jobs. But starring on a reality show is a special kind of job, one where demonstrating that you are a good person who follows good social conventions may not be necessary.
For example, if at a Business Insider function I were to flip over a table and call one of my colleagues a “prostitution whore,” I’d probably be fired. But when a Real Housewife of New Jersey does that, she’s doing her job just fine. Similarly, Phil Robertson represents some very real pathologies of his culture, and his job is to provide a look into the reality of that culture to the TV viewer.
In some sense, when Robertson compares gays to terrorists, he’s doing his job, too. So I’m sympathetic to the idea that A&E shouldn’t suspend him for this. But if they shouldn’t suspend him, it’s because it’s acceptable for Robertson to say unacceptable things, not because his remarks were acceptable.
By: Josh Barro, Business Insider, December 20, 2013
“Hate In A Neat Little Package”: When You Defend Phil Robertson, Here’s What You’re Really Defending
Let’s get a few things straight about what Phil Robertson said that got him in trouble.
Defenses of Robertson, the star of “Duck Dynasty” suspended for his remarks in an interview with GQ, have focused on the idea that he was just crudely expressing the sincere, Christian view that homosexuality is sinful.
Condemnation of Robertson therefore amounts to condemnation of views that are part of Christian doctrine. What are Christians to do about the fact that their beliefs require them to condemn homosexual acts? Why are cultural elites oppressing Christians by making it forbidden to express their views?
Robertson’s defenders should read his comments again, because their defenses are off-point. If you’re defending Robertson, here’s what you’re defending:
- Robertson thinks black Americans were treated just fine in the Jim Crow-era South, and that they were happy there. “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.”
- Robertson thinks the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor because they didn’t believe in Jesus. “All you have to do is look at any society where there is no Jesus. I’ll give you four: Nazis, no Jesus. Look at their record. Uh, Shintos? They started this thing in Pearl Harbor. Any Jesus among them? None. Communists? None. Islamists? Zero. That’s eighty years of ideologies that have popped up where no Jesus was allowed among those four groups. Just look at the records as far as murder goes among those four groups.”
- Robertson hates gay people. Robertson in 2010: “Women with women, men with men, they committed indecent acts with one another, and they received in themselves the due penalty for their perversions. They’re full of murder, envy, strife, hatred. They are insolent, arrogant, God-haters. They are heartless, they are faithless, they are senseless, they are ruthless. They invent ways of doing evil.”
This last one is key. My inbox is full of “love the sinner, hate the sin” defenses of Robertson’s 2013 remarks. But Robertson doesn’t love gay people. He thinks they’re, well, “full of murder.” His views on gays are hateful, inasmuch as they are full of hate.
As a side note, it’s remarkable how often these things come as a package. Robertson’s sincere doctrinal view about the sinfulness of homosexuality comes packaged with animus toward gays and retrograde views about blacks and non-Christians. It’s almost as though social conservatism is primarily fueled by a desire to protect the privileges of what was once a straight, white Christian in-group, rather than by sincere religious convictions.
You might recall that conservatives are currently trying to figure out what to do about the fact that the Republican Party performs quite poorly with the growing share of voters who are not white, straight Christians. They think some of it has to do with economic issues. But then they’re scratching their heads, trying to figure out how Mitt Romney lost the Asian American vote 3-to-1 even though, by Republican “maker-vs.-taker” metrics, Asian Americans are disproportionately likely to be “makers.”
Non-whites and non-Christians and gays keep getting the sense that, even setting aside policy, conservatives and Republicans just don’t care for them. The “Duck Dynasty” episode, with Ted Cruz and others rushing out to defend Robertson’s honor, is just another example of why.
By: Josh Barro, Business Insider, December 21, 2013
“A Thinking, Moral Person Doesn’t Defend Nostalgia For Jim Crow”: What Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson Can Teach Us About Empathy
Yes, I have something to add to the Duck Dynasty controversy, wherein reality TV star Phil Robertson got in trouble for expressing anti-gay views, was suspended by A&E, and has now become the cause celebre of nitwit conservative politicians from across the land. This won’t take long.
I’m not even going to bother addressing the idiocy of the “constitutional conservatives” who think the First Amendment guarantees you the legal right to (1) a cable reality show and (2) never be criticized for anything you say. Nor am I going to talk about Robertson’s anti-gay statement, except to say that nobody buys you couching your bigotry in “biblical” terms just because you call yourself a Christian and throw out some scriptural references. Once you start campaigning to have people who eat shellfish and the sinners who work on the Sabbath executed (the Bible says so!) then we’ll accept that you’re just honoring your religion.
It’s Robertson’s comments about how happy black people were living under Jim Crow that I want to focus on, because they have something to teach us about empathy and individual change. Ta-Nehisi Coates says what needs to be said about the actual reality of which Robertson was so blissfully unaware, but in case you haven’t seen it, here’s what Robertson said about the Louisiana of his youth:
“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.”
I don’t have trouble believing that Phil Robertson never saw the mistreatment of black people with his own eyes, so long as he’s thinking about mistreatment as dramatic things like lynchings and cross-burnings. Maybe as a child, he wasn’t aware of what life was like for black people in Louisiana in those days. But he isn’t a child anymore. He’s a 67-year-old man, and it’s 2013. And part of being a thoughtful adult is realizing that maybe the narrow world of your childhood, as seen through a child’s eyes, was not in fact the entire world. By now, Robertson has had plenty of opportunities to learn about the horror of the Jim Crow era. He can read, and I imagine he owns a television. It shouldn’t be news to him. We’ve had a rather lengthy discussion about it over the last half-century or so.
What Robertson is saying is, “Forget about all that—the real truth lies in what I saw, which is that the black people I knew didn’t complain to me about Jim Crow, so that means that for all intents and purposes it didn’t exist.” But empathy requires us to at least try to imagine that our own experiences might not be the same as everyone’s. Sometimes it even requires that we consider the possibility that our experiences, and the perspective we originally had on them, distort reality. If your neighbor let you borrow his shovel and you thought, “What a nice guy,” and then later you found out that he also used that shovel to bury the 14 runaways he murdered, you wouldn’t say, “He couldn’t be guilty, because he was a nice guy who once lent me his shovel.” You’d understand that the shovel-lending, nice though it may have seemed at the time, didn’t accurately reflect his entire person.
And they may not like it, but white people who grew up in the South during Jim Crow have an extra responsibility to reflect on their own experience, their youthful perspective, and the reality so many people endured. They lived under a terrorist regime that treated them quite well while it committed horrific crimes against their fellow citizens. It may not be fair to say to someone today, “You should have stood against it,” particularly if they were young at the time. But it is fair to say that they now need to understand what it truly was, and if in 2013 they still think that blacks were “singing and happy” before they got welfare and turned all uppity, then they need to wake up.
OK, so I will say one more thing about the conservatives now rallying to Robertson’s cause. The way a thinking, moral person would react to his statements is to say, “Listen, I may not agree with his views about certain things, but he’s only one character on that program, and there’s a lot of value there.” A thinking, moral person doesn’t defend nostalgia for Jim Crow and compare gay people to those who commit bestiality. If you want to love this particular sinner but hate his sin, you’ve got to acknowledge the sin. And my conservative friends, the next time you’re wondering why gay people, black people, and pretty much anybody who is a minority of any kind all consider you intolerant? It isn’t liberals unfairly maligning you. It’s this kind of thing.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, December 20, 2013
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