But anyhow, come to find out this is one of those shows like Pawn Stars and all those house flipping and car redesigning shows where real folks are followed doing whatever it is they do, with some probably hokey mugging for the cameras, but mostly a straight-shoot regarding "this is how we live". I don't know whether the opinion of the bristly-bearded Papa Bear of the Robertson clan was solicited regarding gays or whether he held forth on his own, but the nature of the comments were specific, graphic, and intended to put down a whole class of people. I can understand why his employer is concerned about how that reflects on the show and the network, just as I understand why Martin Bashir came to the understanding with his network that he had gone too far.
I know some conservatives are going to stick up for his freedom of speech, but he isn't being penalized by the government for talking about anal sex--he's being suspended by his employer for the kind of speech that might damage the TV show's brand. He has all the freedom to talk legally that he wants--it's how that freedom impacts his contract with A&E that he has to worry about. As for me, since I never watched the show, I couldn't very well pretend I'm boycotting or anything. But it never fails to shock me when presumably anti-fornication and anti-gay sex people immediately express their issues with gay people solely in terms of the sexual acts almost to the exclusion of any thought that people do other things. Hold hands. Talk. Raise families or barns or Lhasa apsos. Things that are not sex. And I might even be a little bemused at why it's always the gay men sex they have to go to express their issues with.
As for A&E, I don't know what they expect when they host a show that seems to be almost about "Whoot, look, rednecks!" The very idea of Arts & Entertainment TV seems to skew in favor of Twyla Tharp retrospectives or something--but I guess the "arts" aspect might have took a step back right around when the History Channel became about alien invasions. Anyhow, if they question who they hired after they have made a very popular show, maybe they want to give a thought or two to who they hired and either corral their talent better or just not have people they think aren't representative of their "brand". But it's laughable for them to front like they are that surprised now.
2 comments:
Ola, Vixen,
A&E has created a duck storm!
I vaguely suspect that our current president's very unsuccessful attempt to roll out a health care law has created a backlash of negative opinion, and this attack on Phil is an attempt to switch the conversation to the culture. Regrettably for A&E, this has now created a huge backlash against the people wishing to attack Duck Dynasty. Busy, busy, busy...
Like you, I know very little about Duck Dynasty. I've seen parts of it once or twice, and have never given it a second thought. But here is what I think is happening.
Back in the old days with Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw, if people wanted to watch TV, they had to watch news.
Nowadays, people don't have to watch news, and so they don't.
As a consequence, my understanding is that only about 10% of the country pay any attention to TV news programming or internet discussions.
When the rest of the country wants some excitement, they'll tune in the Sopranos or Breaking Bad and see some real violence, not shrill politicians or even shriller commenters yelling silly things at each other.
The consequence of all this is that there is maybe a 30- or 35-million-person bubble of people who stay up to date with the current controversies.
They don't realize that it's just a small percentage of political wonks elevating subjects among themselves.
Once in a while this small group steps on the toes of the other 250 million people who live and move and have their being in the world outside the bubble.
I think think is what has happened with Duck Dynasty. The truth is that most people in flyover country are more or less in agreement with what Phil said to a greater or lesser extent. It is only outrageous inside the media bubble. Outside, in America, it is commonplace.
At least this is the way I see it. Today my wife and I were in 3 different small towns in our state, and the conversations about Phil were ubiquitous. And we did not run across one detractor of Phil. Most of them understood he was rephrasing Corinthians in response to a question he was asked.
One guy said, "When you have a program filled with people who have said up front that they are Bible thumpers, what do you expect?"
--Formerly Amherst
Formerly Amherst, the lib media didn't raise a crapstorm over Mel Gibson's anti-semitism, Laura Schlessinger's "n-word" rant, Sarah Palin's blood libel comments, or a dozen other celeb-and-near celeb statements of sensational awfulness to distract from the Obamacare rollout--this isn't about Obamacare, either, there actually are people who are legitimately offended. You do the media too much credit to think they're that organized, anyway.
If he said being gay was sinful, and that was what he believed, I don't think that alone would have freaked anyone out because any televangelist or religious right-oriented politician has said as much--it's that he went right to a comparison of the anus and the vagina. Call me old-fashioned, but reducing hetero or gay relations to just, well, what hole is used, is gross.
I can see why people prefer to watch TV other than news--on most shows, problems have resolutions. In politics, it seems like problems hardly ever are totally resolved.
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