The far right Palin types, including Palin herself are rushing to defending Duck Dynasty star, Phil Robertson, for his inapropriate remarks .
Once again, Palin, Bobby Jindal (who I thought had some common sense), Ted Cruz and even Newt Gingrich , simply don’t get it. This issue isn’t about free speech. A & E is the publisher. Publishers have ever right to decide what they will and will not publish or broadcast. In fact, they have a responsibility to do so.
Had Robertson expressed himself in a less graphic, coarse, and vitriolic way, I expect no one would have raised an eyebrow. Of course he is free to believe what he wants. However, when he is on A & E, he has a responsibility to not express himself in a way that offends the audience of that network.
Meanwhile, Palin and others have attempted to cash in on the politics of the matter. There shouldn’t really be any politics involved. I guess if it stirs up the base, its good for the far right. Meanwhile, I can’t imagine any broadcast or print media that sets out to offend a large part of its audience. Robertson was offensive not only to gays but also to African-Americans. He should have been suspended until he has a clear understanding of things he can and cannot say. What company in America would permit an employee or contract worker to issue such a diatribe while that person was representing the company? I can’t think of one off-hand.
The War on Christmas was running out of steam. Now its time to #Stand by Phil. Clearly there are a whole bunch of people out there who don’t understand the first amendment or the Bible. Let’s stifle our gag reflex and look at what Phil had to say according to cnn.com:
“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,” he’s quoted as saying.
When asked what he thought was sinful, Robertson replied: “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.”
But homosexuals aren’t alone, Robertson said. “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.”
In addition to his comments about homosexuality, Robertson also spoke about race and growing up in Louisiana before the civil rights era.
“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once,” he told GQ. “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,” GQ quoted Robertson as saying.
Oh dear God. Someone muzzle this guy. He lives in la-la land. The comedy continues. Quack.
It really isn’t about religious beliefs. People may believe what they want. What you can’t do is represent someone else and go express opinions and beliefs that violate many people’s values. There will be consequences. A & E is ultimately a business. They don’t need the controversy. Had Robertson said that his religious beliefs consider homosexuality a sin and left it at that, I think most of us could accept that without it rubbing off on A & E. He didn’t. He went graphic, crude and preachy. Now he is in the naughty corner. He’ll be back. Money talks.
@George
“However, he did protect a prostitute from being stoned”.
Been thinking about this all day. Thanks George – very strong message. Merry Christmas!
Please plant that on my Jesus thread. It is a very strong message.
Did everyone get to see my supposed ‘beat down’ on facebook? Apparently I am not Christian. 🙄
Ramble on, ye cynical philosophers. A&E woke up the proverbial tiger. And the roar caused Cracker Barrel, inter alia, to crumble almost instantly and GLAAD to draw the fire of remonstrance even from its own kind.
I believe GLAAD is still going at it, hot and heavy.
As for Cracker Barrel…well…are you surprised? The biscuits and gravy crowd (My apologies to IH) is hardly the last bastion of enlightenment.
Regardless of the A & E boycott, people still have to pay their cable bill.
As I said, I don’t care what Mr. McDuck thinks of gays. I defend A & E’s right to do what it thinks is best. That’s pretty much it.
As I recall, it was not a prostitute saved by Christ. It was a woman caught in the act of committing adultery. After saving her with those famous words about casting the first stone, he also told the woman to go and sin no more.
“A&E woke up the proverbial tiger” Tiger? Of what?
The homophobia and gay marriage issue did rumble through American politics for a while, and probably helped to decide the 2004 election, but its day is done. Gay marriage is becoming an established phenomenon, kids generally do understand that gay people are born that way (whereas earlier generations seemed to have some confusion on that point – or even that gay people existed), and the isue’s pretty much dead to thinking people, and to political strategists.
This is what’s known as “progress”.
Oh, and um, those soldiers who defend our nations? Lot of gay ones in there. A fair amount. Openly serving.
As you can see in Charts 3 4 and 5 here, the percentage of military personnel who self-identify as gay is the same as for the civilian population – http://www.rand.org/pubs/periodicals/rand-review/issues/2011/spring/gays.html
Ignore the tiger at your peril. He does not like being told by others what he can and cannot say, especially when it appears to be a punishment for expressing his personal religious faith. Uncross your atheistic and agnostic eyes and get it straight. The principal reaction was against an effort to bully and punish for self-expression. GLAAD is not under attack for homosexuality as much as it is for trying to bully others into censorship. A&E was their unfortunate and cowardly dupe. Other cable TV mavens are remarking about how stupidly A&E played the whole thing.
Cracker Barrel appears to be doing o.k., despite elitist disdain for the “biscuits and gravy crowd.” Elsewhere, it is the company which owns Red Lobster and Olive Garden which is discussing the closing of restaurants around the country because they have not been doing very well.
Oh, and William Dafoe saved a prostitute from stoning. Christ saved an adulteress. Not recommended to use Hollywood movies for discussion of Biblical topics.
If my memory from sociology classes serves me, adulteress and fornicator were interchangeable words in biblical times. I don’t recall seeing Daniel Defoe in a biblical movie.
Self expression is fine, on your web page or on your TV show, if you own that network. Otherwise, you are basically a guest. and must go by house rules. I don’t understand why this has become a difficult concept. If I go to your house and start spouting religion that you find offensive, you have every right to tell me to leave.
Who are you talking to about the atheist and agnostic eyes? Unless a person has declared to be an atheist or an agnostic, then That’s not something you get to decide.
Do you think A & E was stupid to cancel Dawg the Bounty hunter? It really doesn’t matter if it was stupid or not. They are the station owners. They get to decide. A whole new group of people will come along to watch a whole new group of shows and no one will care.
You assume a lot. I don’t have distain for the biscuits and gravy crowd. I just don’t think most of them are where I would go look for enlightenment. Is that elitist? My best friend loves the gravy and biscuits at Cracker Barrel. She is an exception to that generalization.
On the subject of censorship, I fully admit that Elena and I are the censors on this blog. It is our responsibility to serve in that capacity.
Am I to assume you don’t like gays, Woverine and that it is socially acceptable to call them an abomination in public?
Not Daniel Defoe. Willem Dafoe, the actor. A 1988 Martin Scorsese film called “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Dafoe played the role of Jesus. The film took such liberties with the Bible that it very much angered many Catholics and Evangelicals. This was especially so with regard to the character of Mary Magdalene, who was depicted as a prostitute being stoned and then saved by Christ using the famous admonition about casting the first stone. Probably where some have gotten prostitute confused with the real Biblical passage about the adultress. As I recall, the film also put Magdalene in an intimate role with Christ, which is something the churches have rejected after centuries of investigation and contemplation by theologians, modern Da Vinci Code movie or no Da Vinci Code movie.
I really don’t care if the issue at hand is homosexuality or a debate over whether the moon is made of green cheese. A man was in an interview. He was asked about his religious faith and he gave an honest answer — wonder of wonders in our contemporary society. Somebody- a loud minority group — who didn’t like the expressed beliefs of the man’s faith put pressure on his employer to punish the man. And the employer knuckled under to those demands, despite the fact that the man was a key part of their own ace meal ticket. No private agreement/compromise with the man about future interviews. No defense of the man’s right to express his faith in a situation away from his employment. Just a quick cave in to the clamoring and demanding minority and a very visible tossing of a Christian believer into the showbiz doghouse. Shameful reaction. Cowardly action. And stupid. 93 million Evangelicals in this country, not to mention millions of conservative Catholics and other conservative religious and political types, free speech advocates, et al. And the cowardly employer , as well as the clamoring minority, finally realized too late that they had awakened the “tiger.” They were dumbass all the way in my book.
Well, since you asked……..Yes, I consider public remarks that the “biscuit and gravy crowd” is not where I would go for enlightment to be a rather unfortunate thing to say about the millions in this country who are not as fortunate as I am to have several college degrees and a long professional career in which I quickly became a boss and not an underling. That same “biscuit and gravy crowd” fixes my car, repairs my house, plugs the leaks in the plumbing, and grows most of the food I eat, among a myriad of other things in which I am not adept. I do not call them the “biscuit and gravy crowd.” I call them the savvy homespun and street-wise people who keep this country running. And I happen to like biscuits and gravy. Sorry, Moon, but I am first generation up from the blue collar and rural class and I will call you on that one.
I never saw that film. I had heard it was too sacriligious.
I hardly think ‘biscuits and gravy’ is a derogatory thing to say about people eating in Cracker Barrel (or Dennys or Bob Evans) especially in light of another calling an entire class of people an abomination. Do you not see the irony and hypocrisy of you “calling me” on that expression while giving the green light to some redneck in cammies to call gays “an abomination?”
Furthermore, if asked about his faith, why on earth did he go right to describing how he felt about homosexuals? I am curious, if I asked you about your faith, how far down the list would that topic be? I could think of a lot of things I would say and my opinion of gays would never even come up. It has nothing to do with my faith other than the Golden Rule.
Yes, I used “redneck” on purpose. It felt good. Its part of my faith.
You seem to be fully ready to throw everyone who isn’t conservative catholic or evangelical under the bus, btw. Are the rest of the folks just not Christians in your opinion?
Not Daniel Defoe. Willem Dafoe, the actor. A 1988 Martin Scorsese film called “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Dafoe played the role of Jesus. The film took such liberties with the Bible that it very much angered many Catholics and Evangelicals. This was especially so with regard to the character of Mary Magdalene, who was depicted as a prostitute being stoned and then saved by Christ using the famous admonition about casting the first stone. Probably where some have gotten prostitute confused with the real Biblical passage about the adultress. As I recall, the film also put Magdalene in an intimate role with Christ, which is something the churches have rejected after centuries of investigation and contemplation by theologians, modern Da Vinci Code movie or no Da Vinci Code movie.
I really don’t care if the issue at hand is homosexuality or a debate over whether the moon is made of green cheese. A man was in an interview. He was asked about his religious faith and he gave an honest answer — wonder of wonders in our contemporary society. Somebody- a loud minority group — who didn’t like the expressed beliefs of the man’s faith put pressure on his employer to punish the man. And the employer knuckled under to those demands, despite the fact that the man was a key part of their own ace meal ticket. No private agreement/compromise with the man about future interviews. No defense of the man’s right to express his faith in a situation away from his employment. Just a quick cave in to the clamoring and demanding minority and a very visible tossing of a Christian believer into the showbiz doghouse. Shameful reaction. Cowardly action. And stupid. 93 million Evangelicals in this country, not to mention millions of conservative Catholics and other conservative religious and political types, free speech advocates, et al. And the cowardly employer , as well as the clamoring minority, finally realized too late that they had awakened the “tiger.” They were dumbass all the way in my book.
Well, since you asked……..Yes, I consider public remarks that the “biscuit and gravy crowd” is not where I would go for enlightment to be a rather unfortunate thing to say about the millions in this country who are not as fortunate as I am to have several college degrees and a long professional career in which I quickly became a boss and not an underling. That same “biscuit and gravy crowd” fixes my car, repairs my house, plugs the leaks in the plumbing, and grows most of the food I eat, among a myriad of other things in which I am not adept. I do not call them the “biscuit and gravy crowd.” I call them the savvy homespun and street-wise people who keep this country running. And I happen to like biscuits and gravy. Sorry, Moon, but I am first generation up from the blue collar and rural class and I will call you on that one.
So the “tiger” is reactionary Christians? And we should expect some type of actions to result from this.
For the record :
1. I consider myself a “rationalist”
2. I love Cracker Barrel – best deal in just a good honest restaurant chain caught in a crossfire they didn’t design. If they were paying him as a spokesman, I’d see this differently.
meant to say best deal in town, and I see them as just a good honest restautant chain caught in a crossfire they didn’t design.
And this is from someone who avoids Pizza Hut because they hired Rush Limbaugh as a spokesman circa 1996.
As to whether I believe that a “God” is real or present or possible, I’ve come to believe that the question is meaningless. When you get down to what most people mean by “God”, they mean a force that created us, and/or a reason that existence makes some rational sense. The cause for the effect. How can anyone claim to know whether those abstract things exist?
I don’t know whether the human mind and consciousness – which is trained from birth to find the cause for every effect – is capable of understanding or encompassing a/the reason for existence. It may be beyond us, as surely as the curvature of the earth is beyond an ant’s.
Meanwhile, i say to you, if somebody tells you that they talked to God and that God wants you to give them 10% of your money – watch your wallet.
Woverine said
I find it particularly amusing that you called me an elitist. Of course, you have no way of knowing that I spent most of my life working with the biscuit and gravy crowd. Perhaps, rather than assuming that I look at them with distain, you should think for a moment that I might know them a little better than you think I do.
Most biscuits and gravy folks are the salt of the earth. I just wouldn’t go looking for enlightenment there. Sometimes its there, sometimes its not. That just isn’t a spot where I would go looking. So while you were getting your advanced degrees and being da boss, I was working with the salt of the earth folks. I am no stranger to them and hardly an elitist. My job would have been easier if I were more of an elitist.
But…think what you want. I don’t think I know of all life’s answers.