Phil Robertson, the patriarch of A&E’s Duck Dynasty clan who was suspended from his hit reality series on Dec. 18 following some incendiary comments about gay people, won’t be put on hiatus after all.
The network and the Robertson family announced Friday that Phil will still be part of the series — and since he didn’t miss any filming, his temporary suspension will have no effect on the upcoming fifth season.
Reaction from the GLAAD bullies was swift and whiny:
“Phil Robertson should look African American and gay people in the eyes and hear about the hurtful impact of praising Jim Crow laws and comparing gay people to terrorists. If dialogue with Phil is not part of next steps then A+E has chosen profits over African American and gay people – especially its employees and viewers.”
They then skrieked “You’re terrible people and I wish you all were dead,” then ran upstairs, slammed the door shut, and spent the rest of the evening texting their friends about how everything was stupid and unfair.
Update: Some tool at MSDNC named Michael Eric Dyson is apoplectic:
“Phil Robertson and the “Duck Dynasty” is part of a majority white supremacist culture that either consciously or unconsciously incubates hatred toward those who are different.”
Update: CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill is also in full hissy-fit mode.
I don’t know what this means. I guess the self-worth of African American and gay people is so fragile that not firing Phil Robertson is so traumatic that they will be driven to suicide or something.
I am so Glaad that Phil Robertson has been reinstated on Duck Dynasty. To the all the gay whiners… suck on it. It’s all about freedom. It works both ways, so don’t be a hater… lol!
I am so Glaad that Phil Robertson was reinstated on Duck dynasty. Freedom of conscience and freedom of thought are not just reserved for the gay gestapo.
Just wondering…is this blog still associated with Chris Barron and GOProud? Just read his comments about Duck Dynasty as a self-identified conservative and wanted to know what was up, especially on the heels of his very public support of Terry Mcauliffe.
I have followed this A+E/Duck Dynasty flameout fairly carefully and what I have found is a typical liberal reframing of the facts.
Phil Robertson is being charged by liberals as being insensitive to blacks and gays by making wild comparisons. Sorry, but that is simply not true. The people going off on these supposed slams and barbs are never able to actually link to the words and context that make their case.
The fundamental rule about an argument is that first you have to agree to disagree. Opinions do not constitute such an agreement. Therefore, once you agree to engage in an argument, the next step is that each premise must be tested for neutrality and truth.
The premise which liberals are launching here is neither neutral nor true. Phil Robertson gave a list of sins as he understands sin. Then he said that only God can determine the fate of the sinner. He spoke about vaginas and anuses and the supposed attraction level of each in sex. That was an opinion, not a premise.
The words Phil Robertson spoke about blacks and whites in the late 50’s and early 60’s in Louisiana around Monroe is not something I can not dispute in his particular case on the basis of fact. Nonetheless, I would not be surprised if the Democrat segregation apartheid was largely in place. However, I saw Robertson referring to black and whites of his level of society as getting along on a personal level much as a Mexican among white and black laborers get along today as the Mexican goes home to his Mexican enclave and the black generally lives among his own kith and kin and the white goes to his chosen area of abode. I saw Robertson’s remarks as saying that the races were working things out on their own and that the tumult that followed forced integration might have been unnecessary with a little more time. That is a big “what if” sort of question for which we will never know the answer.
But the black agitation professionals leapt on Robertson’s words and made him into a rabid Jim Crow supremacist.
The argument from the liberal perspective has now been framed as Phil Robertson as convicted gay hater and white supremacist getting a pass because of the rising number of redneck bullies who grabbed their pitchforks and torches and intimidated A+E into acquiescence.
Now we are seeing the liberals demand of all others to explain how they are able to support or give a pass to a confirmed (by their estimation) racist and homophobe.
Marc Lamont Hill is really just a practiced glib ignoramus. He spouts his stuff as if it is all settled and proved and all there is left to do is for him to drive it home. It really is pathetically typical of all liberal talking heads.
Andrew Breitbart was onto this game and he went after the false premises and burrowed into them. It really is the key to undressing these fools.
“Praised Jim Crow Laws and compared Gays to Terrorists.”
More lies from GLAAD. It’s like reading the Huffington Post.
Well said, heliotrope. I don’t know either, but I suspect on the race relations that in addition to people working together mostly trying to get along was a sense of not airing grievances where there was no chance of change.
And I don’t know what there is for “dialog” with Phil Robertson. In addition to closely paraphrasing I Corinthians, Robertson also said that it was up to God to judge–not Robertson, and that Robertson tried to deal with everyone with love, not hate. As a conservative, I don’t see how anyone but the perpetually aggrieved that all do not bow down to their wishes can complain. (Robertson also said that promiscuous sex with women was also bad, but that tends to get ignored.)
I am glad that Phil has been reinstated. It is a victory for freedom of expression. Does GLAAD have any idea how much of the gay community views Duck Dynasty regularly? if it is minuscule, why are they making such a big deal out of it. As for me, i have never watched an episode. When I saw those bearded characters on Fox and Friends,
my first reaction was they like characters out of the late cartoonist, Al Capp’s, Li’ l Abner, with Mammy and Pappy Yokum, Li’l Abner and Daisy Mae. My interest was that freedom of expression must be preserved. If Phil’s is taken way then the radical left could take mine and any other conservatives righ,t be they gay or straight.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/12/27/duck-dynasty-uproar-divides-gay-conservatives?s_cid=rss:duck-dynasty-uproar-divides-gay-conservatives&page=2
As of Friday, more than 257,000 people signed an online petition started by the group Faith Driven Consumer demanding Robertson’s return to the show, which Nielsen ratings indicate netted A&E nearly 14 million viewers the week of Dec. 9.
Self-identified gay conservatives, who seek to broaden the movement and the Republican Party to include them, have different takes on the controversy.
“The knee jerk reaction of some on the right to actually defend this kind of ugliness is yet another reminder of just how out of touch these folks are with where America is and where America is going,” says Chris Barron, a Republican activist who co-founded the gay conservative organization GOProud.
Roberto,
Duck Dynasty has become about the only show I know on TV and watch and relish. However, I turned the first episode I saw off and walked away thinking that I did not care to watch a bunch of rednecks act the fools.
My daughter told me I “must” watch the show and once I saw the characters for who they are, I was took the bait, hook-line-and-sinker.
There is more great TV packed into one episode than you can imagine. These are truly good people doing good things and giving you a great ride in the back seat as they work out each gag. No profanity. No evil. Just happy, happy, happy dealing with faith, family and friends.
“Robertson wasn’t quoting from the Bible, he went on a vulgar and bigoted anti-gay rant,” says Barron, who stressed he was only speaking for himself and not on behalf of any organization.
Barron’s group was not invited to return as a co-sponsor of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in 2012 after a lobbying effort by social conservatives who believe gay organizations do not belong in the movement.
“I understand people having different opinions about whether A&E’s decision to suspend him was the right call,” says Barron. “What is so hard to comprehend is the desire of some on the right to defend the substance of what he said.”
Grennell is also quoted. . .
‘Duck Dynasty’ Uproar Divides Gay Conservatives
Phil Robertson’s TV hiatus either ‘liberal intolerance’ or good sense, gay conservatives say
By STEVEN NELSON
December 27, 2013
“Gay Americans value free speech, don’t demand that everyone think like they do and aren’t nearly as thin-skinned as the so-called gay leadership,” Grenell says. “Tolerance means you are OK with people thinking differently than you do. Sadly, liberal intolerance is on the rise.”
But Michael Lucas, a self-identified conservative who owns one of the country’s largest gay pornography companies, Lucas Entertainment, says Americans shouldn’t tolerate intolerance.
“He is a religious-fundamentalist bigot, and the world is losing patience with that,” Lucas says. “In Afghanistan he would be fighting for the Taliban. In Russia he would be pulling the roof off gay clubs. We should not feel obliged to make room for this person in American popular culture.”
Lucas grew up in the Soviet Union. In a 2012 op-ed published by The Advocate he said living in a country “run into the ground by an army of bureaucrats” shaped his political beliefs. He said he wishes he could join the Republican Party, because he opposes Democratic Party policy on taxation and economic liberty, but cannot do so until it abandons social conservatism.
“Phil Robertson is not being put in jail; he is just being taken off a TV show for a while,” Lucas says. “This is not a government action, so the First Amendment is not in play.”
Lucas notes that in 2010 Robertson gave a videotaped sermon in which he invoked the biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorrah and seemed to say about gay people: “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 truthless. They invent ways of doing evil.”
“This is not just, ‘Ick, gay sex is icky,'” Lucas says. “This goes a lot deeper.”
and
Notice the lack of supporting data to prove the “conclusion.”
I don’t know if Rusty was helping me make my point made @ #5 or not, but he came up with some perfect examples of how the game is played.
Conservatives who engage in this game which liberals own outright are making asses of themselves. You can’t win by trying to out-demagogue the proprietors of the art of demagoguery.
Chris Barron could not stand up and give a recital of Robertson’s actual “vulgar and bigoted anti-gay rant” words if his very life depended on it.
Lucas will first have to lay out his terms for qualifying a person to be a certified “religious-fundamentalist bigot” before any argument can be enjoined.
So far, we have two relative nobody’s ruling from inside their own minds. Furthermore, those minds, for all intents and purposes, seem to be thoroughly made up. That is to say, closed.
I am sick and tired of the gay left whining and moaning and all of their intimidation tactics.
The funny part is that the bigot and liar rusty and his GLAAD friends called Chris Barron and Michael Lucas damaged meth addicts and Jewish Nazis.
And now they’re trying to champion them.
The inconsistency and hypocrisy of bigots like rusty shows quite clearly their malicious intent in all of their statements.
I was initially interested in GOProud when I heard of them. Then I discovered that Barron and Lucas were more than willing to out gays who supported politicians whose views ran counter to their own. Even if I don’t agree with gay liberals on much of anything, I’ve spoken to a lot of gay liberals who think what they do to such people is despicable.
Outing somebody without their permission is frowned upon in the gay community. It’s a process that requires trust, and if a person does it, it needs to be on their own terms. Perez Hilton got a lot of flack for trying to out gay celebrities.
Barron and Lucas’ actions perpetuate the stereotype that gay men are manipulative and vindictive men who think nothing of humiliating and ruining anybody who stands in their way. They have dragged their feet in plenty of elections, refusing to support any Republican who does not check all the boxes on their gay advocacy list, going even so far as to declare their support of Gary Johnson of all people in 2012, a man who had no hope of winning the election, just because he supported gay marriage.
Barron and Lucas hardly represent gay “conservatives.” GOProud has gone the way of the Log House Republicans, going from a relatively libertarian-conservative group to a liberal Republican group. Whether Barron and Lucas ever espoused conservative views or were merely playing a part, I don’t know. But I am beginning to understand why some groups have been hesitant to include GOProud at CPAC. We don’t need people who embrace such tactics.
So let me get this straight. Acknowledging the existence of godly and happy Blacks in the segregated South as Phil Robertson did amounts to praising Jim Crow laws? Really? This hits home with me in a very personal way.
My grandmother was born out of wedlock in 1922. Throughout my childhood she entertained me with stories of her childhood in rural Texas. She talked about farm life, friendship, family relationships, and faith. She never talked about racism. Being illegitimate seemed to have caused her more personal difficulty than being Black.
As I got older I began to see the disconnect between Granny’s stories and what I was learning in school and on tv about the Old South. Finally, when I was about 10 or 11 I asked my grandmother, “Granny, didn’t you have ANY problems with White people?” I mean, she MUST have had some if what I was learning in school and from Hollywood was true. Well, Granny then told me a brief story about a Black man who was shot at by a White person for stepping out of his place…or something. Granny wasn’t real clear on the details, which led me to suspect that the incident was probably more hearsay than fact. Still, my curiosity was satisfied and I never brought the subject up again.
And what does this mean? It means that Phil Robertson was right. There were godly and happy Black people in the Old South. There were Blacks whose lives were more impacted, for good or ill, by their personal decisions and/or family situations than by racism. My grandmother was one such Black person. Although she didn’t realize it, Granny’s wonderful stories and her passionate opposition to abortion set me on the path to becoming the staunch social traditionalist, patriot, and anti-liberal that I am today.
Thank you, Granny and Phil Robertson, for revealing a reality that the left desperately wants to suppress. And GLAAD, DUCK YOU!!!!!
I always thought Chris Barron was a tool, and he has proven me right again. It’s why I keep activists at arms’ length. I am disappointed that GOProud chose to side against liberty, but I can’t say I’m surprised either.
If dialogue with Phil…
Would this be like a national conversation on race? The kind of conversation where you sit down, shut-up, and listen to the grievance-mongers tell you what an evil person you are?
I suspect these conversations resemble the conversation between a certain band leader and Luca Brasi.
Now, if I were Phil Robertson, I would sue GLAAD for defamation and put them out of business once and for all.
Can someone on the Libtard Left show me exactly where Phil Robertson praised Jim Crow laws, as GLAAD states he did? (I’m looking at you, Rusty Cut-and-Paste.)
The only way to respond to bullies is to refrain from being intimidated and to call them out each time. Period.
Regards,
Peter H.
“Rusty Cut-and-Paste”. Brilliant, Peter!
Thanks, Seane-Anna!
BTW, I loved your family story about your Granny in Texas. Would love to hear more about her and your family.
I hear you about life in South during the Depression – it’s what my grandparents went through when they tried to assimilate to life in this country after leaving Greece. Talk about culture shock.
When my grandfather tried to open a diner in downtown Houston in the 1930s, he wanted to hire a nice young man he knew to be his busboy. The businessman who owned the car-repair shop told my grandfather not to do it, because he’d lose business. Why? The young man was black.
My grandfather’s response was legendary: “So what would people not come, if I hire Jimmy [the young man]? Why they do this? Is this not America? I do as I please, right?”
The other man had no answer.
Grandpa hired Jimmy but put him to work in the kitchen so as not to “offend” the white patrons. Back then, you hired white women as waitresses and Hispanics as busboys. Blacks were kept in the kitchen. But Grandpa made sure that all his employees were treated equally, and during breaks everyone ate at the same table – a rarity in the South at the time.
Just thought I’d share.
Regards,
Peter H.
You’re welcome, Peter! Your grandfather sounds like an A-1 man. Bet you’re really proud of him!
And my grandmother was an awesome lady. Her whole life contradicted the liberal narrative and planted in me the seeds of doubt about liberalism that sprouted into full blown conservative reaction. For example, Granny didn’t hesitate to leave an abusive marriage at a time when, according to feminist doctrine, women had no options due to smothering patriarchy. Granny, however, didn’t know that patriarchy prevented her from protecting herself and her daughter (my mother). She left my grandfather, became a single mother to my mom, and got a job cleaning houses to support herself, her mother, and my mother.
Granny was poor, Black, female, and “uneducated”, all the things that, according to liberals, make a person unable to make it in life without their help. But Granny did make it in life without their help. She was an awesome example to me. She passed away 23 years ago. I will forever miss her.
I hear you. Grandpa died when I was very young and Grandma lived to be 89. Both of them are still with me in my memories.
What our grandparents had in common was that they didn’t rely on others (much less the government) to live out their dreams. This factor is sorely missed in today’s society.
Regards,
Peter H.
Thank you for sharing your stories about your grandparents, Seane-Anna and Peter H.
What has happened with GOProud is an example of what is wrong with forming organizations based on a characteristic like homosexuality. Yes, knowing that there were other gay conservatives was extremely valuable to me back when I was struggling with accepting my sexual orientation, and I can see other ways that letting it be known that not all gays are part of the leftist borg, but founding a whole organization on such a thing just seems like you’re playing identity politics. Plus, as far as I can tell, Chris Barron has never been very reliably “conservative” (or libertarian, for that matter).
Chris Barron is why gays should just avoid organizations like LCR and GOProud. If you want to be active in politics, join Heritage, join Cato, join the Tea Party. Don’t waste your time with organizations that put sexuality ahead of principles.
I disagree. Robertson never lost his freedom to express himself; A&E also enjoys that same freedom, including the freedom to make really stupid business/entertainment decisions in who they hire/fire/suspend/reinstate. Although I doubt anyone at A&E has learned anything from this, at least GLAAD is upset and that’s good.
I’m not sure I understand exactly what Barron thinks is ‘vulgar’ — discussing anal sex and comparing it to vaginal sex? And for the umpteenth time, why aren’t these activists critical of A&E for signing off on the interview or GQ for writing such a complimentary interview/piece about Robertson? This entire dust-up seems manufactured.
I would be totally underwhelmed if I learned that GLAAD got a fat sympathy “donation” out of A+E.
Yep. This whole thing was good publicity and A&E pretty much did what made the most business sense, probably. I mean, the people who are mad at A&E probably aren’t going to stop watching Duck Dyansty because of this. If this whole thing was a calculated business decision, I can’t fault A&E for that. In fact, I respect them for it.
To Peter @25, sorry your grandparents have passed on, like mine. But at least they left us a precious legacy of self-reliance, of achieving a good life and being a good person without government “help”. Nothing can beat that.
And to Rattlesnake at @26, you’re welcome! Glad you enjoyed mine and Peter’s stories.
Peter and Seane-Anna, thank you for your stories of your grandparents. They sound like wonderful people.
Robertson never lost his freedom to express himself;
Yeah, but this was the same as demanding he shut up, along the same lines as using the “raaaaaaacist!” card. This, of course, was carried out by the same used tampons that don’t seem to have a problem with a fellow liberal calling someone a “cocksucking fag”.
Well, for one thing, Robertson isn’t pushing subjugation like the professional victims. What is so hard to comprehend is some dipshit in DC who can’t comprehend that.
(sidebar) Really I haven’t been following GOProud very closely at all. I was kinda disappointed that Perfect Hair Forever LaSalvia ran off to join the American Criminal Liberals Union. Don’t know what’s up with Barron.
This whole LGBTetc. activist movement will play out just like the Civil Rights movement. Oh, yes, everybody will get the legal rights they want, but people ultimately won’t deal with them for fear of offending them. In other words, they’ll scare away the very thing they want the most: true acceptance by others.
Seane-Anna and Peter have painted a picture of the Old South that was different than I had imagined. As an immigrant, who attended a semester at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennesee. One afternoon, I went to nearby Winchester, when a young black guy who worked in the dining room came over and began to walk and talk with me. In my paramoia, I feared the KKK, would come and tar and feather us. It didn’t happen. But in Chattanooga, a Korean classmate and I were invited to dinner by another whose family lived in the outskirts. We had directions which required that we take public transportation. We boarded the bus and a few minutes later the driver shouted that we couldn’t sit together. I responded that i thought the sign that said the front of the bus is reserved for members of the white race, applied only blacks. He was definite that my classmate wasn’t white. so we got off and walked. In the Greyhound Bus station to return to Sewanee, the bathroms and drinking fountains were separate.I could never understand the reason for it.
Since then I have known and had staff who were born and raised in the South. I never heard animus for whte people from them. It seems that the animus of young blacks is in the Northern states and cities (polar bear hunting) where neither they nor their immediate families experienced the so-called evils of the South for which they blame all white people for and take their revenge.It is fueled by the liberal left and so-called black leadership like Al sharpton, and Jesse Jackson.
Roberto,
Race prejudice was a very real thing in the south and no one can erase it or revise it. However, practical people deal with their situations and the reality of their environments and make their treaties and learn to navigate according to the unwritten rules.
The 60’s upending of segregation was traumatic all around and plenty of good people, both black and white, got burned in the tumult. Black riots and the Black Panthers served to “validate” the emotions of white supremacists. The Kennedy brothers and the FBI tried to upend Martin Luther King by destroying his character in order to erase his base. However, King called his people together at the Lincoln memorial and they came and they made a statement which overpowered the old time politics of race and race suppression.
Integration was very much like being in the vanguard of occupiers after a major battle. No one really knows just how to carry off the assignments or exactly what role to play. That is not a new normalcy, it is a different stage in the process of establishing a new normalcy.
Here we are, fifty years later, and the race mongers are still carrying on about discrimination and all the hurt and pain from “back in the day.”
I grew up in a house with indoor plumbing, electricity and a car. But around me were people with kerosene lighting who were dependent on others for transportation. Our realities of comfort were different, but when we played and hunted and went swimming and harvested crops we were peas in a pod. Race, religion, age, country of origin did not separate us.
Power does not corrupt. Bad people corrupt power. A law officer pushing his prejudice with his badge is a bad person. The concept of a law officer is a good one.
We were thrown into tumult by the civil rights era. For the most part, I believe it was an idea whose time had come. There were bad actors in the mess and some of the ideas that came out of it have done inestimable harm. (Affirmative Action, welfare rules, etc.)
That was then and this is now. All of us needs to confront our prejudices and make a strong effort to sublimate them, if not overcome them. Some will never try. Take that for granted. But good people do not reach for a can of “victimhood” every time they get discouraged.
My main gripe is that Demonizingrats and most liberals stir stuff up to create a stink that will drive their favorite victims to vote for them. That is divisive, corrupt and evil.
But when the victim has been housed and fed by a pandering government, it is understandable how they would fear other people “dedicated” to taking it away from them.
From that perspective, we have traded racial segregation for class segregation. There are not very many chapters in the Demagogue Book of Societal Manipulation. It is an age-old game of power and corruption in the hands of governors who grow rich off the process.
heliotrope
I do have a memory of seeing in the news the marches, the killing of Medgar Evers and the Episcopal seminarian. I left Sewanee after one semester. I pledged Delta Tau Delta. Each fraternityhad its specified tables, and regularly I remember some of the brothers, looking at me saying; “we haven’t had a yankee hanging in years.” Or “you’re an itralian, which means you’re nothing but a *N word turned inside out.” Needless to say I felt uncomfortable in that environment.
It seems as though southernblacks have moved beyond and seem to be well integrated into contemporary society while northern blacks use the past as an excuse for claiming victimhood as the reason for their delinquent acts against whites.
Kevin @ 32, you’re welcome!
Comparing it unfavorably to vaginal sex is, I suspect, the part that Barron found “vulgar.”
If Robertson had said “a fuckhole’s a fuckhole, dude!”, I doubt that Barron would’ve complained about the “vulgarity.”