Fenster writes:
I favor reasoned discussion about the actually important issues brought out in the Robertson kerfuffle. But I recognize it is just so damn tempting, and so much fun, to just judge.
That’s on display in my area. In my part of the swamp–eastern Massachusetts–the conventional wisdom is that there are no serious issues to discuss, and that our side wins. Here, for instance, is how today’s Boston Globe discusses Duck Dynasty. Note that this is not a news article, an arts column, an editorial, or a critical review. It is a TV listing!
Ouch! Call Dr. Paglia!
Thankfully, not all of Boston is so hidebound. Here is a very nice essay in the most recent Bostonia magazine (put out by Boston University, so it’s got a nice Eastern pedigree). In it, a nice Boston liberal talks about how she has learned to respect conservative ideals. And she doesn’t even condescend. More of this would be welcome.
Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan struggles with the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other in his handling of Robertson.
His conclusion is a generous one, and he does not favor the firing.
What Phil Robertson has given A&E is a dose of redneck reality. Why on earth would they fire him for giving some more?
But he is being exceedingly generous, since before coming to this conclusion he felt compelled to note that
to posit gay people as the true source of all moral corruption is to use eliminationist rhetoric and demonizing logic to soften up a small minority of people for exclusion, marginalization and, at some point, violence.
In other words, let him stay on the air, but watch him closely since he has a gun.
IMHO, the issue has been handled best in two recent pieces, one by Cathy Young, a kind-of libertarian, and the other by the Christian writer Larry Taunton, in The Atlantic. In both cases, the writers try to identify the issues at stake, and engage in reasoned discussion. More of that would be welcome.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
What’s wrong with judgement?
A man gets suspended (I was wrong about him being fired) for speaking his mind, in a country that prattles on endlessly about the importance of free speech and religious freedom, and I’m meant to find it interesting material for dinner conversation and not get too heated up about it!
Especially when there is a consistent pattern of this sort of thing happening. The slippery slope gets vindicated over and over again but some people, no matter how educated, are too blind to see.
1930’s German history is especially fascinating. It was interesting to see the “educated” opinion of Hitler on his assumption to power. So many saw him as a “fly by night thing”. People who saw him as menace were ridiculed. He applied the vice slowly and deliberately and in the end those who mocked him were his victims. Mark Twain was right; history might not repeat but it sure rhymes. The words are different but I’m hearing the same tune.
I now live in a state where I can quite realistically lose my job for failing to refer for an abortion against my conscience. I’m waiting for the knock on the door. This shit is real for some of us and not simply some dinner table conversation material.
The liberty that was entrusted to your generation has been squandered. It’ll be up to my generation to establish it anew. You don’t talk with the Left, you drive a stake through it’s heart.
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Amen brother — preach on.
Everyone should check out “slumlord’s” blog, it is quite good:
http://socialpathology.blogspot.com/
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A moral compass without objective standards is as useless for the navigation of morality as compass without true north. The reason why these two bastards burn in hell is always wrong. No matter what the context.
Should be
A moral compass without objective standards is as useless for the navigation of morality as compass without true north. The reason why these two bastards burn in hell is because what they did is always wrong. No matter what the context.
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My great uncle was a news editor at the Frankfurter Zeitung in the years before and during Hitler. That was one of Germany’s leading newspapers, with an international reputation and circulation. In fact, after Hitler first ordered it shut down with the rest, Goebbels sneakily countermanded his order and let it stay open for propaganda reasons. It looked good internationally. The devil’s bargain was that the FZ could not be overtly anti-Nazi. But when the FZ criticized a party official for corruption, the official’s wife complained to Hitler, who raged at Geobbels, and it was over. For sure the editors way underestimated Hitler’s game.
So yeah when in a situation in which conversation–over dinner, in the press or in a blog–is insufficient, well, then I guess it is time to reach for one’s gun, to borrow a quote inappropriately, perhaps. The question is whether we are in that situation. I am not convinced.
The abortion story in Australia you linked to gives great pause. For me, though, I am not convinced it is time to reach for the gun, and that conversation is not still a remedy. Heck, all you have to do is ratchet back a couple of decades, and it would be the conscience of the doctor performing the abortion that would be ignored as he went off to jail.
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“all you have to do is ratchet back a couple of decades, and it would be the conscience of the doctor performing the abortion that would be ignored as he went off to jail.”
Yeah, you bet, that happened a whole lot. In fact, doctors often performed abortions back when it was technically illegal. This is typical liberal BS, and utterly unworthy of you, Fenster. You know better than this.
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But here’s the real kicker Fenster, there is no need for a woman to go see a doctor in order to get an abortion here in Victoria. A woman can walk up to any abortion clinic and get access without a doctor’s referral. But should she go to a doctor and want one, he has to provide one. Huh? That doesn’t make sense if the issue is one of abortion access. But it does make sense if someone wants to rid the medical profession of Christian doctors by compelling to act against their consciences unnecessarily. This is not an issue about about abortion, rather it is a mechanism by which the medical profession here can be De-Christianised.
By the way, the organisation that dreamed up this totalitarian turd is U.S. based. Emily’s List is quite active in your bit of the world as well. The fact that you can’t see the danger does not mean that the danger is not there.
Every serious historian who has studied the rise of Hitler has recongised that there were multiple points in his early career where he, with comparatively trivial effort, could have been stopped. Hitler’s rise to power is a much due to the failure of Germany’s leaders (their best and brightest) to recognise the nascent malignity. They all thought he was a joke, they all thought he could be reasoned with. They were all wrong.
I’ve studied the Left for a long time am of the opinion that the majority of them a good meaning people with low serious intellectual capacity. But the ones who drive the agenda are serious arseholes. You can’t reason with them, you can’t argue with them they have to be politically and culturally destroyed. You can’t argue (in goodwill) with men who refuse the rules of logic and do not want to face facts. It becomes a battle of competing world views.
Heck, all you have to do is ratchet back a couple of decades, and it would be the conscience of the doctor performing the abortion that would be ignored as he went off to jail.
Is there any “context” which would made the gassing of the Jewish kids right? Or the Gulag? Or were the Fascists and communists wrong by virtue of being ahead of the times? I cut people a lot of slack when it comes to morality but, hell, elevating context to ultimate arbiter of morality is just another way of arguing for moral relativism. Push your reasoning hard enough and we could argue that Hitler was a contextual martyr and that shrines should be built to Stalin.
A moral compass without objective standards is as useless for the navigation of morality as compass without true north. The reason why these two bastards burn in hell is always wrong. No matter what the context.
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To me, it comes down to the terms in the contract Robertson signed. If it contained the equivalent of a “morals clause” — something along the lines of “thou shalt not speak or behave publicly in a way that contradicts the image promoted on this reality show” — he doesn’t have a leg to stand on, as he signed away his own rights. Of course, I’m just speculating, and perhaps there was no such clause. But f someone has read of one (or the terms of the contract itself), I’d love to have a link.
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It’s interesting you would look at this through a legal lens. Most have opted not to do that, preferring to put the conflict on a larger stage. But of course the contract would have some bearing on the matter. What’s doubly interesting is how you framed it: in terms of whether he might behave in a way that contradicts the image promoted on the show. In fact, his statements seem totally in keeping with that image, so if that’s what the language is, I think it would be A&E that would be on shaky ground if that was what the action was taken for.
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I would argue that the show promotes apple pie family values, and that it’s “sell” is that they exist even within family as eccentric as this one. And the belief that blacks were happy as slaves and that the Lord is coming after certain groups puts a blight on that.
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Robertson did not say that blacks were happy as slaves, or that the Lord was “coming after” anyone. He stated that he, personally, never saw a black person mistreated under Jim Crow, and he simply stated the traditional Christian position on homosexuality. What was Robertson supposed to do, make up a story about seeing blacks oppressed, a la Bill Clinton? And it’s interesting that the traditional Judeo-Christian position on homosexuality is now not consistent with “apple pie family values”. Now when did that happen? Progress is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?
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I agree that’s all he said. One person’s testimony, if true, should never be held against him. The problem is one of missing context. It looks like GQ just took that quote and put it in a box, probably as a way of highlighting its likely controversial quality. But that quote would mean different things in different contexts.
For example, let’s say it was in response to “how about your own experience, Phil? Did you personally observe a lot of racism in your neck of the woods?” His answer then would be a straightforward way of answering a direct question honestly about experience. But what if the question had been “well, of course there has been a history of racism in some parts of this country, doncha think?” His answer could then be interpreted as being a tad disingenuous–“gee I never saw it and don’t know much about it”.
For sure, liberals want to interpret his statement in the latter light or worse, leading question or not. From that particular liberal viewpoint it is unforgivable to even provide one’s personal experience, if that experience does not support the approved narrative. I don’t agree with that view.
But also: if Robertson is the canny and smart guy that people say, he knows darn well that a personal experience statement like his will be taken the way it has been taken. In other words, it may be a truthful telling, but I doubt it is virginally innocent in the manner of a rustic who only knows what he sees. It’s could well be a kind of baiting. In the end, he has his eye on the ratings (canny that way, I believe) and despite the moaning from the right he will be doing fine going forward, IMHO.
Let’s assemble here in a year and see whether the Cathedral has shoved him in the dungeon or whether he’s on the boob tube making lots of money. *My* money on the latter.
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I don’t think that liberals or conservatives can be grouped together as saying, believing or doing one thing. People are more interesting than that. Yes, one has to generalize at times, but for the record, I am not American and only in certain contexts would describe myself as a liberal.
Toddy Cat, you are correct that he did not say that blacks were happy as slaves. That was my mistake, and I apologize. As for the quote in its entirety, I acknowledge that this is interpretation. Everyone brings their own nuances to this. To me, Robertson starts with a specific example of his own experience and implies (through the phrases “pre-entitlement, pre-welfare”) that the anecdote backs up a much more universal and less benign opinion. That’s just how I see it.
As for God’s attitude toward sinners, Robertson says, “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.” Well, I guess it depends on how each of us interprets the idea of not inheriting the kingdom of God. To me, it means I’m going to hell. And if that isn’t the Lord coming after me, I don’t know what is. (I also wonder what happens to the female prostitutes.)
But these are spiritual matters, and your mileage may vary.
As for my comments in general, I think they speak to a conflict between definitions of scriptural values and family values. Toddy Cat asks when traditional JudeoChristian values were no longer family values. Well, that’s a conversation that could last forever, because many people are now debating the nature of both JudeoChristian values and the nature of family. The definitions don’t automatically match these days. Depends who you talk to. Add politics (accusations of liberal and conservative group-think), and you have the reason this interview caught fire.
Unfortunately, the interview also made thousands of people gather behind barricades and shout at each other. That’s not a discussion. It’s just venting.
Fenster, I don’t think the Duck clan is going away, and they will be as rich as Croesus a year from now, if they aren’t already.
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Toddy: OK this is a blog not a peer reviewed research site, I am not an expert on the history of abortion, and the conversation here typically requires some give and take since people may view things differently. So when you said I should know better I thought “who knows? I thought the 1940s and 1950s were a different world, not just the same world operating under different rules, but maybe that’s not the case.” But at least looking around for a few minutes on the web, I seem to find some historical justification for the notion that when things were illegal, there were often bad consequences for people breaking the law. This from When Abortion Was a Crime.
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft967nb5z5&chunk.id=d0e3371&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e3371&brand=ucpress
Raids and Criminal Trials
Raids of abortionists’ offices became the national norm during the 1940s and 1950s. Raiding the establishments of criminals— like gambling, prostitution, and bootleg liquor businesses—was not an unknown technique to police, but raids became newly important in the enforcement of the abortion laws. Reflecting on those years, one journalist commented in 1951, “Ten years ago, reform movements and law enforcement drives drove practically all the competent abortionists out of business.” [15]
Police and prosecutors around the country duplicated the innovative investigative methods used by Chicago officials in the Martin case. New York police raided several physician-abortionists in the early 1940s.[16] In 1945, police arrested a San Francisco abortionist, who was known as a “careful and clean operator who functioned so openly that a city official described her business as a ‘public utility.'”[17] In 1952, after questioning two patients picked up at a bus stop, detectives arrested a Kentucky physician who had been providing abortions since the late 1930s.[18] Police raided the offices of long-time abortionists in Akron, Detroit, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon.[19] The Los Angeles police department had a six-member team devoted exclusively to pursuing abortion cases.[20] As police stepped up raids of abortionists’ offices during the 1940s and 1950s, corrupt police officers (or their imitators) cashed in by conducting fake raids and extorting abortionists.[21]
The strategy of raiding abortionists’ offices not only resulted in the arrest of the abortionist, but also yielded women who had had abortions. The record of the Illinois Supreme Court indicates the importance of women patients to the state’s case against abortionists. Of the cases reviewed by the Illinois Supreme Court regarding abortions performed between 1940 and 1960, women testified about their illegal abortions in approximately two-thirds of the cases; only one-third involved a woman’s death. In contrast, in the previous seventy years, over 80 percent of the abortion cases heard by the court centered on a woman’s death.[22]
——————
Now, I don’t mean to turn this into an abortion stand-off. My comment was made simply as a way of pointing out that context is important.
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Finally,
If the Daily Mail is to believed, it does look like another Cathedral hit job.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2527430/Hung-dry-Duck-Dynasty-star-family-lash-A-E-making-controversial-interview-public-suspending-homophobic-comments.html
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Well, I agree with your cautious “if the Daily Mail is to be believed ….” I never automatically believe what I read in the paper. And yes, I exercise special caution with the DM. In my limited experience, every provocative quotation I’ve read there (and they’re often often about whispered, unseen scenarios)–has not been checked. Just basic, shoe-leather journalism–or, in this case something easier. A phone call.
The unnamed source near the beginning seems to believe that A&E was present at the interview and implies that A&E even proposed it. My problem is that the journalist seems to have taken no steps to confirm that. Without some Journalism 101 involved, I’m not taking the bait. The piece is written to appeal to people’s pre-conceived conceptions.
Also, the Robertson clan are an obvious story. Any magazine worth its salt would ask to do a piece on them, or for an interview. And I doubt that GQ would allow a rep from A&E to monitor the interview as it unfolded.
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. . . . and no shortage of opinions.
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