How are you, my favorite Fox News watching (uncle/co-worker/landlord/etc.)? Happy Holidays! Yes, I know you prefer Merry Christmas, but I am an ex-Jew and a current atheist, and I would really like to wish you a Happy Pagan Solstice, so let's settle in the middle at Happy Holidays. Happy Holidays!
Yes, yes. Obamacare. I can keep my doctor if I like him. Elizabeth Warren wants to give every McDonald's employee $7,000 dollars an hour. Hillary Clinton personally shot eight disabled veterans in Benghazi. Rob Ford was on crack and is still a better mayor than Deblasio with his punkish looking son. We covered this during Thanksgiving. Let's skip ahead, shall we?
That Duck Dynasty Guy! What's his name? Uncle Jud? Cousin Moonshine? Grandpa Mason-Dixon? Patriarch "The Civil War Had Nothing To Do With Slavery?" Yes, in fact, I did hear about his GQ interview. What is he doing even talking GQ? I thought GQ only talked to Bradley Cooper and Pharrell about what colognes they wear. Shows how much I know about print media. And are GQ and Details the same magazine?
Sorry, I'm easily distracted. I'm back. So I heard that Uncle Duck said something about hating gay people? No, I didn't actually read the quote. Did you? No? Okay, let's look it up together.
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?
Well that was uncomfortable! I really wish I hadn't read that right before eating. But, I see your point. It's kind of disgusting to me to think about this unkempt looking bearded man talking about vaginas and anuses, and really, he's just expressing his preference for said vaginas over said anuses, but I don't see why A&E would suspend him over something like that. Oh, wait, there's more.
But hey, sin: It's not logical, my man. It's just not logical. 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.
Okay, makes more sense now. It seems like he's comparing two consenting adults engaging in homosexual sex acts to a person forcibly raping an animal. Actually, I'm going to remove "seems like" from that previous sentence. He is absolutely saying that gay people and animal rapists are the same thing. Not only that, but he's comparing people who have multiple sex partners—both heterosexual and homosexual—to animal rapists. AND he's doing it in a down-home, folksy twang! He's comparing gay people and people who have a lot of premarital sex to animal rapists in the same way he would tell his granddaughter how to cast a fishing line!
(It should be mentioned here that the person you are conversing with, very well might hold similar beliefs. These people are beyond are reach and will all be dead soon. For your own sanity, please do not try to explain to them why Neil Patrick Harris is not the same as a horse sodomite.)
Okay, so he compares homosexuality to bestiality, which is insane. But wait! There's more! Here are some comments he makes about the black people he grew up with in the pre-Civil Rights days.
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!
What a magical time this sounds like! Black people got to work side by side with "white trash" for all white farmers and none of them even complained! What happened to those days? Why don't we have a bunch of happy minorities working the fields, singing to their heart's content, satisfied in their station with absolutely no upward mobility? Sounds fun!
So Daddy Rebel Flag hates gay people. And philanderers. And he has a shocking unawareness about what it was like for minorities during the pre MLK days. But that's not really what this is about, is it? Plenty of people are gay hating racists. There's a whole chunk of the electorate that think about nothing else! That's why Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Ted Cruz have all made public statements defending this douche. Concerning his comments about gay people, Palin said he was just "quoting scripture." You know that passage that says vaginas are awesome and anuses are a trap that will keep you out of the kingdom of heaven? This is a minority view, but not such a minority view that certain bat shit politicians feel like they have to jump on the duck loving bandwagon to score political points.
So what you're saying is that this is an issue of freedom of speech. The first amendment! The best amendment with the exception of the one that you think means you can shoot anybody you want! Well, while we're looking up quotes, let's look up the exact wording of the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
So ignoring all that stuff about petitions and religion (although that part about Congress not respecting any religion must hurt), we see that the amendment says Congress may not "abridge the freedom of speech" of any person. Congress! Not A&E! If President Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid had come down to the bayou and told Cousin White Supremacy that he was no longer allowed to be on TV because of his comments, then yes, this would be a violation of the First Amendment. But the same thing just happened to Alec Baldwin, and you didn't see Rick Santorum going on national TV to denounce his firing. Baldwin was fired from his MSNBC show because he called somebody a "cock sucking faggot." You guys didn't complain because, hey, one less liberal blowhard on MSNBC isn't going to make a difference. But this was one of your guys, so now it's all hand of the government and political correctness and liberal Hollywood and freedom of speech.
This has absolutely nothing to do with freedom of speech. A&E, the network on which the television program Duck Dynasty resides, has decided to suspend this guy because they do not want to be associated with somebody who makes such ignorant, stupid comments and that is their right! They are a business that's sole purpose is to sell advertising. They create television shows that we might enjoy like Storage Wars and Shipping Wars and Parking Wars so that we will watch their channel and then maybe, accidentally see a commercial for Poligrip. Duck Dynasty is a carefree show about a family of Christian billionaires (let's not even go into the hypocrisy of that) who enjoy hunting and playing practical jokes on one another and dispensing good ol' fashioned redneck bon mots about life and the meaning of family. At the end of every episode they sit down for family dinner and pray. Yes, the show's audience mostly leans right, but the show itself is never explicitly partisan. It reflects Christian values and Southern personalities in a, get ready for this, politically correct manner. Nobody on the show ever talks about Obama being a Muslim Socialist or abortions bringing on God's wrath or gay people being as evil as animal rapists because that's not what the show is about. The Duck Masters may think these things (and now we know at least one of them does) but they never talked about it on the show. Now he's given an interview to a magazine as a representative of the show and the network and he's shattered the illusion of his character. Phil Robertson (yes, I know is name) can never go back to just being a wise redneck grandpa with a funny beard. He's revealed himself to be ignorant and hateful and A&E has no interest in producing a show about ignorant and hateful people.
And this is the part of our conversation, my Republican (uncle/co-worker/landlord/etc.) that I'm going to tell you something that will not make you happy. A&E didn't have to suspend the Duck Guy. It probably wouldn't have hurt them to keep pretending as if nothing had happened. The majority of Duck Dynasty viewers probably will not stop watching because of these comments. And Duck Dynasty is a HUGE money maker. It's the most watched show in the history of the network. A&E took action and suspended Phil Robertson because that's what happens to you now if you reveal yourself to be a gay-hating idiot. They might lose money and viewers and sponsors, but A&E, the network that produces Hoarders, decided to put their morals before their money. The tides are changing and there's no stopping them. More and more people are going to have to check their ignorance at the door, and you may not think that is a good thing, but it makes me happy, happy, happy.
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