The Duck Dynasty guy said some things about gay people that were trivial and dumb, but he premised it on some statements about civil rights that deserve more attention. TNC:
The belief that black people were at their best when they were being hunted down like dogs for the sin of insisting on citizenship is a persistent strain of thought in this country. What it ultimately reflects is inability to cope with America that is at least rhetorically committed to equality. One can quickly see the line from this kind of thinking, to a rejection of the civil rights movement of our age[.]
Funny how the constant threat of violent murder with no protection from the law makes people so polite and deferential.
Anyone who misses those ‘good old days’ is dumb or deranged.
Roger Moore
Just remember: a well armed society is a
non-uppitypolite society.Gex
I’m trolling the Support Phil Robertson page on Facebook. I left this one:
Good fun.
Summer
Meanwhile, the “protection of the law” in Durham, NC last night:
http://wunc.org/post/durham-police-use-tear-gas-break-protest-teens-death
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Lawrence O’Donnell did a nice takedown of this part of it
Robertson was a full grown adult when the Sixteenth St bombings happened in Birmingham, and when the three Freedom Riders were killed by the Mississippi KKK
What’s the implication here that Phil doesn’t see? Also, too, “the blacks”.
Will any of the nice upper-middle class white people who talk about politics on TV who are made very nervous, not by Republicans using racist dog whistle politics, but by other people pointing out the whistling, notice how “the Patriarch” has easily incorporated those buzzwords and that thinking into his worldview? “Entitlements”, we are assured by the Brokaws and Cokies and the Halperins, is a budgetary term of art, not meant to have any implications about those who receive them. So obviously Pappy Phil is just a down-home budget wonk, Ezra Klein with a backwoods beard!
MattF
What TNC says, particularly about Louisiana. Outside of New Orleans– or, rather, outside of what’s left of New Orleans– ‘colorful’ is a euphemism for ‘evil’:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Edwards
‘Vote for the crook’. No foolin’.
GregB
This is where the GOP cognitive dissonance gets really thick. Half of their political rhetoric is how the Civil Rights Act was passed by conservative Republicans and they are the ones who are really the true engine behind that legislation.
Yet every two minutes someone who claims to be a conservative Republican is waxing poetic about the good old days before those Civil Rights agitators ruined America.
Flying the traitorous rebel flag and telling us how happy pre-Civil Rights blacks were is all part of that successful GOP re-boot to appeal to newer demographics.
Cervantes
@Gex: Nice. Thanks.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I thought the best part of that section was where he said, “I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash.”
I’m not sure how much more fail he could put into one sentence.
cmorenc
The south is full of “good old boys” similar to Phil Robertson, just not quite so raggedy-looking or coarse speaking. And person to person they are often indeed good, decent people to those they are in personal contact with, including the many of the sorts of folk they rail nastily against in the abstract. Except that railing-in-the-abstract gives far too much social support to nastier, more malevolent folk inclined to actively make the lives of blacks and homosexuals miserable. The good old boys like Phil Robertson who are benign in their own actual behavior give cover with their remarks to the sorts of folk who aren’t so benign.
TooManyJens
@Gex: Genius.
Corner Stone
The ex was over last night and she just didn’t get why Phil was in trouble for stating his opinions. I was going through and unpacking some of it, but she still was having a hard time getting it. The whole time she’s continuously checking her Facebook feed. And after about the 15th or so most over the top, hateful and bigoted comment “in support of Phil” came through, she finally started getting it.
That’s what a family full of wingnuts will do for you. Make it seem like that’s all just expected and shit.
Elizabelle
@Gex:
Well done, grasshopper. Well done.
Mr. Longform
I am still (naively) shocked when a white person says gone-with-the-wind crap about how happy “the blacks” were back in the good old days. Even if they avoid “plantation owners treated them like family, etc.”, they still manage to believe somehow that life for a formerly-enslaved population in the the Jim Crow era was just dandy. I mean, how deluded do you have to be to think it was OK for American citizens to be denied the right to vote or to do pretty much anything else and to NOT think that was, you know, unjust? Is it because they really don’t, to this day, think African Americans are real Americans? It’s hard not to come to that conclusion.
Cacti
None a’ them cotton pickers ever complained to young Phil Roberts.
Because as we all know, complaining to a white kid in 1950s Louisiana would have been not at all hazardous to a black person’s health, and Phil surely wouldn’t have snitched them out to the boss man for getting uppity.
Elizabelle
@Gex:
Your snark has the added advantage of being true.
And those reading it may not have their anti-libtard filters up.
Very, very good.
jacy
I read the GQ article in total (my son linked it to me), and what Beardy McBearderson said about gays was appalling, but was possibly one of the least offensive things he said…. that man’s got a head full of spiders and isn’t even self-aware enough to realize it.
Cacti
@Mr. Longform:
Is it because they really don’t, to this day, think African Americans are real Americans? It’s hard not to come to that conclusion.
Pretty much.
How much time did the media spend in 2008 and 2012 wringing their hands over Obama’s standing with white voters in the primary, and the general elections?
someguy
Well, Duckboy did get something right when he referred to himself and his homophobic, racist pals working the fields with the black people as “white trash.” Give credit where it’s due.
cmorenc
@Corner Stone:
Phil’s actually being quite genuine in part here – there’s an odd mix of genuine friendly solidarity between “white trash” and poor blacks but it’s mixed with a volatile edge of repulsion too, of the need by that strata of whites to feel they also have some characteristics that clearly distinguish themselves as not the bottom strata, with blacks conveniently positioned to occupy that niche in rural southern society. The latter is where all the gibberish about welfare, etc. clearly pointed at blacks (just not the particular ones he worked in the fields with) comes from. But as to the blacks he had actual contact with in the fields, the sentiment is genuine, though more than a bit obtuse about the limitations and heavy slanting of his own perspective of his black mates-in-the-field.
kindness
The Duck Dynasty folk are absurd. That isn’t to say that a significant proportion of the population of the US isn’t absurd. Obviously as this pointed out they are.
Part of the uproar about this is fundamentalists/conservatives loving their sense of victimhood. They live for that stuff. It justifies their own intolerance and ignorance as far as they are concerned. I don’t see it that way. I see them as morons & shitstains on the palate of the American experience. All you have to do is substitute any group were the unlucky Duckie said homosexuals/blacks and it is apparent that what he said was wrong. Now I defend his right to be wrong. It’s sadly written in our Constitution for all practical intent. But I also feel A&E has every right to slap their wrists and tell them to sit in the corner for a couple weeks which is what A&E did. I mean, they’ve already wrapped the next season’s show which A&E plans to air. This wasn’t even a real suspension, just a public rebuke.
And that is all the victimization morons need to scream and howl. Morons. Fucking morons. I guess my only real beef is that the MSM insists on parroting the framing of the morons rather than tell it like it really is.
Se la vie.
AliceBlue
@Gex:
I think I hear heads exploding over there.
piratedan
I can remember growing up in the 60’s and the 70’s and there was a two night “docudrama” done by Quinn Martin regarding the killing of those civil rights workers in Mississippi and then FBI investigation that was performed to bring those responsible to justice and the difficulties in getting that justice done in a place like Mississippi. Had a profound effect on my young self and it’s damned sad to see that four decades later that there’s still a virulent strain of racism that needs to be eradicated. It’s the mustard stain on the national soul, and I wish there was a way to solve it short of slapping a bunch of dumbass ignorant people silly.
Lurking Canadian
@Mr. Longform: see Buckley, William F, erudite father of modern conservatism, who stood astride history shouting, “Hell yes, the white minority, being superior, has the right to rule”.
This shit has a long, long history, and they don’t really try to hide it.
liberal
They should be denounced as traitors—not just to the nation per se, but also to the ideal of America.
liberal
@piratedan: Not that you’re implying otherwise, but I’m pretty sure the FBI was either ineffective or actually harmful during those times, at least in the case you mention and like cases.
Hillary Rettig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: smart points
Violet
It’s not surprising that the anti-gay comments are the ones getting all the attention while the racist comments are swept under the rug. Wingnuts really don’t know what to do with the racism in the Republican party. It’s there and obvious, but they really want to pretend it’s not. Much easier to focus on the anti-gay comments and hope the racist stuff goes away.
geg6
@Gex:
That. Is. Awesome.
piratedan
@liberal: made me go look it up….
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072667/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_36
not claiming Hoover or the FBI were sparkling examples of civil rights advocacy, but at least they brought the case to trial when Mississippi itself did bupkis.
Mr. Longform
@Violet:
Maybe that counts as an advance. Someday we can hope they are also embarrassed about the anti-gay comments of their members. By then they will be openly reviling some other group they hate. Who’s next? or, who’s left?
geg6
@Violet:
Yes, it was very apparent in the local newscast where the racist stuff was never even mentioned.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
The key thing about “white trash” is not their skin color. It’s their smothering embrace of the concept of being trash, and doing everything they can think up (which, for stupid people, is quite a lot, to give them some credit) to demonstrate it on a 24/7/365 basis.
Violet
@Mr. Longform: Women. Women are always left to be less than when everything else is gone.
Botsplainer
@cmorenc:
Ah – so you met my maternal grandfather.
Villago Delenda Est
@cmorenc:
Well, the solidarity exists for a bit, but just as long as some people know that they are second class members of the vanguard, and don’t get uppity about assuming any leadership roles.
Botsplainer
@Mr. Longform:
Jesus was going to fix it all in the hereafter, so it made it OK for those beloved grandparents, aunts, uncles, coaches, teachers, pastors and mentors to cluck about the injustice of it all while sitting back in a cowardly way and silently benefitting from the Southern social order. God and Jesus would forgive them, and would balm those who had been treated unjustly.
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet:
Woman is the nigger of the world — John Lennon.
Bill in Section 147
@Gex: Your cogent, well-stated argument which relies on an actual issue reeks of correctly-spelt troll.
geg6
@Villago Delenda Est:
This. Same as it ever was.
Violet
@Corner Stone:
I thought that sentence was kind of interesting because divide and conquer has been the GOP’s strategy for decades now. They don’t want poor black and white banding together to take on the man. They want the white people on their team and looking down at the black folks who are on the other team. They want to break that income and class solidarity and thus keep taking more and more away from the poor folks.
The fact that Mr. Robertson sees any kind of solidarity or similarities with black folks who work in the fields was kind of interesting to me.
celticdragonchick
@Summer:
Read here about what police did to Occupy Chapel Hill about 30 minutes from Durham
celticdragonchick
More here… and here.
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet:
Robertson imagines that he has some sort of solidarity with those working in the fields, but the people in the fields are more than smart enough to realize how phony Robertson is.
After all, the “Duck Dynasty” clan is pretty well off…that’s the entire premise of the reality series.
mike with a mic
I don’t know if dumb or deranged are the only options.
In the South that part of history is sort of glossed over. It’s portrayed as “sure some horrible things happened, but it wasn’t all that common or wide spread. Northerners made up wild claims about the depth and level of racial mistreatment and animosity as an excuse to occupy the South, destroy it’s culture and way of life, and make sure it was economically inferior to the North so they could boss around the South and screw with them”.
Now granted, this is revisionist history, but all cultures do that. Groups that are on the losing side of a battle are usually but hurt about what happened and make up all sorts of excuses as to the how and why and portray the other fuckers as evil assholes who are to blame for everything. Where the loser is always the injured party even if they started it.
It’s RARE the losing party quasi fesses up to it’s own jackassery and buries the hatched like German and Japan post WW2.
WereBear
Ah, but you are taking it at face value, which means you aren’t from the South, are you?
Mr. Robertson was accurately stating his own position in the social order, a low one, as was the position of the black workers he toiled alongside. His statement was reflecting what others thought; to the higher-ups they were both of low status.
His statement also sets himself apart as “white.” There is no solidarity reflected here. Trash makes no matter.
The black doctor must step aside for the white field hand… or what’s a Jim Crow for?
rikyrah
he was on point
aimai
@WereBear: Very true. Plus: long tradition of poor mouthing as a form of working class braggadoccio.
Karen in GA
@Gex: Bravo.
Gene108
@Mr. Longform:
From what I have deduced the rational of whites to link welfare to unhappy blacks / destruction of the black family has to do with rising crime rates in the 1970’s.
OMG! Crime rates are going up! OMG! Blacks are finally getting Federal welfare benefits the same as white!
Blackd getting welfare is leading to a rise in crime!
This had been one of the driving forces behind the Right’s approach to government and the social safety net, since Reagan took control of the Republican Party in the 1970’s.
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est: I haven’t watched the series at all and don’t know anything about them. Were they always well off or just rich because of the show?
I know they don’t really have solidarity with the black folks in the fields–and how many of those are left these days anyway? Isn’t it mostly Latino immigrants working the fields these days? It is where I live–but I digress. I get that he imagines solidarity and if you got the truth out of those folks in the fields they would likely give a very different version of that story. But I still found it interesting. The class identification isn’t totally severed despite the GOP’s best efforts.
If the GOP becomes the party of rich folks–and I mean in a more obvious way–I know they are that right now, but they’re even more the party of racists–where will poor white folks go?
David Hunt
It would be nice if we could simply post “What Ta-Nehisi said” every day, but unfortunately that’s not always the case. There are days when he doesn’t post anything.
Violet
@WereBear:
Yes, I am from the south. I know these attitudes and this sort of racism up close.
Edit: How the hell do you get “you are taking it at face value” to mean “you are not from the south”. WTF?
Villago Delenda Est
@mike with a mic:
The Germans might have learned a lesson from WWII, but I’m not so sure about the Japanese, who gloss over their many atrocities committed when they were on their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere kick.
The Chinese and Koreans certainly have not forgotten, but the Japanese try really hard to.
One of the reasons why China chose to create international incidents over isolated island groups they and Japan both claim is that it’s better for domestic consumption to make hay with Japan, which was the point of the exercise in the first place…diversion from domestic problems.
Bill in Section 147
@Corner Stone: Your twisting it to sound like he weren’t complimenting. When he was growing up black people as a whole were equal to the lowest, dumbest, most ignorant whites. Master Duck’s Pappy’s generation believed they was better than the culluds and that was racism even though his Daddy were no racist. Gramps Duck owned some men and some women and that was plain wrong. Even the dumbest white trash knows it is wrong to own men.
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet:
The entire “Duck Dynasty” story is that they got the show because they became rich selling stuff to sportsmen. That’s how they got the attention. The show is just gravy on top of their existing pile of money. They’re not like Sarah Palin, who needs the income stream to keep her elaborate artificial lifestyle going.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gene108:
Correlation/causality fallacy, writ large and loud.
Cacti
@Villago Delenda Est:
The Germans might have learned a lesson from WWII, but I’m not so sure about the Japanese, who gloss over their many atrocities committed when they were on their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere kick.
Japan is as bad as the confederate states when it comes to historical revisionism of their role in the war.
But they’ll put on their sackcloth and ashes all day long for how awful it was that they got nuked twice.
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est: Oh, okay. I wondered how they got on TV, but people get TV shows for the strangest of reasons so you never know.
A doctor I go to moved his office because the service business (I’m leaving the type unnamed on purpose) next door to him got a reality show. They could not stand the business owners nor the clientele and the reality TV cameras right next door as their patients came and went were too much. As far as I know, the TV show never aired, but it was filmed. The producers told the very odd woman and family who owned the business, “You are exactly the kind of person we look for for reality shows.”
Gene108
@Violet:
The rich Southern whites have been playing poor whites off against blacks, since Colonial times. The modern GOP is the current manifestation of this mindset; but it is a deeply rooted mindset about how we as a society should operate.
Gene108
@Violet:
From what I have seen, there was not overt hostility if whites to blacks. White cinservatives, to this day, can be very decent on a personal basis.
But when things move beyond their comfort zone and people no longer seem to have the clearly defined roles the white conservative is comfortable with they totally flip the fuck out.
They would be nice to a black field hand, but if the same field hand became a boss they would flip the fuck out. A boss is not a role for blacks.
negative 1
Grantland had a really good article on this topic yesterday, but to me the best takeaway was: don’t you think A&E knew about this guy’s views for a long time before this? I can’t help but feel they deserve a little more scrutiny, because as good of a writer as Drew Magary is, something tells me he wasn’t exactly pulling teeth to get Dick Dynasty to start spewing forth bigotry. This really never came to the network’s attention before?
Villago Delenda Est
@negative 1:
A&E used to be a very classy cable outfit. Now it’s an utter sewer, like most cable channels. And I agree that they had to know where this was headed…which might be part of the point. I’m sure there’s been a ratings spike on “Duck Dynasty” with the controversy, and after all, that’s what it’s all about.
The benjamins.
WereBear
@Violet: Sorry, I know folks who hear Southerners say “Bless his heart” and completely misunderstand it. :)
I might have a sensitivity to it, as a child I came from Northern Yankee bluntness to Southern gentility manners. It resulted in a lot of being treated as thought I’d been raised by wolves… simply because I wasn’t “decoding” what they thought I was being told!
Patrick
@Cacti:
Amen!!!
I will never forget when Obama trounced Clinton in the North Carolina primary and certain media pundits kept saying it wasn’t a big deal because it was mainly African-Americans who made the difference.
There was never a single mention that Clinton’s win in New Hampshire shouldn’t count because she was mainly helped by white voters.
The obvious level of racism from the media, especially liberals in the media, was an eye-opener.
Gravie
@WereBear: you are right. I grew up in the segregated South, where the bottom line ideology was that any white person — no matter how poor, raggedy or stupid — was better than any black person, no matter how accomplished, educated or wealthy. It took a lot of years to recognize that in myself and root it out.
Violet
@WereBear: Yes, moving to any new culture can be baffling, but within one’s own country it’s particularly challenging because you don’t think there should be that kind of communication difficulty.
schrodinger's cat
@Patrick: They also keep going on and on about Reagan Democrats but I haven’t heard of a single story about Obama Republicans like Tunch’s minion John Cole. I have at least 3 friends who were registered Republican who became Dems to vote for Obama in the primaries in 2008.
Elizabelle
@Violet:
The Robertson clan.
Duck whistling? Built a fortune.
Dog whistling? Not so good.
WereBear
@Violet: True! I was hurt and upset because I had previously been lauded for my lovely manners and now I was some kind of troglodyte for not reflexively adding “sir” or “ma’m” to every utterance to adults.
I did learn it, though… and now I can’t get rid of it, even though Noo Yawkers think I’m being affected…
Ya making fun of me? Do I look like some kind of knight on a horse or something?
Corner Stone
To clarify a little, my thoughts on him saying he was, “with the blacks” because he was “white trash”, just speaks volumes about the lack of awareness of what he’s actually saying.
There is no solidarity there, and his inclusion is a further insult.
kc
I hate Phil Robertson’s fucking guts, because now I’m going to have to listen to my wingnut family members bitch about the injustice of it all through Christmas dinner.
Goddamn it.
Patrick
@schrodinger’s cat:
You can add me to the list. But the term Obama Republican doesn’t fit the media narrative.
kc
@Gex:
Bwahahaha! Nice work.
kc
@cmorenc:
Implicit in Robertson’s comments about entitlements and so on is the notion that now “the blacks” are all just standing around with their hands out.
kc
@Villago Delenda Est:
They’re also big fucking phonies, who grew those stupid beards out just for the show.
Assholes.
kc
@WereBear:
Sometimes when we say “Bless your heart” we really mean, “bless your heart!” and other times we mean . . . “Bless your heart.”
There’s a difference . . .
Violet
@kc: Go upthread and read Gex’s great Facebook comment and spout the pro-Union comments right back at your relatives. You know, we need strong unions to protect workers’ rights of free speech. Etc. At least have some fun with them.
FlipYrWhig
@kc: And that way he can continue thinking the following: “I made something of myself the hard way, which means anyone who tries hard enough should be able to do it like I did, which means anyone who hasn’t made it must not be trying hard enough, like those lazy black people, not that the problem is their race, but their work ethic.” This is pretty much the way half the country thinks. Apart from the whole part about being a success, which most of the people who think this way aren’t.
Corner Stone
@kc: We’re having homemade lasagna. C’mon over, nothing wingnutty happens in my house.
FlipYrWhig
@kc: it’s a bit like Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess. Except then people wouldn’t have been so gullible as to believe the performance.
kc
@Violet:
I saw that; it was great. I may go troll that page myself.
Why, I was just thinking how shameful it is that A&E exploited that old man by forcing him to sign a contract he didn’t understand and go act the fool on TV for millions of viewers to laugh at. And now they’re throwing him under the bus just for expressing the views that any bigoted old dude would share. Sure, they gave him a lot of money, but is that fair considering he’s probably never signed a contract in his life? Heck, he probably signed it with a wobbly “X.”
kc
@Corner Stone:
That sounds great. I weep thinking of all the precious Xanax I could save if I wasn’t surrounded by embittered right wingers on the baby Jesus’s birthday.
Berial
I have watched the show, for what it’s worth I don’t remember seeing very many other races on the show, which seems surprising for a show set in Louisiana.
Jeremy
@GregB: Yeah but that talking point is easy to refute since the republicans who voted for the civil rights act were mainly moderates and Rockefeller republicans. Everett Dirksen supported it but he was more of a moderate conservative.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat:
Question for anyone who was paying attention to politics back then: Was the “Reagan Democrat” phenomenon a thing pundits discussed while Reagan was actually president?
Presumably it was noted at the time that a lot of Democrats voted for Reagan because he trounced Mondale. I didn’t really start paying attention to politics until around the 1st Gulf War, and I remember hearing about “Reagan Democrats” when Clinton was running but not before that.
PS: I have another name for them: Republicans!
Violet
@Betty Cracker: Out of curiosity, I did a Google search by year starting with 1980. The first year I found “Reagan Democrat” was in 1985.
pseudonymous in nc
@negative 1:
Of course it did. That’s what editing rooms and contracts that give the network total editorial control are for.
I have to think that it’s reached the point where the wingnuts have shat the bed here. The Duckleberries can’t simply go back to A&E as carefully-edited yokels, and there’s a pretty limited reality TV audience for culture warriors, as Palin and her grifter clan showed. The Robertsons aren’t going to be heading off to another network because that big ol’ contract’s bound them to A&E.
The bigot armies have no idea what the “winning” endgame is for their hirsute heroes.
Svensker
@kc:
Just keep sympathizing that you know exactly how they feel — you remember the Dixie Chicks and how Martin Bashir’s first amendment rights got trashed when he was mean about Sarah Palin. Just awful.
Trollhattan
Has anyone watched the show? Hardly knew it existed until Bobby Jindal told me yesterday how awesome and Cyrus-free it was. Should I start? If I do, does that mean I have to also watch shows about people who spend their times buying storage lockers full of other peoples’ shit? Do I really need more people in my livingroom to feel superior to?
Patrick
@Svensker:
Not only did they get their first amendment rights trashed. The Dixie Chicks got death threats for using their first amendment right. I don’t recall the clown like hypocrites on the far right getting upset whatsoever about that.
debbie
I wish more people would comment on how Phil said what he said about blacks and gays, and then said, “But I’m not judging.” That’s exactly what he, and so many conservatives, do nothing but.
Jay C
@schrodinger’s cat: @Patrick:
Right on – the political-media acceptance of “Reagan Democrats” as a discrete political bloc so neatly fit into the Big Narrative the Beltway Village loves so (especially when it is a narrative of Republican/conservative triumphalism), it’s taken them decades to notice that said demographic (still less the culture-war framing that spawned it) doesn’t really exist any more: it has basically has aged/died/apatheticized-in-disgust away. Or, most easily, just become Republican.
But in Washington, zombie Narratives can shamble on for ages…..
JR
@mike with a mic: But it’s not just about Jim Crow: it’s the S.O.P. for all Southern racial injustices. See, for example, this passage from The Lost Cause (Pollard, 1866):
Southern blacks were cheerful and content: pay no attention to the tonnage of evidence and common sense to the contrary.
gelfling545
Now why do have this nagging suspicion that, perhaps feeling their 15 minutes may be about at an end, these remarks were made to stimulate their supporters to flood Walmart this holiday season to buy all their licensed merchandise?
@Lurking Canadian:
It’s hard to look at the Duck Patriarch and his flock & determine how anyone could think this.
pseudonymous in nc
@gelfling545:
I’d assume that the ‘Duck Dynasty’ merch deals, along with the entire trademarked brand name, are in A&E’s control. The bufords won’t know whether they’re supposed to be buying the branded duct tape and jerky or snatching it from under the tree and returning it to Walmart.
Plantsmantx
@Violet:
Now that we know what he said in a 2010 “sermon”, his racist comments might recede even more, and as a black person, I’d understand that.
karen
Free speech just means you don’t get arrested or imprisoned. It doesn’t mean that you’re shielded from consequences of what you say or that people can’t react to it.That’s what people don’t get. Sure, you can say whatever the fuck you want. But your right doesn’t trump my right to react to it as long as I’m not violent.
kc
@Plantsmantx:
I can’t believe how much sheer hate radiates from some people who call themselves Christian.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
I have a theory — does anyone else think the MSM is focusing on the anti-gay comments because to some people they’re defensible on religious freedom grounds, whereas only people in the Christian Identity movement would claim a religious basis for the anti-black comments?
John Cole
@Betty Cracker: Gerry Ferraro was a Reagan Democrat. We had quite a few flame wars about her nonsense back in the day and then during the first Obama campaign.
Short Bus Bully
Bullshit. They’re fucking obtuse for not being able to see the obvious and evil for not caring.
Fuck those American Taliban motherfuckers right back to Sherman’s March to the Sea.
Plantsmantx
Isabel Wilkerson, the author of The Warmth of Other Suns, tweeted a reminder that the basketball great Bill Russell is from Monroe, LA. She wrote about him and his family in her book:
…
Reformed Panty Sniffer
@Elizabelle:
There is plenty of evidence that A&E knew what they were getting into with this group early on. I guess the suggested $400 million value of their merchandising speaks louder than words. (Can’t believe that many people would buy their crap.)
In other news, Mr. Robertson is reportedly a recovering alcoholic who was saved/born again etc. So I think being an insufferable prick is a feature not a bug of his personality.
PaulW
To my fellow Horde: I’m glad of y’all.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Gex:
Dumb quibble, but he is a union employee, and had a contract. He violated the terms, and got canned.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Cacti:
Somebody ON THIS VERY PAGE was recently wringing their hands about Obama’s loss of young white voters between 2008 and 2012.
moderateindy
@Patrick: Not only did they get their first amendment rights trashed.
First off, neither Bashir, the Dixie Chicks, or Phil Robertson had their 1st Amendment rights trashed. Jeebus F-ing Christ, it infuriates me how many people are clueless, when it comes to this subject.
Second, the thing that bugs me the most about this entire saga is that it truly is an example of te both sides do it meme. The left increasingly laps up their fair share from the fake outrage trough. The right is outraged by the unfairness and persecution of poor Phil Robertson, while the left is outraged that a 70 year old born again Xtian from small town Louisiana holds views that are mainstream for his generation and geography. This guy is such an evil hateful bigot that one of his children adopted a black kid. Get a grip people, and realize that his breed are slowly dying off. But the guy isn’t evil, he’s a 70 year old from rural Louisiana
Plantsmantx
@moderateindy:
What does that prove about Phil Robertson, or even Phil Robertson’s son, for that matter? ? I’ve had fun with people who try to deploy the “Appeal to Melanin” thing. When I, a black person, have countered by saying that the fact of having a nonwhite person in one’s family isn’t proof positive that they’re not a racist, some people have gone apoplectic. I especially like it when they suggest I’m an ingrate. I’ve asked some of them if they think the same thing is true of a black person who has one or more white people in their family, and not once has anyone answered “yes”. In their minds, it only applies to white people, or at least, it doesn’t apply to black people. That’s funny, too.
Another Holocene Human
@Plantsmantx: Exactly. I have a middle-aged cracker coworker who has a Black grandson whom he loves to death, but that hasn’t made him any less biased towards his grandson’s father, or less of a flaming racist in general.
Even Hitler had his “good Jew”. No bullshit–he made sure that the German army doctor who saved his life in WWI was shielded from harm just as he was picking off German Jewish invalids, mentally ill, etc & marking them for death in the name of “eugenics”.
moderateindy
@Plantsmantx: Talk about a ridiculous argument. I did not say Phil Robertson was not a racist. But you’re expecting me to prove a negative when it comes to his family. Evidence shows that at least one of his kids doesn’t hold the same views. Unless you want me to believe that someone that hates black people would go out and adopt a black kid, and name him after himself, an honor he did not bestow on his first born son.
The exact point that I am making is that it is you who is going apoplectic over the comments of a 70 year old man from rural Alabama, ideas which apparently haven’t transfered to the next generation.
While exceedingly misguided and ridiculous, his comments really didn’t rise to the level of hatred, they were much closer to simple ignorance. In fact, he actually identified as being like black people.
So my point stands, this entire episode is little more than ginned up outrage, which if you want to bitch about the right wing’s constant employment of the tactic, then perhaps you shouldn’t participate in the exact same activity. The fact that so many people on this subject take some stupid bigoted comments by an old guy from the rural south and instead of simply condemning those comments for their ignorance, choose to make him, and his entire family into an evil malevolent entity is just plain beyond the pale.
Plantsmantx
@moderateindy:
I’m not asking you to prove anything. I’m just saying that your “evidence” isn’t proof of anything, one way or the other. I didn’t say, or even suggest that either the father or the son “hates” black people. One can be quite fond of black people, and still be racist.
You’re absolutely right. He said he was “white trash”, and that made him just like “the blacks”.
Do you believe the whole “I have a person of another race in my family, so I’m incapable of racism” thing also applies to black people?