The homophobic comments were no doubt outrageously offensive, but I'm surprised that some of his racist comments have flown under the radar. I found his claim that the black people he grew up with in Jim Crow-era Louisiana were never mistreated to be astoundingly ignorant. He paints a picture of black people singing in the cotton fields, happily working for the white man without a care in the world, until the twin plagues of "entitlement" and "welfare" rode into town and turned that idyllic world into hell. It's a hard sell. I'm definitely not buying it, and I think you'd have to be racist, or at least really fucking clueless, to do so. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's just willfully ignorant. Although this picture of him in blackface is a bit suspicious...
 |
| For shame. |
Anyway, like pretty much everything that happens on Earth these days, people’s reactions to the event are far more interesting than the event itself. Sides were immediately taken, with Team Duck receiving kind words and support from none other than the governor of Louisiana, Jobby Bindle (I especially like the Spoonerized version of his name because the imagery wonderfully captures his transformation from sitting Governor to itinerant Presidential hopeful, traversing the country with one hand grasping the polka-dotted bindlestick slung over his shoulder while the other hand sheepishly rocks a tin can back and forth as he ingratiates himself with GOP power brokers). Jindal/Robertson 2016. You heard it here first. And hopefully last.
I don't know how I feel about A&E indefinitely suspending Robertson. It's certainly their right to do so, but it seems like an empty gesture that won't make anything better. It's also leading to quite the backlash, and I'm not so sure A&E wants the spotlight shined on it instead of on Phil Robertson. After all, this is the network that once aired such highbrow fare as Beethoven's Fidelio and Agatha Cristie's Poirot, but has now resorted to airing Duck Dynasty, Criss Angel Mindfreak, Dog the Bounty Hunter, and about 38 different reality shows with the word "war" in the title e.g. Parking
Wars, Storage Wars, Dancing With The Wars, Shipping Wars, Shopping
Wars, Puppy Wars, Curb Your Warthusiasm, Pawn Shop Wars, Wars &
Recreation, etc. etc. etc. It's not too difficult to imagine tons of people of boycotting A&E and discovering that they're really not missing out on anything. It would be in A&E's best interest to let all this be water under the bridge, or I guess water off a duck's back.
It's not like Phil Robertson would have a hard time getting a new TV gig if he wanted one. His life story just screams cable TV: he grew up dirt poor in northern Louisiana, got a football scholarship to Louisiana Tech (an oxymoron on par with 'Kansas City'), turned into a violent alcoholic who kicked his wife and kids out of the home, and finally, as sure as the sockeye salmon will swim hundreds of miles upstream to spawn before dying, completed the life cycle of the angry young Southern male by renouncing his sinful ways and accepting Jesus Christ as his savior. Jesus tests really well in focus groups across all key demographics in America, which is pretty much unheard of for a Middle Easterner. If I were in charge of programming over at Fox News, I'd just hand the entire weekend over to Phil Robertson. He could have a cooking show where he grills up some shrimp while Sean Hannity accuses the remoulade of being communist.
Obviously I'm not a fan of Phil Robertson's screwy socially conservative beliefs, but I also have a problem with the duck call he invented. It just doesn't seem fair. As if a human brain, camouflage, opposable thumbs, and hunting rifles weren’t enough unfair advantages, we had to go and introduce duck calls into the mix? I just hope when the aliens come to take over Earth they have really weird voices and are incapable of mimicking human speech, to at least give us a fighting chance. Wouldn’t it be something if aliens from, say, the seventh moon of Alpha Rigel DQX-17 show up here in a few years with a machine that precisely mimics human speech and use said machine to assist in their invasion and then later admit they got the idea while watching reruns of Duck Dynasty? I bet y’all Duck Dynasty fans would sure feel stupid then.
In conclusion, here is a list of things that I, as a heterosexual man, find more desirable than a man’s anus: 1) female anus; 2) ducks; 3) squirrels; 4) killing things including but not limited to items two and three; 5) our new alien overlords from Alpha Rigel DQX-17, provided they are not into male-on-male butt stuff. Seriously, those gay Rigelians gross me out. God created Zurmplek and Borp, NOT Zurmplek and Glorp!!!
 |
| Pay no attention to the phallic object in my mouth. |
No comments:
Post a Comment