Jumpin' Jehosophat! I thought maybe it wasDaffy Duck who said those terrible things.by KenAs God is my witness, I thought Duck Dynasty was a cartoon show, and I'm not thinking of live-action animation. No, I thought it was, like, a ripoff of some of our classic cartoon ducks, like maybe Daffy -- that would have fit the story, wouldn't it? Or more properly, when you think about a "duck dynasty," who would you think of but our Donald and his Uncle Scrooge and his mischievous nephews Huey, Louie, and Dewey?Yesterday, as the Washington Post's Matea Gold reports,
conservative politicians rushed to defend Phil Robertson, the shaggy-bearded, homespun star of the breakout series, who was suspended by the cable network after his published comments about gays stirred a storm of controversy.Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), a likely White House contender whose state is home to the show about a family that runs a duck-hunting gear enterprise, called Robertson and his family “great citizens.”“The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with,” Jindal said in a statement prominently displayed on his official Web site, adding: “I remember when TV networks believed in the First Amendment.”Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), another probable 2016 candidate, chimed in on Facebook, writing: “If you believe in free speech or religious liberty, you should be deeply dismayed over the treatment of Phil Robertson.” And 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin wrote in a Facebook post that “those ‘intolerants’ hatin’ and taking on the Duck Dynasty patriarch for voicing his personal opinion are taking on all of us.”
That's right, the Tuny Loons are rushing to pile on, in even more doody-brained fashion than usual. But then, in the Republican Party, Governor Booby is what passes for a thinker. It's so sad. Those people have apparently heard about this miraculous invention called "thinking," and while they don't know about it, they hope desperately that perhaps they know someone who actually does -- and so they invest hope in the likes of birdbrains like Booby and Paul-Ayn Ryan-Rand.Of course there's no First Amendment issue here. No one has prevented their guy Dopey Duck from saying anything. A&E simply decided it needed a cooling-off period from their web-mouthed star. For the excellent business reason that, although they're thrilled to have tapped into this Crackpot Christian demographic with Duck Tales, there are other demographics they value which are imperiled by the kind of ranting Dope D did to his GQ interlocutor.ThinkProgress's Alyssa Rosenberg has a wonderful description of the process that unfolded, in an excellent piece called "What the Duck Dynasty Scandal Tells Us About Race, Homophobia and the Media."
As is clear in the profile in GQ, A&E has tried to walk a fine line between portraying the Robertsons as religious Christians without spotlighting the parts of their beliefs that have the potential to cause precisely the kind of firestorm that resulted yesterday. "There are more things Phil would like to say--'controversial' things, as he puts it to me--that don't make the cut," Magary writes. This dilemma of wanting part of a reality television cast member's personality, but only the parts that will make you money, is one that faced CBS's Big Brother this year, too, after discovering that the ways in which a number of their controversial and colorful cast members were controversial and colorful was that they were enormously ignorant racists.I absolutely understand the desire to make money off of either evangelical Christianity or American backwardness, which has increasingly been one of the staples of reality television. There is clearly a market for an underserved audience of religious Christians who would like to see themselves reflected in popular media more frequently. And there is clearly a market for being horrified by other people's behavior. But it is exceptionally difficult, in a reality television context, to separate out and wall off the part of someone's personality that is attractive and media-friendly from the parts that are less palatable to a mass audience. If you're writing fiction for television, those attributes can get shaved off by the collective process of the writers' room. But if you are, yourself, a reality television product, especially if you feel like you're being suppressed or misrepresented, those parts of your personality and beliefs will inevitably out. Sometimes, the surprises are pleasant, as was the case on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, where a family offered up as backwards and repellent proved to be tolerant, loving, and charming. But that is not often the case.For the most part, reality television producers and the networks that air their work, have decided that these outbursts are worth the risk of continuing to sell highly specific personalities, precisely because the cycle of suspension, response, and temporary profit loss are so well-established at this point that it can probably be worked into a budget. I can't imagine anyone at A&E is surprised that someone like Phil Robertson, who bills himself as a Bible-believing evangelical, believes that you can "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," or that he would say something like "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? But hey, sin: It's not logical, my man. It's just not logical." The question was probably when, not if.
And as A&E quickly realized, GLAAD is so efficient at getting hold of and responding to homophobic ranting like this, that as soon as the GQ thing became public, the clock was ticking on them.
And when that when arrived, A&E had a well road-tested formula to use in its response, provided by the folks at GLAAD. GLAAD is the most effective media advocacy organization that I know of, on two levels: first, its ability to swiftly identify and condemn anti-LGBT speech and to get results, and second, in its deep, comprehensive, and intersectional research on the depiction of LGBT characters and figures in media. When Robertson's remarks broke, Wilson Cruz of GLAAD responded quickly with a statement that hit on an incredible number of ideas in a clear, efficient way."Phil and his family claim to be Christian, but Phil's lies about an entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe," ;he said. "He clearly knows nothing about gay people or the majority of Louisianans -- and Americans -- who support legal recognition for loving and committed gay and lesbian couples. Phil's decision to push vile and extreme stereotypes is a stain on A&E and his sponsors, who now need to re-examine their ties to someone with such public disdain for LGBT people and families." It was a condemnation that positioned GLAAD as a more sophisticated and compassionate arbiter of Christian values than Robertson, drew a connection between culture and legal protection, and offered a reminder that GLAAD has plenty of experience influencing media sponsors.And A&E knew immediately what it had to do to respond to GLAAD: Robertson was suspended for an indefinite period of time, a punishment that doesn't just promise long-running financial losses to him, but because it has no end point, can't be immediately decried as too short or too long. It's action that effectively ends the news cycle, as far as A&E's need to take action and appear responsive are concerned.
Alysssa makes an interesting point about the contrast between the firestorm caused by Dopey's homophobic blithering in "his comments about African Americans and the Civil Rights movement, which weren't worked into the narrative of the profile, but appeared as a pull quote in the online version of the piece." Alyssa writes, "While Robertson's views on homosexuality are presented as consistent with his religious beliefs, his remarks about African-Americans are actually more politically extreme, aimed at undermining the validity of the safety net." And she goes on to explore the black-folks-were-happy-as-clams racism Dopey represents, with interesting speculation about the reasons for the different treatment, though I would guess that at least one crucial difference is that the overt racism is, I gather, limited to an online-only pullquote rather than being part of the actual article."Normally," Alyssa concludes, "the lifecycle of the Duck Dynasty scandal would end with the suspension.
But in an attempt to score political points off the controversy, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has decided to express his great sorrow about a supposed suppression of Phil Robertson's right to free speech, which I was not aware included a guarantee to be paid to say whatever he pleased on a major television network's airtime.
Of course what the Tuny Loons are accusing some mysterious left-wing conspiracy of doing is what the Right-Wing Noise Machine is organized to do routinely, only for real, and with real savagery: try to ruin the lives of any quasi-public figure who says anything that infringes on its sacred looninesses. As usual, it's not always easy to separate those who are stupid to know better from those who are too dishonest to care.Welcome to the 2016 GOP presidential race!Is that, um, Huey, Dewey, Uncle Scrooge, and Donald?UPDATE: New Ducked Up RevelationsDo you know what a fluffer is? The clinical Wikipedia definition: "A fluffer is a person employed to keep a male adult film star aroused on the set. These duties, which do not necessarily involve touching the actors, are considered part of the makeup department. After setting up the desired angle, the director asks the actors to hold position and calls for the fluffer to 'fluff' the actors for the shot. Fluffing could also entail sexual acts such as fellatio or non-penetrative sex." That's a fancy way of saying it's the cocksucker who keeps the porn actor's dick hard. Fluffer is also the name of a 2001 gay porn film that got a buzz because Blondie (Debbie Harry) was in it. But it will have a whole new life now because so was Scott Gurney, the creator of Duck Dynasty. In fact, Gurney played Johnny Rebel, the main character, a porn star, crystal meth head and male prostitute. Watch a clip or two… if you dare… It's just like Duck Dynasty:#
