Duck Disaster: Jindal Wades into the Blind

I’ve spent some time in Monroe, Louisiana.  About ten years ago, I had to teach all over the state. I am just glad I spent some time in some other cities before getting sent to the Monroe area or  I’d have never left the confines of Orleans parish again.  Monroe is a place I’d rather not  visit again.  My first thought on wandering around  was “Where are all the black people hiding?” Then, I wondered why they were obviously not around their white neighbors. That was before I read and found out that the KKK are live and kicking in that region of the state.  I also begin hearing personal experiences like this one.  A coworker and office mate of mine at the time–a young black woman of about 25–had gone to university up there.  She told me that she learned that she couldn’t walk through the white frat section of the campus because she kept getting spit on. This was like the year 2000 so, we’re not talking way back in the day.

When I learned Duck Dynasty was being filmed in Monroe, I figured that you weren’t going to see a lot of black people in the show and that it was going to be yet another one of those reality shows where the rest of the world gets to learn about the backwater cultures of the South. These Hollywood reality shows like to entertain their city friends with the likes of our backwater rubes.  They make them cute, fuzzy, eccentric, and gosh darn lovable. I’m not sure if you watched Swamp people or Axe Man or any number of other shows where they trot out our old white guys that hang in the woods, but it’s pretty formulaic.  The problem is that the shows are  pretty well edited and controlled.  You can see, however, that whenever these Duck Dynasty guys go to the country club, the backwoods, or the kids’ schools, there are really no black people in the picture. Again, that’s my take away from every visit to Monroe.  They are freaking insular up there. But then, just like no one noticed the tales of “happy darkies in the cotton fields” told by Phil Robertson until later today, no one has noticed the distinct lack of diversity or reality in the show.  Well, maybe their core audience has and that’s why they like it.  I guess it all was okay until Phill opened his big fat mouth and pointed out–like a bayou version of snowflake snookie–that gawd made women’s vaginas for men and gay men must be crazy and sinful to not take advantage of that.

Like all reality shows, Duck Dynasty is probably heavily edited. But, it’s a big old media world out there. The Duck Dynasty Paw Paw got interviewed sans handlers by GQ.  His Monroe roots are now exposed.  His Southern Baptist tirades don’t look so homespun any more. He’s not just a cuddly, curmudgeon who has a thing for killing what ever moves like Ned outta South Park.  Phil Robertson is outta the closet now  alot like Paula Dean got outted a while back. Wither the cash cow er duck?

There’s several things that have kind’ve intrigued me about this ever unfolding story.  The first is that the response to the homophobic comments are being played out a lot more than his appalling racist and sexist comments.  Women are vaginas.  All the black folk he grew up with were straight out of that old southern stereotype of the happy Uncle Tom and Aunt Jemima brand.  Ah, they were so happy and singing during them Jim Crow Days.   Robertson had no apparent realization black folks were rightfully scared for their lives back then so they just put on that damn smile to protect themselves.  They also are hard to find among white folks in Monroe today so I’m thinking there’s still some of that going on up there and they know it.

 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 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.

It’s also worth noting that because of GLAAD’s swift intervention, much of the media coverage has focused more on Robertson’s anti-gay remarks than 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. 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.

“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,” Robertson said. “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!… Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

That’s a vision of the American South and American racial history that’s in keeping with Paula Deen’s alleged plantation nostalgia. It’s an attempt to substitute Robertson’s own memories of his interactions with African American laborers, whose behavior around him may well have been influenced by his relative privilege as a white man, even a poor one, for the larger history of organizing against and resistance to the economically and racially ruinous consequences of the Jim Crow system. It’s a kind of narrative that’s aimed at retroactively manufacturing black consent for policies aimed at maintaining white supremacy.

The other equally appalling thing is that the right wing is playing this as some kind of first amendment rights issue.  Since when do Republicans think employees get to ignore the wishes of their corporate overlords?  Where was the outrage over Alec Baldwin or Martin Brashear?  Robertson is now the right wing martyr for oppressed christians who are just expressing their traditional values and have a first amendment right to do so that we all just have to respect.  WTF?

I woke to reading that my asshole governor had jumped in on that.  My guess is he’s trying to get on the radar of the Republican base again for his endless wetdreams of being President.  Did he actually read what this guy said about black people or was he just thinking the homophobic remarks would be the place he could pander those Iowan evangelical votes?

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Thursday criticized the “politically correct crowd” following the suspension of “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson over comments he made about homosexuality and religion in a recent interview with GQ magazine.

“Phil Robertson and his family are great citizens of the State of Louisiana. The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with,” Jindal said in a statement released by his office. “I don’t agree with quite a bit of stuff I read in magazine interviews or see on TV. In fact, come to think of it, I find a good bit of it offensive. But I also acknowledge that this is a free country and everyone is entitled to express their views.”

A&E, which airs “Duck Dynasty,” put Robertson on indefinite suspension from the show on Wednesday because of a controversial interview with GQ, in which, he commented on his inability to comprehend homosexuality or societies “without Jesus.”

“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,” Robertson told Drew Magery in GQ.

When Magery asked him to define “sin,” Robertson responded, “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.”

In another part of the interview, Robertson equated Shintoism and Islam with Nazism.

So, see?  There’s a little bit more out there than just the horrid comments about homosexuality.  There’s the comments on blacks, women, and nonchristians.  It’s a smorgasbord of bigotry!  And, my governor is defending his right to say all of it as an employee of a corporation that probably wants viewership from black people, women, and folks that are not christian. Why wouldn’t they fire his redneck ass?  He probably is going to cost them as much money as he brought in over the last year if not more.

But, the bigger questions is what’s going to happen with all that Duck Dynasty merchandise that’s all over the place now?  Are there enough bigoted rednecks in the country to keep the franchise going? Maybe the franchise should just consider moving to a slot before the Huckabee show and advertise on the likes of Hannity and Rush.

Well, there probably is enough of them in Northern Louisiana and Texas. Here’s the latest bit of ring wing furor or is that fuhrer?

Other conservatives are now weighing in as well, including the Family Research Council and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.)

Here’s Cruz’s comment: “If you believe in free speech or religious liberty, you should be deeply dismayed over the treatment of Phil Robertson. Phil expressed his personal views and his own religious faith; for that, he was suspended from his job. In a free society, anyone is free to disagree with him, but the mainstream media should not behave as the thought police censoring the views with which they disagree.”

Update 3:47 p.m.: The National Organization for Marriage has launched a petitiondemanding that A&E reinstate Robertson and apologize for suspending him.

Let me just remind you that the Family Research Council is a bona fide hate group.

So, I thought I could just let this entire thing pass with comments down thread, but I couldn’t.  I would just like you to know that almost every one I know south of the I-12–that would be the creole/cajun part of Louisiana–is talking about seceding from the state again.

Oh, look, it’s a photo of two blowhards!

I am just hoping we get rid of those Hollywood tax credits and that the reality show folks will go pick on some one else’s backwards hicks for awhile.