Dear Dirty America

What Do You Expect A Hillbilly To Say?

I love fake entertainment controversy as much as the next hollow-headed American consumer, but the eruption of Duck Dynasty‘s Phil Robertson is even more than I can handle. If you would like to ignore scandals like these, you have to move out of your home or apartment and live in a cave. If you live in the modern world, the media’s ubiquitous existence will peel back your eyelids and force you to witness this cultural disfigurement. They’ll whip this controversy into a pleasurable gay and anti-gay frenzy of social distraction until climax.

What’s the big deal? Well, I’m not sure there is one. According to Yahoo TV, Robertson is from America’s most popular TV family, so if that’s the case, his recent remarks about gay folks aren’t setting well with many in the general populace. Yet, what else would we expect from the stars of Duck Dynasty?

This is another example of a non-issue gripping America’s consciousness. Everywhere you look, the headlines announce that a Duck Dynasty star has been suspended from A&E’s network for anti-gay remarks. But first of all, the real issue is how someone like Phil Robertson can become a star who people listen to. He might be an interesting character, but to become one of America’s most popular family members shows a far deeper sluggishness in American ideals and aspirations.

Instead, we should start searching for the next Martin Luther King Jr and put his face on TV five hours a day and begin signing petitions to jail tapeworm bankers like Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein. Meanwhile, the 21st century Mahatma Gandhi can build his army quietly, and train them for truly non-violent resistance. We should put this energy into real issues, like drafting authentic healthcare reform, fighting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Internet freedom, receiving living wages for work, and cutting off the welfare queens like Warren Buffett and the major multinational corporations that don’t pay taxes, but extract our wealth and buy our elections to continue their billion-dollar benefits.

Second of all, if you’re watching Duck Dynasty, or you care about it at all, you’re probably watching too much TV. You’re most likely not internally well-adjusted anyway. If you care about what a man named Phil Robertson says on a popular reality TV show, you might not have your focus aimed in the right direction.

Here’s part of what is riling up the anti-defamation groups and giving the GLAAD spokesman the titillation he waits for everyday:

Phil probably should have cut himself off at this point (considering he’s a national TV star), but instead he paraphrased Corinthians. “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers — they won’t inherit the kingdom of God,” he warned. “Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.” (source)

Beside the obvious, ‘Who cares what Phil Robertson thinks’ is the question of, ‘Why can’t he think what he does about gay people?’ You can’t give a clodhopper a national platform and expect him to give innocuous phrases celebrating diversity and dissolving personally developed systems of ethics.

Isn’t it this off-the-cuff character trait that they pay him for? Why can’t Robertson believe in the best lifestyle as one monogamous relationship between a man and woman? To suspend him from his shit show because of his hillbilly-style of relating his beliefs seems hypocritical. He’s not tuned to academic talk. He doesn’t know how to tread lightly. If he did, he wouldn’t be a star on Duck Dynasty. What does A&E expect?

It’s like asking Kim Kardashian who she voted for in 2012. “Voting what?” she would say. “Oh yeah,” she’d say, and giggle while her 24-hour makeup team powdered her sculpted face, “I voted for the darker one.”

That might come off as racist, but it’s not racist based on her capabilities. It’s just that she knows next to nothing outside of being pampered and worshiped. You can’t hold someone who tweets photos of her bare butt to tens of millions of people to a high standard. You’ll be disappointed throughout your entire life if you do that.

I don’t know Phil Robertson’s life or history, nor do I have any interest in learning about it. And neither should you. If you don’t like that a star from Duck Dynasty believes homosexuality is not the best, most natural lifestyle, and that it could lead into further sexual acts that stray from what he considers the true and right purpose for why we’re living on this planet, why not ignore him and mainstream media entertainment all together?

Ultimately, you can watch America take sides again because an irrelevant hillbilly with a culturally-sanctioned microphone said how he really feels. Both sides feel righteous in these situations. It’s what they live for. The GLAAD spokesman is aroused and waits for these thrills like a poodle thrusts against its leash at the smell of ham. That’s why he’s the spokesman. He gets to take the heat and unleash it publicly when he feels justified. He’s got a reason to snap his jaws.

And Phil Robertson gets to enjoy his celebrity platform from which he can spout his religious and social views. Everybody’s got a hard-on over this. It’s the same instinctual arousal, just activated through two opposing viewpoints. I say, get hard-ons over something else, America. Find a meaningful battle and let your juices pump over that.

It’s horrific to watch this spectacle. Both teams bare their whitened teeth.The media is going to harp on this again, just as they did about the Chick-fil-A crisis a year ago. Imagine a whole country obsessed with fried chicken breasts and homosexuality. It’s the perfect intellectual dollar item that keeps us inspired. The media is going to allow these fools on both sides to ramp up their self-righteous energies to fever pitch and gloriously toss them off in our faces. I’m trying to look away.

[Illustration from “The Circus Procession. A lyrical parade of colorful circus characters”, 1888]