Self-Confessed “White Trash” Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty Spoke Like Such — So Why Is this News?

© 2013 Peter Free

 

27 December 2013

 

 

Citation — background — to an interview with Phil Robertson, documenting his inflammatory anti-gay and racial remarks

 

Drew Magary, What the Duck?, GQ (January 2014)

 

 

Reality star Phil Robertson — whose television appearance and behavior probably should have posed fair warning — holds some relatively conventional neo-Confederate, purportedly Christian views

 

Specifically, on race:

 

 

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person," Robertson is quoted in GQ. "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.... 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.”

 

© 2013 Cavan Sieczkowski, 'Duck Dynasty' Star Phil Robertson Claims Black People Were 'Happy' Pre-Civil Rights, HuffPost Blackvoices (19 December 2013)

 

I found the above quote to be an interesting indicator of Robertson’s lack of interpersonal perceptual ability.  He and I are of the same generation.  And much of my youth was spent in Virginia, DC, and Maryland.  My black friends and I would not have agreed with the Duck Dynasty star.  Not even close.

 

On homosexuality:

 

 

“It seems like, to me, a vagina -- as a man -- would be more desirable than a man’s anus," Robertson told GQ. "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.”

 

“Everything is blurred on what’s right and what’s wrong. Sin becomes fine," he later added. “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. 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. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

 

© 2013 Cavan Sieczkowski, 'Duck Dynasty' Star Phil Robertson Makes Anti-Gay Remarks, Says Being Gay Is A Sin, HuffPost Gay Voices (18 December 2013)

 

The obvious flaw in Mr. Robertson’s perception here is the lack of recognition that homosexuality is biologically determined.  A vagina is not going to interest a heterosexual woman or a homosexual man.

 

Phil Robertson’s lack of imagination and empathy seem to be noticeably defining characteristics.

 

 

Equally indicative of the generalized political Right — former Governor Sarah Palin rushed to Mr. Robertson’s defense, without even knowing what he had said

 

The former Governor is not noted for her intellectual acumen.

 

And she has a pronounced tendency to shoot her mouth off, thereby (one can presume) draining some of painful air pressure in her head.

 

 

Unloving and stupid people act like this most of the time — many of them under the guise of unevolved Old Testament Christianity

 

Reportedly, 250,000 folk have signed a petition to reinstate the fired Mr. Robertson back onto A&E’s popular show Duck Dynasty.

 

People like to watch fellow bigots voice perspectives taken under the umbrella of the Bible’s socially archaic benedictions.

 

 

Humanity has always been an ethically sorry and (out-clan) unloving species

 

It should not be news that many of us continue to act this way.

 

Being able to look down on others is a treasured family value.  Thinking that God approves makes this especially rewarding.  Spiritual growth is thereby not required.

 

Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris all had a valid point in thinking that religion — rationally seen as an outgrowth of prevailing local social perceptions, rather than as coming from an omniscient and omnipotent God’s inexplicably fumbling attempts at communication — causes at least as much trouble as it resolves.

 

 

The moral? — Paradoxically, doubt saves

 

Even in the Christian idiom.  But Phil Robertson and ilk are neither spiritually skilled nor apparently smart enough to recognize this truth.  That does not make them evil people.  Just ignorant, with perceptibly nasty edges.  Like most of us, most of the time.

 

No news in this, really.  Other than as an opportunity for some us to think ourselves morally superior to others.