Go Duck Yourself

As I've said before, I watched Dork Dynasty once, just to see what the fuss was all about, and literally felt stupider by the end of the episode. I have no idea if the show is still airing -- and if it is, what sort of galoot is still watching it, and why. Whatever the case, Phil and Willie Robertson have parlayed their pop-culture notoriety into their avocation of injecting their regressive views into the political and religious arenas.

During the RNC last week, Willie Robertson found himself in the human centipede of D-listers, explaining as only a cosplay hillbilly millionaire could about how the "elites" don't know how to talk to "real people". That latter is one of the most tedious conceits imaginable -- that simply being working-class makes one more "real" or "legitimate". In many cases it does, but not always, and there is no shortage of supposedly regular people who are completely preposterous examples of humanity.

Willie Robertson and his family have made enormous sums of money exploiting the class anxieties of dopes and peons whose only respite is to convince themselves that smart people really aren't any smarter than anyone else, that study and expertise and analysis mean nothing, that Jebus is watching, even if he hasn't made them happy and wealthy and successful yet.

Dick Dynasty

If I'm going to bother to pray, it's going to be for Phil Robertson to kindly go fuck himself, and take his retarded "show" and his bullshit fantasies with him. Your fifteen minutes are up, and you're still a braying shitbird, "dude." I might actually order a Duck Dynasty t-shirt just to make a YouTube video of me taking a big creamy dump on it, and wiping my ass with it. These American ISIS types can go straight to hell already.

Of course, I could easily deconstruct everything Robertson actually said at this so-called prayer breakfast, and point out fact-by-fact how he has a bizarre and ridiculous misunderstanding of what atheists actually believe (and don't believe). I could point out that his weirdly detailed torture/murder fantasy of his imaginary atheist family says a lot about Robertson's fevered brain, just as much it utterly denies how a real Christian would characterize their savior's message of love and tolerance.

But it would be a waste of time to do that. Robertson is a turd who inexplicably got rich and famous for doing very little, and has chosen to use his platform to push a cultlike mentality of what constitutes morality and belief. This pig-fucking dipshit can't disappear soon enough.

Cash Cow

Maybe it's wishful thinking to suppose that the garbage of reality teevee, particularly the more exploitative "hillbilly" schtick of Duck Dynasty and Honey Boo Boo, have finally jumped the proverbial shark -- even if, in this case, the hapless selachimorph is in a vat of mayonnaise, with some drooling inbred gibbering and tapping on the side at it.

Slathering the contrived misadventures of these random backwoods halfwits in a greasy film of "family" life doesn't make it any better, doesn't change the fact that (to insert and compare current "conservative culcha" tropes) Phil Robertson was more of a thug than crackers assume Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were (or that he's simply a blithering idiot with way more of a platform than his nonsense deserves), that June Shannon could shame any welfare queen Those People might have.

It's passing strange that, in a 24-hour media system that scrutinizes and ruminates over the most ridiculous, peripheral ideas imaginable, that those inconvenient truths don't get brought up more often, or much at all. Not being part of the audience, I really have no idea who what the demographic for this sort of shit is in the first place, presumably shut-ins lacking any semblance of taste or critical thought. Having made the mistake of sitting through one episode of Duck Dynasty just to see what the fuss was about, and seen enough excerpts of Honey Boo Boo on The Soup to get the idea, I can at least safely posit that these things are not being watched "ironically," that the core audience is genuinely interested in the (again, contrived) comings and goings of these dullards.

Yes, ordinarily these are just the usual chacun à son gout deals, where the smart set can safely curl their collective lip, roll their eyes, mutter something uncharitable about the complete lack of sophistication of the fan base in question, and be on about their way. Might as well gripe about the success of Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber.

But when, in the above examples, you have one "star" using his "fame" to promote his mossback religious and political agenda anywhere and everywhere he can, and the other is a disgusting idiot who has been impregnated by multiple felons, and has partnered with at least two convicted child molesters, it's a little more than just a matter of taste.

Maybe it's time to start boycotting the sponsors of fucktard basic cable outlets such as A&E and TLC -- which, let's recall, used to stand for Arts & Entertainment and The Learning Channel, respectively -- until they can vet their maroons a little better. Not saying we all need to watch Mawsterpiece Theatre and practice our Downton Abbey etiquette protocols, not remotely. But this incessant promotion of idiots and assholes -- isn't that what we have politics for?

Don't Really Give a Duck

Couple of final thoughts on the stupid Duck Dynasty thing, and then I'm gonna let it go. This episode is moderately interesting to me, in the way that Paula Deen's and even George Zimmerman's transgressions were interesting -- that the events themselves were absolutely dwarfed by the cultural buttons that were pushed, and the quickness and stubbornness with which the usual barricades became populated.

A lot of these things simply revolve around "Red" America being unable or unwilling to cope with, or even get a handle on, the rapid advances taking place in the nation's culture at large (if there can truly be anything resembling an "overall" culture, in a nation with 320 million people, and countless points of origin). The world is leaving them behind, as those things tend to happen, and they can't stand it. It's not just because Black President, though that's certainly a catalyzing factor. It's the small coincidence that the same fuckers who shipped their jobs overseas and poison their water tables also happen to own the media channels that immerse them in swollen rivers of disinformation.

So you have large swaths of people who have been ripped off and burned for generations, and don't say shit, coming un-fucking-glued over whether Cracker Barrel will continue to sell cheap swag from their favorite teevee show. Hokay then. I don't think there's anything to reason with. It's all just spittle and foam.

If there's one thing about this nonsense that's important to reiterate, it's that this is not a free speech issue. Really? Yeah, really. Go back and read Phil Robertson's comments, comparing gays to people who fuck animals, or criminals, drunkards, adulterers. Check out some of Reverend Phil's previous episodes of this sort of jabber on YouTube; he didn't just start doing this when the GQ writer showed up on his doorstep.

Now replace "gays" with "blacks," or "Mexicans," or whatever you like. Wasn't that all that long ago that those groups were in those sorts of conversations. It becomes easier to consider the basic fact that this guy made some indisputably disrespectful comments about groups of people -- or, in the parlance of A&E or any network, customers. That's really all there is to this; again, if you think you have a First Amendment right to talk shit about your customers while you're on the job, I encourage you to give that a shot, and let us know how that works out for you.

Bottom line is that Phil Robertson has a right to speak his mind, and did so. The people he talked disrespectfully about have a right to say, "Hey, asshole, we resent you comparing us to criminals and goat-fuckers," and they did so. And Robertson's bosses at A&E have a right to discipline their employees, and they did so. The difference here is that the Robertsons clearly don't see themselves as "actors," perhaps because their backyard is the studio.

But that is what they are, actors in a sitcom, and just like Charlie Sheen got his ass taken down a notch when he got too big for his britches, started believing that he was the show and could tell anyone and everyone to go fuck themselves, that is what is happening here. There is a weird cultural sway the family holds over (again, we are talking about a fucking teevee show, and a lousy one at that, right?) their viewers, a very Face in the Crowd kind of vibe at the heart of it all, with Phil as Lonesome Rhodes. Nobody can tell him nuthin'.

Even the Song of the South Uncle Remus reminiscences of happy, godly blacks picking cotton in the Jim Crow South, when you think a half-second, are enormously offensive and ignorant -- and loaded with more conservative cultural assumptions. What Robertson is really invoking there is not directly a time when those people knew their place, but certainly a time before they were on welfare having a zillion kids. That's the underlying sentiment of comments like that, and we all know it.

That's why they call that sort of shit "dog-whistle" speech -- because it goes right past most people, because it wouldn't occur to them to catch something like that. But you can't tell me that someone who grew up in a place and time where blacks couldn't even enter a restaurant or drink from a water fountain doesn't know what he's fucking saying.

Obviously, the show inherently exploits stereotypes, and in so doing creates some cultural friction and even tension. That's at the heart of it -- to show these goofy hillbillies making beef jerky and blowing shit up in the swamp, then easing toward the more universal tropes of family and (for some) faith. See, these crazy good ol' boys really are just nice guys who love their families and Jesus, and not necessarily in that order. Their blood is red, just like ours. [rolling eyes]

Personally, I hate cheap, trite shit like that, and what little of the show I have seen felt like a consummate waste of time even by reality teevee standards. I suppose if I wanted to know how to field-dress a possum or convince people that I had a steel plate in my head, the show would be the place to start.

But sooner or later, especially since this is a nation that increasingly lives and breathes manufactured outrage, someone on one side or the other of these magnified cultural tensions eventually says something stupid, crosses a line most people have learned to recognize. And because the perpetually aggrieved and threatened side, by definition, always have their backs up, conjuring grave offenses if none can be legitimately be found, we play the game.

The media do their dance, and make no mistake, this will be fodder for many a race in the coming midterm season. The multi-billion dollar perpetual campaign industry depends on it. When already mis-/dis-/under-informed people rely on simplistic, shopworn tropes to circumscribe their "values" that they deploy in the voting booth (on the off chance that they get off their asses to do so in the first place), nothing good can come of it.

Get the Duck Out

And you thought the "War" on Christmas was bad, as far as imaginary grievances go. This is one of those pseudo-cultural eructations that gives me the urge to shoot out the teevee and the computer, and head for a nice cabin deep in the woods. This country has lost whatever it had left for a mind.

For the record, I don't much care one way or the other about what Phil Robertson had to say about anything, anymore that I would care about what Spongebob Squarepants or the bottle blonde from The Big Bang Theory had to say about anything. (But you should read the entire article for yourself, simply because it's an interesting story, and Drew Magary, originally "Big Daddy Drew" at Kissing Suzy Kolber, is a damn good writer.) What Magary noted in his follow-up to the now-infamous article is about what I would have assumed -- that the Robertsons are essentially decent folk, a bit different, but we're all a bit different in our own way, I suppose.

The difference is that most of us don't have an employee-employer relationship with a cable network. Remember way back when last weekend, where we talked about how everything you see on teevee, no matter how much you lurve it, no matter how much integrity you might think it has, exists mainly to sell you shit? That, in spades. Maybe the Robertsons seriously think that the show is just a harmless bit of fun, where they get to goof around, make sure the world knows how much they love them some Jebus, and soak the rubes for swag and hundred-dollar duck calls.

But A&E -- you know, the network that airs the show and has a vested interest in protecting the brand -- just wants to keep the gravy train on the tracks. So when the lead character of its hillbilly sitcom goes and starts speaking his mind in a way that might make sponsors nervous, it's a bidness problem, pure and simple.

Swamp Thing

So....religious hillbillies turn out to be exactly what they say they are, and people seem to be shocked, surprised, dismayed even.

Or, you know, it could just be another lame publicity ploy, bullshit to make the pop-culture machine churn. Gosh, can't imagine it might be that.