Duck Dynasty And Quackery By Charles M. Blow, New York Times

Duck Dynasty And Quackerybycharles M Blownew York Times December 2

‘Duck Dynasty’ and Quackery By CHARLES M. BLOW New York Times December 20, 2013 · I must admit that I’m not a watcher of “Duck Dynasty,†but I’m very much aware of it. I, too, am from Louisiana, and the family on the show lives outside the town of Monroe, which is a little over 50 miles from my hometown. We’re all from the sticks. So, when I became aware of the homophobic and racially insensitive comments that the patriarch on the show, Phil Robertson, made this week in an interview in GQ magazine , I thought: I know that mind-set.

Robertson’s interview reads as a commentary almost without malice, imbued with a matter-of-fact, this-is-just-the-way-I-see-it kind of Southern folksiness. To me, that is part of the problem. You don’t have to operate with a malicious spirit to do tremendous harm. Insensitivity and ignorance are sufficient. In fact, intolerance that is disarming is the most dangerous kind.

It can masquerade as morality. A&E, which airs “Duck Dynasty,†moved quickly to suspend Robertson, as his comments engaged the political culture wars, with liberals condemning him and conservatives — including Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a possible presidential candidate — rushing to his defense. Let me first say that Robertson has a constitutionally protected right to voice his opinion and A&E has a corporate right to decide if his views are consistent with its corporate ethos. No one has a constitutional right to a reality show.

I have no opinion on the suspension. That’s A&E’s call. In fact, I don’t want to focus on the employment repercussions of what Robertson said, but on the content of it. In particular, I want to focus on a passage on race from the interview, in which Robertson says: “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. The blacks, 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.†While this is possible, it is highly improbable. Robertson is 67 years old, born into the Jim Crow South. Only a man blind and naive to the suffering of others could have existed there and not recognized that there was a rampant culture of violence against blacks, with incidents and signs large and