I don’t really care about the goons who sell duck calls and hate, so I’ll just give you two things to read: Ta-Nehisi Coates and this cartoon.
I hope that is all clear.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
He’ll just have to retreat to talk radio and Fox News like all the other trogs.
That’s one of the things that infuriates me to a loss of reason: the misrepresentation of “freedom of speech” especially by those who actively want to silence other people. Note how most of the claims that duck dude has been “silenced” are calling for others to STFU.
Speech has consequences. When you say something revolting, and people react, you really shouldn’t be so gosh darned surprised.
What about A&E’s freedom of speech? It’s their channel, isn’t it? And they pay this idiot to appear on their channel, don’t they?
So what if the network is bowing to outside pressure to take this clown off the air rather than taking him off the air of their own volition? If they decide to take him off the air, they can. If some other network wants to air this show, let them.
Caine wrote:
Yep. And if you don’t believe it, try screaming a string of obscenities at your boss and/or customers some time (which is a surprisingly apt comparison to what was done).
And Sarah Palin has suddenly decided that Free Speech means being able to say whatever you want on a national cable television network without being punished for it, but that’s not the tune she was singing when Martin Bashir got fired from MSNBC.
Bigoted free speech goes in only one direction, from the bigot to everyone else. If someone calls the bigot a jerk or expresses dismay about the bigot’s bigotry, that’s stifling the bigot’s free speech. This system also holds for religious fundamentalists, right wingers, MRAs and Lord Monckton.
Free speech / Free market… same thing, right? If the “people” don’t want your views/product they will tune out or look elsewhere. Funny how the Bobby Jindal and Palin’s of the world forget this irony.
Phil Robertson has never even commented on Pharyngula, so how did PZ manage to take away his free speech by banning him? I’m so confused.
I never realized how poisonous appeals to Free Speech can be until recently. It’s really been eye-opening. I wonder if it has always been this way and I never noticed, or if the right-wing is finally catching up and has just recently taken to co-opting and perverting what has traditionally been a left-wing meme. I mean, I think the latter case might be true, but I think it is being too generous to the assume cleverness of right-wingers and too generous to assume that the silencing tactics aren’t significantly contributed by “well-meaning” lefties.
I’ve been reading comments about this story in several places, and the rightwingers have really gotten nasty in their defense of this bigot. I’m appalled, but not really surprised. It all seems to be part of the “dumbing down” of America. What else can we expect when a family of mouth-breathing redneck hillbillies have been raised to star status?
There are days that I despair for this country.
GQ must be loving this. I’m sure the hits on their website have gone up considerably over the last couple of days.
this whole free speech howling of the reactionary right wing numbskulls sounds so much like the kind of uproar when the court says that they can not have a governmental authority promoting a religion like saying prayers in school. They cry that the court is against god or some other distortion..
It is not about free speech or prayer it is about their desire for the power they want to do the saying what can be said and what to pray
such bull shit
uncle frogy
A&E wrote, to clarify, the line was crossed when “bestiality” became part of the dialogue. We all have heard the fundies bring up that slippery slope, which, it seems, is their logical progression. Homosexuality is the gateway behavior to many of the things for which one can be damned to eternal hellfire…and, therefore, must be legislated against. That’s just crazy talk.
redneck hillbillies?
not so much.
I’m pasting this here to FORCE you all to watch this. the whole Duckman Show was nothing but a scam from the start. Now, they might ALSO be homophobic and racist, but they were fucking yuppies before they got made up for this show.
see for yourself:
What does it say about right wingers, that besides the non-stop Obama derangement syndrome, the biggest passion seem to revolve around defending the imaginary White Santa/Jesus and the free speech rights of a homophobic racist redneck reality TV star.
The most awesome part of that linked article on the anti-lynching bill? Where the editor injected a parenthetical fact-checking that racist senator’s idiotic made-up statistic right in the middle of the article.
Why don’t journalists do that anymore?
Ichthyic: everyone should always assume the crap they show on TV as “reality” programming is fake as fuck until proven otherwise. It’s unscripted (as in they don’t have to pay writers), but not unplanned and not unmanufactured.
Real life is not as constantly dramatic or interesting as a TV show.
point is, the family starring in that show were already multimillionaire yuppies (watch the vid to see the family photo) before they ever started this show.
the show is fake, the comments are fake… it’s all fake. It’s double suck that not only did this assholes’ fame manage to make it so hundreds of thousands of people LIKED what he had to say (see the facebook page), but the entire thing was a con from the start.
makes me want to BBQ the asshole even more, and toss on A&E for being in on the scam from the beginning.
fuck, how did American TV get so fucking horrible? It’s like something Jean Paul Sarte might have thought up as torture.
I’m just going to randomly blame Rupert Murdoch.
You’re entitled to free speech. You’re not entitled to use my shoulders as a soap box.
This poll at The Guardian is in desperate need of Pharyngulation, considering that it seems to be running nearly 3:1 against Phil Robinson getting fired: It’s under 2013, Dec 19, duck-dynasty-phil-robertson-suspended-anti-lgbt-poll
alkaloid @21
How about a link?
Al Dente, #21:
How do I provide one without it getting caught in the filter?
<a href=”link”>link to whatever</a> is the proper format with “link” (in quotation marks) being the address.
This is a link to this thread
@Al Dente, #24:
Thank you. Here’s the link: Guardian Poll…now trending even worse
Censure=!=Censorship.
Freedom of speech does not imply a responsibility for any media outlet to give you a platform for any stupid, bigoted opinion you care to express.
Pere Robertson should thank A&E for providing him less opportunity to broadcast his bigotry and stupidity.
This is precisely why I reject religion–it provides a means of justifying our small-minded opinions by giving them ultimate sanction by the sky daddy.
I’m with #18; “reality” TV in general and Duck Dynasty in particular (which I have seen some of) is about as real as a Disney animation. And that’s the best that can be said for Robertson’s theology as well.
OK, Ichthyic, your link brought gales of laughter to our house this morning. Thank you for that!
On another forum I was asked my opinion on free speech and said basically, say whatever you want, but not at my house. If you’re at my house, I don’t want to hear that crap so you can keep it to yourself. Now some of the other posters are calling me a “bigot” because I don’t want a bigot in my house…
re: Guardian poll
Dang, those comments. There are a few people who hang at those The Grauniad threads who never fail to make me despair at humanity.
I hated the show from the beginning, the one’s being made fun of was the audience but they are too dense to figure it out.
This kind of argument about free speech infuriates me and one sees it daily, on any story where someone has encountered negative reaction to something they have said. I have been reading about the Twitter incident with Justine Sacco today (http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/12/21/justine_sacco_plane_landing_tweets.html) and on pretty much every story I have read there have been endless commenters complaining about the lack of free speech, or that free speech cannot exist when you can *gasp* lose your job over something you say.
“Reality TV” is an oxymoron. They may not pay writers to produce scripts with specific dialog…after all, a Writer’s Guild strike was a major reasons for their explosion…but that may be about it. You can bet they have a detailed production script for each scene, including a good idea of what will be said and how, because every minute of actual shoot costs money, tons of it. In fact, if you look at Duck Dynasty on IMDB you’ll note that the staff includes a number of “story producers,” “story assistants,” and at least one “story editor.”
Plus, while the flap is over his homophobic remarks, it could just as easily be race or sexism. His GQ comments that I’ve seen are terribly sexist…you know all those women “sleeping around” is sinful (not so much about the men) and women have vaginas, which makes them nicer to him. The fact that the focus has been on homophobia, and not on sexism, suggests just out safe it is to exploit homophobia in this country and how invisible sexism is. They…and by that I mean the producers, sponsors, and probably A&E, as well as the news media fomenting this story…felt his homophobia and sexism were OK (you know, hahahaha) until the SHTF…
Or maybe that’s the point. They wanted the SHTF. “TV News” is Reality TV. You’ll notice that A&E hasn’t cancelled its hit or canned Phil. They’ve garnered a lot of support for this jerk’s bigotry and I’m sure DD’s ratings will do just fine with all the controversy. Also, I bet they are selling gazillions of Duck Commanders for the holiday.
yup. people who don’t understand that NOT allowing you to repress someone is not curtailing your free speech rights.
just goes to show how long these morons have lived with the privilege! It will be another generation before they figure out that privilege disappeared with the internet.