Meow!
Posted on 12/21/2013 11:36:53 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
If you're confused how a duck hunting entrepreneur's disparaging comments about gay people became the biggest news story of the week, you're not alone.
There were plenty of other things to talk about, from Iran and Syria, to Obamacare and the NSA, yet "Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson's suspension from A&E commanded by far the most interest, as anyone who monitors traffic for news websites could tell you. The story has stayed atop the news ranking site Memeorandum's leaderboard for the past three days and absolutely dominated Google searches compared to other stories:
(INTERACTIVE-GRAPH-AT-LINK)
Why? You could blame a slow news week, our infatuation with celebrity culture, the media's love of inanity, etc. But I'll hazard another guess: The story provided profound psychological satisfaction for both sides in the culture war by confirming deep, ugly suspicions of the other side.
Take two of the most cited columns from the right and left, which generally encapsulated the response from either side.
Matt Lewis wrote at the conservative Daily Caller that the controversy exposed that "there really are two Americas" -- a conservative, rural, Christian America that feels under attack from a cosmopolitan, blue America.
Responding to Lewis from the left, Business Insider's Josh Barro agreed, but added that "one [America] is better than the other." There's the one where it's OK to dehumanize gays as subhuman and claim that blacks were happier under Jim Crow than they are today, as Robertson suggested, and then there's the better one where it's not OK to say those things, Barro argues.
Each column elicited a chorus of "amens" from their respective side, and therein lies the appeal of the Robertson saga.
For urban liberals, it's hard to find a more cartoonishly distilled stereotype of the American South and modern conservative masculinity than Phil Robertson, with his ZZ Top beard, camouflage everything, and molasses Louisiana drawl. So Robertson's comments, then, were seemingly confirmation of the urban liberal's worst suspicions about Southern White conservatives: They really are all as bigoted as I thought!
Of course that's not entirely true, but it's much easier to think of the other side as a cartoon than as a complex, nuanced human, so this kind of apparent confirmation provides deep satisfaction that the way you think you understand the world is actually true and has been all along.
For conservatives, it's the inverse. A&E's (read: the liberal media) decision to fire Robertson and the left's glee at his removal is confirmation that your world and everything you hold dear really is under attack. Urban liberals really do hate my Christian, traditional, rural values. This country really is slipping away.
As Lewis wrote, the right sees it as "an attack on 'unsophisticated' country folks as much as it is an attack on orthodox Christianity." America is becoming a country conservatives no longer recognize, and when a guy like Robertson gets fired for espousing a deeply held religious belief -- a view shared, by the way, by almost half of Americans -- that is terrifying. Mark Steyn wrote Friday in the National Review that the firing harkins a coming "age of intolerance" against Christians.
Of course, both sides' reductionist views are incomplete. But the satisfaction of feeling like you were just given license to continue holding that incomplete view -- and to remain inside your comfortable bubble -- is what drove so many clicks and Tweets and comments on the Robertson story.
It's license to continue misunderstanding the other side.
They’re taking a bubble and gold and claiming they can get it to balance in the middle.
I never thought I would say this, much less believe it, but Christians are under attack,
They just haven’t let loose the lions...yet.
I don’t think our side is misinterpreting the liberal viewpoint at all. I think we have a deep understanding of where the other side is coming from and we don’t like it. I see it more of a battle of good versus evil lifestyles, based on traits exhibited by the left. Licentiousness, constant lying about things big and small, a fascist, socialist ideology to justify their lifestyle, a petty, bureacratic mindset based on rules and regulations on those issues they favor and choose to enforce, lots of narcissistic personalities more interested in their own petty interests over that of the country, a lack of true patriotism for this country along with a blame America first mentality. Where are we going wrong here? We aren’t.
We are losing touch with God and that’s why we aren’t winning. (We’re sinning, but not winning.)
That is a ball squarely in our court. God won’t shove His blessings down throats that refuse to swallow them.
We need to call on a lion. The Lion of Judah. No mere “kitty kitty kitty” either. More like “Hey! All Conquering Hero! We love ya! Come over here!”
But then get ready to get some attitude adjustments from said Lion....
Agreed:)
I was just sitting here wondering....maybe the media and political attacks equate to the lion’s den of yore.
Alex Seitz-Wald
I have my doubts about any man who hyphenates his last name...
No, there's NOTHING that Robertson said that is even close to that.
I wish I could state my hatred of the media, but there's probably not a word for it.
I know what you mean.
There is no doubt in my mind that the media has always controlled things. But perhaps it is so much more evident today it makes you sick. But, of course, it wouldn’t be as evident as it is without the alternate media.
Yes and it’s only going to get worse.
The left started this by playing games with the language and demanding mere “tolerance”.
Because even if one doesn’t like something, he should tolerate it right?
Then they changed the meaning of “tolerance” to demand affirmation and the elimination of criticism.
The complicit MSM pushed it full steam ahead with queer characters on every sitcom and normalized it.
Now anyone (that can be made an example of) who dares question the agenda gets ridiculed, isolated, and marginalized so others will be afraid to speak their minds.
The left gets more bold and the right gets more timid. At least that has been the pattern, with some exceptions such as efforts to cement natural marriage in state constitutions.
At the end of the day this is not about politics, power, or even money. It is about the pervasive spiritual darkness that has driven this once great nation to celebrate what God has condemned, and condemn what God has commanded.
Every knee WILL bow, and every tongue WILL confess that Jesus is Lord. That is the reality, and that is how the story will end.
So take heart my brothers and sisters.
Meow!
We have a part in this drama too. We haven’t been embracing God (as a society) as vigorously as we could. We’ve been letting Satan spew his B.S. in our faces without beseeching God for an answer, and now it has come to this juncture.
Well God’s waiting for when we will stop boycotting Him. Yes, we. Don’t blame the unbelievers. Point the finger of responsibility at us, the nominal believers. I’ve been vigorously doing something about in my personal life and it has boosted me to greater victories. Now if we can multiply this times a few million “rednecks” we could get somewhere in this land again!
Very well said, Flaglady. We haven’t misunderstood the left at all. The reason we’re so on edge, is because we understand them all too well.
There is no longer a consensus of values in America. Lincoln famously said in 1858 that a house divided cannot stand. He was right then and his words are true today. The future of America is very clouded.
I do not regard leftists to be human beings. They are not “complex and nuanced”, they are a simple virus! A deadly virus which exists for no other purpose than to destroy its host and increase its power.
No. When you start out with lies you don't have a handle on anything.
You nailed it. Well done!
You’re exactly right and through Phil Robertson we’ve been told that we can’t even say anything about it. We’re not to even speak of right and wrong. References to long established value systems are not allowable.
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