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.
Look around these stories are blown up to cover for serious issues schemes and scams behind the curain
I don't think it's 'coming' but rather it's been around the whole obama administration and a number of years before that.
Actually, when you start out with lies and treat it like it's a legitimate statement, you have a stacked deck.
At the very least, this most recent eruption of homosexual “tolerance” helps distract the nation from the numerous, increasingly severe failures of President You Didn’t Build That and his communist regime.
Leni
All in all I think the Conservative side is better armed but if you look at how the military has been infected by the Leftist PC virus you can’t count on them to be neutral. It all depends who is in charge when it finally hits the fan.
“Look around these stories are blown up to cover for serious issues schemes and scams behind the curtain”
You’re absolutely right; this government doesn’t want people talking about our unreported inflation, high unemployment/stagnant wages, mass illegal immigration to replace a dwindling American population, the coming costs of ObamaCare, or the fact that none of these issues will improve in the foreseeable future.
If people understand how bad things were we’d have a revolution (today).
The homosexual gestapo has succeeded in intimidating people into keeping their opinions to themselves. Very few dared proclaim that homosexuality is, in fact, still a sin, regardless of parades, changes in the laws, and the silence of the masses.
Suddenly, a man who speaks the truth rocks this world. It’s not a preacher who speaks only to his own gathering, but a very public person. How dare he remind everyone that what homosexuals do is still sin. They thought they had shut that down, but now their consciences have been seared.
Personally, I think God has used Phil Robertson to open this up. I hope that many who are held captive by this horrible lifestyle will be moved to seek God and be healed. I suspect that many, if not most, of these people are not even aware of the healing power of God to free them.
If just one person is delivered from this because a seed has been planted, then it will be worth it. I’m sure that would make Phil, and all of the Robertsons, happy, happy, happy.
To Flaglady post #4. Thank you for those thoughts. That is the kind if a response and comment I appreciate most at FR. Thoughtful causing further thought. If most comments were similar (the opposite if anger and name-calling)...FR would be beyond any sort of reproach. That is the type comment I seek mining FR daily.
Worth repeating.
” 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. “
Are they really? The view articulated by the writer about Blue America is spot on!
HHC's husband.
You said more of worth in five lines than the author of this article could dream of.
Your post 4 encapsulates why we need to get into this fight.
Innocent lives are at stake. we value the individual; the secular humanists value the State, both as a hammer for compliance and as a fount for their value system.
Isaiah chapters 1-10 depict where America is right now and where we are heading unless our course is corrected by a return to God and His Word as a nation.
I have never watched this show and I just can’t believe how this story has dominated EVERYTHING for over a week.
Of course I support Robertson rather than A & E in the dispute, but ohmigoodness can’t we find something else to talk about?
(But see.....here I am....talking about it!)
Merry Christmas to you and yours 2ndDiv - you always keep the threads hopping here!
And Lincoln got that quote from Jesus in the New Testament.
“It’s license to continue misunderstanding the other side.”
I understand the “other side” just fine.
Or woman, for that matter.
Indeed he did but he was paraphrasing the same Daniel, referred to by "HiTech RedNeck" in reply number 13.
I'm afraid that our "kingdom" has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
“And Lincoln got that quote from Jesus in the New Testament.”
He was paraphrasing from the Book of Daniel in the O.T. Jesus cited O.T. Scripture frequently.
Homosexuals hate The Lord because He is the antithesis of their god, Satan, and He disregards all they value, which is their sexual deviance and worldly lives. Most of the people around me claim they are atheists and have not been brought up in Christ, have never gone to church, have nothing to believe in but what is in this world. Can you imagine how pathetic your existence must be if you value nothing higher than yourself, your sexual perversion, and the people around you and worship at the altar of homosexuality? No wonder so many atheists and homosexuals kill themselves!
Obamacare is unraveling, and Obama’s response to that failure is completely lawless.
Obama’s foreign policy is unraveling, especially in the Middle East, and Obama’s response to that failure is completely useless.
Obama’s economic policy is unraveling, and Obama’s response to that failure is empty rhetoric.
No, I don’t have to ask why the compliant media are creating an issue out of one actor’s comments, which match the views of half the country.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.