Quackers…

Unless you’ve been living under rock you’ll know that there’s been quite an uproar over remarks about Gays, Jesus and life in the south, made by Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the Duck Dynasty  show that airs on A&E over here in the good ol’ US of A!

So as always, here’s my $0.02 worth and you can take it or leave it, it’s just my opinion, yours may well be different.

I don’t agree with the guy but  I understand why he has the opinions and beliefs that he has. I did not always agree with my own father, a product of World War II in Europe, but I understood why he had the opinions that he did have and I respected him for that.

By his own admission, Robertson grew up in a time when those views were the prevailing views of society. Many people change as society changes but many don’t, can’t or simply won’t change along with it. Any way you look at it, they remain rooted in the past. If you are Joe Nobody and spouting to you mates over a couple of beers then no one really cares but when you have a public face, be it a TV show or even something as humble as a blog, yes, even this one, then sometimes you have to be a little bit more aware of your surroundings than you would otherwise be. You’d think a hunter would know that, but apparently not!

In a fair world we could all say what we like with no fear of reprisal but the reality is that everything we put out there for public consumption is subject to opinion, either by the public at large or anyone we can be associated with. It’s no different to the similar uproar a while ago over comments made by Dan Cathy, CEO of Chik-fil-A  on similar topics. I don’t agree with those or him but he’s welcome to his views, I just don’t eat at his establishments, that my choice and the cost (not much I admit) he pays for making his opinions public. I have no problem with him having his views, just don’t expect me to agree.

Off hand I think that if A&E were to disassociate themselves from everyone on their shows that has an opinion that is  contrary to current social norms, they’d very quickly find themselves with no shows at all. Overall  I think that Robertson got the sharp end of a not unexpectedly pointed stick from A&E for airing his point of view which is pretty strange really considering that it’s supposed to be a REALITY show. You don’t get more REAL than this which makes me at least want to question just what version of REALITY it is that A&E is trying to show.

And that’s all I have to say on the matter.

Tags: Duck Dynasy, Phil Robertson