Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson’s comments to GQ sparked another one of those controversies that a lot of people wish would just go away, but as with the Miley Cyrus VMA performance (blog), I find it to be a fascinating issue because of the cultural dogfight that resulted.
A few quotes from the interview (here):
“It seems like, to me, a vagina--as a man--would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”
“We never, ever judge someone on who’s going to heaven, hell. That’s the Almighty’s job. We just love ’em, give ’em the good news about Jesus--whether they’re homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort ’em out later, you see what I’m saying?”
And this on the South in the days of Jim Crow:
“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. 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.”
It is not surprising that many were not pleased with his comments, which they saw as bigoted and ignorant, and the A&E network immediately suspended him from Duck Dynasty. The reality show has a lot of fans, however, and they took to Facebook to express their disapproval of A&E’s decision.
I think it helps to think about issues like these by breaking them down into sub-issues. In the case of Phil Robertson, the broader issue is whether it is okay to be gay, including sub-issues like whether it should be okay before the law and whether it is okay before God. Then there is the issue of whether he has a right to his opinion and religion. And whether he has the right to freedom of speech, in his home, on television, in magazines, etc. Whether a company that employs him has the right to fire him and would be right to do so. And what kinds of response are the rest of us permitted when faced by his views?
Unfortunately, public debate has a tendency to glob all the sub-issues together, with everyone joining a For camp or an Against camp. Sure we have all heard the various aspects of the issue raised, but always within the context of a battle between broad For and Against opinions. Rarely do you hear anyone speak as if they understand there are multiple issues at play and on some of them they may stand with Robertson and on others they may stand against him.
This is what I call the What-It-All-Boils-Down-To Syndrome. Take any issue, no matter how multifaceted, and there’s never any shortage of people reducing it to one facet that is most likely to support their globular For or Against position. Sometimes a complex problem can be reduced to a basic principle that undercuts the other arguments--identifying how concepts relate is a key tool of reasoning--but most of the issues of the day cannot. When people say “What it all boils down to is…” you can usually be sure it doesn’t.
But they sure wish it did, because then they win.
It is possible, however, to work through the problem, addressing each sub-issue to construct a nuanced opinion. For example, my own opinion is that Robertson’s condemnation of gay lifestyles is wrong and that God (if such a being worthy of the name existed) would disagree with him, too; that Robertson does indeed have the right to his personal opinion and brand of faith; that he has the right to speak his opinion wherever and whenever he pleases; but that he should not have immunity from certain consequences: his employer, A&E, has the right to remove him from the show and would be right to do so, and everyday people--especially those he maligns--have the right to express their criticism in non-violent ways.
Someone else might say that it is a sin to be gay, so Robertson was right in his personal religious belief, but God loves and forgives everyone, so Robertson was wrong to publicly judge and condemn. Nonetheless, A&E shouldn’t fire him because it sets a questionable precedent if corporations can fire employees for publicly uttering their personal views--like those CEOs who decreed they would fire any employees who didn’t vote for Romney in 2012. Best for all of us to keep private opinions private.
Countless variations on these themes are possible.
But instead of discussing these matters with our full powers of discernment--of sifting and sorting--the public participates in this strange phenomenon in which the following type of scenario is not uncommon: Person A who is For says, “Duck has a right to his personal opinion,” and Person B who is Against responds, “But his employer has the right to fire him,” and the two never appear to notice, much less admit, that they may actually agree on both of these points. In fact, it isn’t hard to imagine two people bitterly clashing over this issue when they actually agree on nearly all of the involved sub-issues.
That’s because in their minds, first and foremost, they stylize themselves as For or Against within the issue as one undifferentiated whole. So here’s another syndrome: High School Debate Syndrome. Remember how high school teachers would declare a class debate and assign every student to one side or the other? Inevitably, some students would protest that they didn’t believe in the side they were assigned, to which the teacher would always reply, “That doesn’t matter. Come up with reasons for your side and don’t budge an inch.”
It’s as if now that we’re adults, we do this to ourselves. We pick a side, then come up with reasons (which is backwards if philosophy and psychology have taught us anything) and begin digging trenches, even when, in our calmer and more rational moments, we aren’t fully on our own side.
But it’s okay to see issues in their complexity. When it comes to Robertson, it’s okay to be both for and against (little first letters now to keep them in their place), depending on the specific aspects of the larger issue and to find points of agreement in dialogue with others. This way, some actual progress can be made in, and some clarity brought to, the issue--even if only so that opponents can later butt heads all the more vigorously about what really separates them.
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Postscript in light of recent news (here):
How do I feel now that A&E has restored Robertson to the program? I am opposed to it because I would have preferred to see a company take a firm moral stand even at the expense of a cash cow. But I’m also fine with it, because the public dialogue has played itself out, with certain forces winning the day. Those forces have been put on notice, they’ve won the battle, but they’re losing the war, and the day will come when they won’t even be able to get away with these little victories.
I would just like to interject one thing here that some people lose in context. While watching the interview, it didn't seem (through facial expression and body language) that Phil was being derogatory, discriminating, or malicious in any way. When dealing with a written version, when one puts their own trials and tribulations behind it, it can seem as though he stood strongly against it. My point is not to say he was right or wrong or that I am behind or against him, it is just to state that the written word lacks enough meaning to fully decode what the man was expressing. We (USA) as a country and those that were raised in it, have gotten into the habit of believing vernacular discerns meaning, when to tell you the truth we have all been guilty of saying something that everyone else took the wrong way. Our 'Bill of Rights' being just one of those things, that are taken at face value and ripped and turned around, based on the definition of the individual words used, instead of the conveyed meaning the forefathers may have thought were implied.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, too many people spend too much time debating issues that unimportant and uneducated people spout in the public media.
My two cents anyway. What do you think John?
I think your comment is spot-on about how his comments may have been blown up a little, or a lot. I don't know if you read my Miley Cyrus blog, but I could have said many similar things bout Robertson's comments: there is some ambiguity. His comments on the pre-Civil Rights era in the South, for example, are very troubling because of broader context (we know the situation was generally bad for civil rights in the South then, and his comments fit into a broader narrative that seeks to erase the worst of what happened), but he did say he was speaking from only what he himself saw, and I detect some pride in being poor whites suffering alongside blacks. Which is to say, his comments may not have been as bad, or delivered as harshly, as his most vocal critics suggest.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I take a slightly more positive view of devoting time to what people like Robertson say, because if people don't take to the Internet and disagree, his opinion goes unchallenged. In a perfect world, reality TV stars' ever utterance wouldn't be such a big deal, but when they are, those who disagree need to speak up or risk forfeiting the issue.
Thanks for commenting. For the most part, I've resigned myself to getting a handful of hits at best and no comments.