A&E’s Duck Dynasty Dilemma. By Lee Habeeb. National Review Online, December 26, 2013.
Habeeb:
It had
never happened before. When big, powerful TV executives ask a star to apologize
for what they deem inappropriate comments or behavior, the star simply
complies. A team of publicists is assembled, the star does the obligatory
apology tour for the press and promises never to do or say what he did or said
again. Ever.
But the
TV gods never met a man like Phil Robertson. Or his family. When they decided
to place the patriarch of the Duck
Dynasty clan on a non-suspension suspension for his comments to a GQ magazine writer about homosexuality,
the executives at A&E created a problem.
Because
this family believes in a bigger God. The same God that roughly 70 percent of
Americans believe in. The Robertsons take their faith seriously, and one of the
more important elements of that faith involves putting no god before theirs. Not
even the suits at the big network.
It is
such an important notion in Christianity that there are commandments about it
in the second book of the Bible. I guess the executives at A&E never got
that far.
If not,
didn’t they at least see the movie version with Charlton Heston?
Here’s
a quickie theology lesson for those executives: The Ten Commandments are pretty
important rules for followers of Christ. And for Jews, too. The first four
commandments are all about man’s relationship to God and how God must be first
in our lives.
Not
network executives or ratings. God.
Those
commandments are the reason dictators throughout history haven’t much cared for
Christians and Jews.
The
executives at A&E weren’t aware of the Fifth Commandment, either — the one
that talks about honoring your father. When they decided to punish Phil
Robertson, they should have been ready for the immediate response from his
sons: We stand by our dad.
This is
a family that honors their father and understands that without his commitment
to them, there would be no Robertson family, let alone a Duck Dynasty.
If only
we had more fathers respect their commitments, this country would be in much
better shape.
Indeed,
that’s been the appeal of Duck Dynasty
from the beginning: the culture of family that Phil Robertson created. The
culture of family the show celebrates. His family sticks together. They tease
and mock each other. They fight, play, and work together. They even eat
together.
It’s
the secret wish of almost everyone I know — to be a part of a big, loving
family. And it seems harder than ever to pull off, given the pace of modern
life. Given the temptations around us to put other values above family.
In that
GQ article that caused all the fuss,
we learned a lot about Phil Roberston. Yes, he described his position on
homosexuality not very artfully, but it is no different in the end from what
most Christians believe about it, that it is a sin. And that is enough these
days to get yourself in a lot of trouble with gay activists.
But here
is, as Paul Harvey liked to say, the rest of the superb GQ story by Drew Magary that most Americans never read. And it is a
heck of a tale.
Phil
Robertson grew up poor as poor can be in the northwest part of Louisiana,
where, as the writer pointed out, “Cajun redneck culture and Ozark redneck
culture intersect.” His father was tough
as nails, his mother a manic-depressive. Roberston was a star quarterback in
high school and as a scholarship athlete played for one year at Louisiana Tech.
But he never played a second year, because duck-hunting season and football
season overlapped. The young man who replaced him at Louisiana Tech was none
other than Terry Bradshaw, because, as Drew Magary wrote, “that’s how these
kinds of stories go.”
Robertson
spent his days after college working a series of dead-end jobs and his nights
chasing girls, getting drunk, and popping pills. At one low point, he had to
flee the state of Arkansas after beating up a bar owner and his wife. Kay
Robertson persuaded them not to press charges, in exchange for a sum of money
that amounted to most of their then-meager life savings.
In his
mid 20s, GQ reported, a “piss-drunk Robertson”
even managed to kick his wife and three kids out of the house. “I’m sick of
you,” he told Kay.
That’s
a story that repeats itself every day in America, with tragic consequences.
Luckily
for Phil and his family, he stopped worshipping Jim Beam and chose to follow
Jesus Christ. Phil turned to God and turned his life around. And the lives of
his wife and boys.
That,
too, is a story that repeats itself every day in America.
Robertson
soon founded a company that created a contraption that was able to replicate
with remarkable accuracy the sound of a real-life duck. It was bad news for
ducks everywhere but great news for duck hunters. And the Robertsons. They made
a DVD about the family duck hunts, which led to a show on the Outdoor Channel,
which led to Duck Dynasty, and fame
and fortune.
Right
from the beginning, though, this was no ordinary reality-TV family. The
Robertsons were not the Kardashians. During their negotiations with A&E,
Jase Robertson told the GQ reporter,
“the three no-compromises were faith, betrayal of family members, and duck
season.”
That’s
why the A&E executives will never get an apology from the Robertsons.
Because people of faith should not have to apologize for what they believe in.
Even if they give an answer now and then that is less than artful — or even
insulting.
Ironically,
there was a day not too long ago when network executives thought it best for
gay people to keep quiet about their lifestyle. It would have ruined careers,
and shows.
It was
a tragedy that actors such as Rock Hudson had to live a lie their entire adult
lives out of fear they might be “outed” and lose everything. It’s a type of
cruelty one can’t imagine, being compelled to lie to the world, and even
families and friends, about such a fundamental aspect of your life — your
sexuality.
That
Ellen DeGeneres can be who she is, and what she is, and do a great show for all
to enjoy, and do it with class, style, and wit, is a testament to how far we’ve
come as a society. And how tolerant we’ve become. She has many Christian fans.
I know, because I’m one of them.
I also
happen to be one of those Christians who believe she should have the right to
get married. That the state should be the state, and the church the church, and
that we should not punish each other or boycott each other for who we are. And
what we think.
If
anything, a new brand of intolerance is rising from certain gay activists
hell-bent on bullying Christians into suppressing their core beliefs — or else.
They are also showcasing their own narrow-mindedness by judging a man’s entire
life through the narrow prism of their own agenda. And one bad sound bite.
(Conservatives, too, have been guilty of this same practice; think Bill Maher
after 9-11, and the Dixie Chicks during the Iraq War.) I was thumbing through a
book recently about John Wooden, the legendary coach of UCLA’s great basketball
program. On the subject of integrity, he had this to say: “The five people who
first come to mind that best reflect integrity are Jesus, my dad, Abraham Lincoln,
Mother Teresa and Billy Graham. The order of the last three really doesn’t
matter.”
There
they are, the two most important influences on one of the most influential
coaches and exemplary men of the 20th century — Jesus, and his father.
Today,
Wooden would get roped into an interview with some reporter, get asked what the
Bible says about homosexuality, give the “wrong” answer, and get fired from his
post for “hate speech.”
Is that
the gay activists’ idea of progress?
But
back to Phil Robertson and that article in GQ.
The writer wasn’t expecting his time killing time on the Robertsons’
20,000-acre stretch of Louisiana floodplain to affect him as it did. Here was
Drew Magary’s remarkable confession:
The
ecology here has been so perfectly manipulated that it feels as if two giant
hands reached down from the sky and molded the land itself, an effect that I’m
sure would please Phil. Whatever you think of Phil’s beliefs, it’s hard not to
gaze upon his cultivations and wonder if you’ve gotten life all wrong.
Magary
wondered about his own life, and his own priorities, and if they may indeed
need to be reassessed:
I
shouldn’t be sitting around the house and bitching because the new iOS 7
touchscreen icons don’t have any [f***ing] drop shadow. I should be out here,
dammit! Killing things and growing things and bringing dead things home to
cook! There is a life out in this wilderness that I am too [chickens***] to
lead.
The
reporting from Magary ended as gracefully as it began, with the two men leaving
the wilderness after a day together.
We hop
back in the ATV and plow toward the sunset, back to the Robertson home. There
will be no family dinner tonight. No cameras in the house. No rowdy
squirrel-hunting stories from back in the day. There will be only the realest
version of Phil Robertson, hosting a private Bible study with a woman who,
according to him, “has been on cocaine for years and is making her decision to
repent. I’m going to point her in the right direction.”
As we
reflect on all matters at the turn of the new year, maybe we should think about
how lucky we all are to live in a country as rich, diverse, and beautiful as
ours. One that allows the Robertson family and Ellen DeGeneres to live their
lives freely, and to make a living without fear of reprisal for simply being
who they are, and for believing what they believe.
And as
some among us seek to cleanse the world of sound bites and speech that hurt our
feelings and sensitivities, maybe we can reflect on Thomas Jefferson’s great words
on the subject: “It does me no injury for my neighbors to say there are 20
gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my legs.”
For a
New Year’s resolution, let’s stop breaking legs and destroying the livelihoods
of people for the mere act of disagreeing with us. Or saying something we don’t
like.
We are
better than that. And tougher.
