Duck Dynasty ‽
I think I established my total disconnection from ‘Reality TV’, which may be on TV but has almost nothing to do with reality.
Frankly, when I saw references to Duck Dynasty I assumed it was a on the Cartoon Network. Now it is the basis for another Fundie Christianist meltdown.
Badtux covered the kerfuffle as someone born and raised in Louisiana, and that has to be part of it, but the whole thing smells.
I saw pictures of the guy, and my response was – this is a put on. Looking like you were in the mountains with Fidel and Che is not the sort of fashion statement that normally attracts GQ, so the interview seems just wrong.
The most obvious mistake is the beard. I’ve had a full beard for decades and know about living with a beard. I hack it back at least once, and normally twice, a year so that it doesn’t get in the way.
That beard is too long to put up with in real life. You can’t move through the brush without it snagging on something. You have to know where it is when going to bathroom. You have to be very careful around fires. It will catch in zippers, doors, chairs, actually just about anything. If a tie is a problem around power tools, that beard is even worse.
This smells like jockeying for position over a contract renewal, or maybe a ratings event. My understanding is that the show was on hiatus, so he wasn’t really working when things blew up, but A&E is certainly not interested in this kind of controversy. If the ratings have been dropping in the key ‘young adult’ demographic, A&E may have already planned to drop it.
The real point that people should take away from all of this is that religion is a choice. People make a decision for themselves as to what they’ll believe and can change their minds at any time. Skin color and sexual orientation are there at birth, and can’t be changed. If people choose a religion that discriminates against anyone for the way they were born, those people have chosen to discriminate, and there is no way around it.
4 comments
The beard predates the television show by a number of years. I’ve seen older pictures of him from before the television show, when he was doing the dog and poney of fundie congregations to sell his duck calls, and he had the beard then too. So the beard may be a put-on, but it’s one of long standing. My take on it is that it may be impractical, but it serves the same purpose as the oh-so-impractical tail feathers of the male peacock — i.e., it create sexual attraction on the part of the opposite sex err people who buy duck calls. The fact that Phil makes his duck calls out of wood is just conincidence :twisted:.
The reporter from GQ was sent there for the same reason that A&E televised the show — i.e., Phil is someone for them to point and laugh at from their oh-so-sophisticated New Yawk/Los Angeles base. So it was intended to be something of a hatchet job from the word “go”, but one a bit kinder and gentler than what actually happened. Usually Louisianians of Phil’s age are a bit more… circumspect… with people they think are trying to make fun of them. So either that reporter was damn good at getting raport with Phil, or you’re right — it was a setup.
If it isn’t ‘artificially enhanced’, that took many years to grow. Mine grows at around 4 inches a year based on what I cut off. The one he has, if you look under the hood you could easily become one with the water pump. It isn’t practical, so there must be another explanation, like image among the Christianists.
The guy isn’t that much older than I am, and I sure don’t rant in person, the way I do on the blog, because it would offend them. I have a hard time believing he didn’t intend to start the reaction. There is something going on that isn’t in the reporting. He may simply be tired of the grind of doing the show and was looking for a way out. Don’t know, don’t care, but you can’t declare hatred and not expect to pay a price. Religion is not a ‘get out of consequences, Free’ card.
Apparently these are pics of when they were just plain yuppies. So to get a tv show means you have to go furry and stupid?
A duck call is really a reed instrument, like a recorder, so it requires skill and intelligence to make one that works well. It really has to be tuned to the ducks you are trying to attract, so it requires a decent ‘ear’ to get it right.
I think that these guys are stereotypical backwoods good old boys the same way Senator Sam Ervin was just ‘an old country lawyer’, it’s a useful façade.