Freedom of Religious Opinion? Not If You're Phil Robertson

[C_Clayton_Jones]

A&E didn't sign up for illusion. They signed up for reality. That's what they got, reality. They didn't sign someone up to play a part but someone who was the part. They knew exactly what they were getting. The network just thought they could exercise more control than they really could.

No doubt the network imagined that if they gave Phil Robertson celebrity he would start acting like a celebrity and consider that celebrity worth protecting. He doesn't. He literally is above anything the gay/ liberal cabal can do to him. Even the race card is useless. Robertson can refuse to play. Pick up all the marbles and go hunting.

Nonsense.

They ‘signed up’ for money.

And the cast member was suspended out of concern for the proverbial bottom line, no other reason.

 

[Mac1958]

.

Interesting to see the American Left - the folks who so passionately proclaimed their commitment to free love, free expression and freedom from The Man not two generations ago - now so cynically clamping down on freedom of expression as they move to control and micromanage our lives more and more with each passing day.

.

 

[Pogo]

It all boils down to this:

While a TV network has all the right in the world to regulate what is put on their programming, they are always and ultimately at the mercy of their viewership. People could have simply changed the channel, but nope. Some of them see it as an outlet to attack people of faith, irregardless of what rights the actors/network have.

^^^this

and that is what is happening. they have the absolute right to fire according to their views( or lack thereof), since they are the private enterprise.

He has the absolute right to sue if he feels like it.

"Sue" huh?

On the basis of .... what?

we have the absolute right to support whomever we choose to.

what all of us are doing.

"all of us" huh?
Lemme loin ya a truth about mass media. "Boycotts" don't work. For every regular viewer who commits to turning off the show there's five more on the side who weren't really watching that will now tune in to see what it's all about. That's how mass psychology works. That's why we say there's "no such thing as bad publicity". That's exactly what that means.

Lush Rimjob's ratings also spiked after he slandered that student. Same thing. That's why I keep pointing out that audience ratings do not measure assent, they measure attention. And attention can be acquired in a lot of ways, especially negative spectacles.

A&E was already making money off this goofy-ass show. Now they stand to make more. Their competitors are envious.

 

[Katzndogz]

If you think what you see on the screen is "reality" --- why does the show have writers?

What do the writers write? If, in fact, the show was scripted wouldn't the writers just write out all those references to God, Jesus and guns rather than tell the family to stop mentioning the subject?

No, not if it $ells.
Some of y'all keep imagining the Producer acts out of some kind of ideology. They don't. They sell what $ells.

If you really think that family spends time memorizing lines you never saw the show.

So you're saying they're stupid rednecks? Or just stupid?
Run with that.

They all have college degrees. Phil has a Master's Degree in education. They built a 400 million dollar company they are hardly stupid. They just don't care. No one is going to tell them what to do and certainly not what to say. It has been so long since we have seen that kind of independence we can no longer recognize it.

 

[rightwinger]

The show is scripted.

All reality shows are plotted. Scenes and situations are set up, "actors" are given lines to say in response to certain set ups. While not scripted line by line, they are far from spontaneous

 

[Spiderman]

The show is scripted.

All reality shows are plotted. Scenes and situations are set up, "actors" are given lines to say in response to certain set ups. While not scripted line by line, they are far from spontaneous

And all the shows are edited.

The people at A&E knew that line was left in.

As I said before this is a manufactured publicity stunt that most people are stupid enough to believe.

 

[rightwinger]

.

Interesting to see the American Left - the folks who so passionately proclaimed their commitment to free love, free expression and freedom from The Man not two generations ago - now so cynically clamping down on freedom of expression as they move to control and micromanage our lives more and more with each passing day.

.

That American left that you speak of was passionately involved in the Civil Rights era and were very concerned about the racist hate speech of the time. That is why the "n" word is not openly used anymore

 

[NYcarbineer]

What's funniest about this thread is that the author of it is now claiming to be right,

while having reversed his original position completely.

I reverse my opinions because of my open mindedness, something you are wholly incapable of doing. If I remained rigid in my stances all the time, I would be seen as unreasonable. Satisfied?

You reversed your opinion because people like me and others in this thread proved you wrong.

When someone proves me wrong on something, then I'll stand corrected.

 

[LoneLaugher]

.

Interesting to see the American Left - the folks who so passionately proclaimed their commitment to free love, free expression and freedom from The Man not two generations ago - now so cynically clamping down on freedom of expression as they move to control and micromanage our lives more and more with each passing day.

.

You are hereby cordially invited to say anything that you want to say.....provided it does not violate the PC terms of this site...which you have agreed to. Then, we shall all bear witness to your swift and complete persecution!

Please, the floor is yours.

 

[rightwinger]

The show is scripted.

All reality shows are plotted. Scenes and situations are set up, "actors" are given lines to say in response to certain set ups. While not scripted line by line, they are far from spontaneous

And all the shows are edited.

The people at A&E knew that line was left in.

As I said before this is a manufactured publicity stunt that most people are stupid enough to believe.

He did not say it in a show. He said it in a magazine interview

 

[williepete]

Interesting to see the American Left - the folks who so passionately proclaimed their commitment to free love, free expression and freedom from The Man not two generations ago - now so cynically clamping down on freedom of expression as they move to control and micromanage our lives more and more with each passing day.

December 20, 2013 6:00 PM

The Age of Intolerance
The forces of “tolerance” are intolerant of anything less than full-blown celebratory approval.
By Mark Steyn

Last week, following the public apology of an English comedian and the arrest of a fellow British subject both for making somewhat feeble Mandela gags, I noted that supposedly free societies were increasingly perilous places for those who make an infelicitous remark. So let’s pick up where we left off:

Here are two jokes one can no longer tell on American television. But you can still find them in the archives, out on the edge of town, in Sub-Basement Level 12 of the ever-expanding Smithsonian Mausoleum of the Unsayable. First, Bob Hope, touring the world in the year or so after the passage of the 1975 Consenting Adult Sex Bill:

“I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d get out before they make it compulsory.”

For Hope, this was an oddly profound gag, discerning even at the dawn of the Age of Tolerance that there was something inherently coercive about the enterprise. Soon it would be insufficient merely to be “tolerant” — warily accepting, blithely indifferent, mildly amused, tepidly supportive, according to taste. The forces of “tolerance” would become intolerant of anything less than full-blown celebratory approval.

Second joke from the archives: Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra kept this one in the act for a quarter-century. On stage, Dino used to have a bit of business where he’d refill his tumbler and ask Frank, “How do you make a fruit cordial?” And Sinatra would respond, “I dunno. How do you make a fruit cordial?” And Dean would say, “Be nice to him.”

But no matter how nice you are, it’s never enough. Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson, in his career-detonating interview with GQ, gave a rather thoughtful vernacular exegesis of the Bible’s line on sin, while carefully insisting that he and other Christians are obligated to love all sinners and leave it to the Almighty to adjudicate the competing charms of drunkards, fornicators, and homosexuals. Nevertheless, GLAAD — “the gatekeepers of politically correct gayness” as the (gay) novelist Bret Easton Ellis sneered — saw their opportunity and seized it. By taking out TV’s leading cable star, they would teach an important lesson pour encourager les autres — that espousing conventional Christian morality, even off-air, is incompatible with American celebrity.

Some of my comrades, who really should know better, wonder why, instead of insisting Robertson be defenestrated, GLAAD wouldn’t rather “start a conversation.” But, if you don’t need to, why bother? Most Christian opponents of gay marriage oppose gay marriage; they don’t oppose the right of gays to advocate it. Yet thug groups like GLAAD increasingly oppose the right of Christians even to argue their corner. It’s quicker and more effective to silence them.

As Christian bakers ordered to provide wedding cakes for gay nuptials and many others well understand, America’s much-vaunted “freedom of religion” is dwindling down to something you can exercise behind closed doors in the privacy of your own abode or at a specialist venue for those of such tastes for an hour or so on Sunday morning, but when you enter the public square you have to leave your faith back home hanging in the closet. Yet even this reductive consolation is not permitted to Robertson: GLAAD spokesgay Wilson Cruz declared that “Phil and his family claim to be Christian, but Phil’s lies about an entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe.” Robertson was quoting the New Testament, but hey, what do those guys know? In today’s America, land of the Obamacare Pajama Boy, Jesus is basically Nightshirt Boy, a fey non-judgmental dweeb who’s cool with whatever. What GLAAD is attempting would be called, were it applied to any other identity group, “cultural appropriation.”

In the broader sense, it’s totalitarian. While American gays were stuffing and mounting the duck hunter in their trophy room, the Prince of Wales was celebrating Advent with Christian refugees from the Middle East, and noting that the land in which Christ and Christianity were born is now the region boasting “the lowest concentration of Christians in the world — just four percent of the population.” It will be three, and two, and one percent soon enough, for there is a totalitarian impulse in resurgent Islam — and not just in Araby. A few miles from Buckingham Palace, Muslims in London’s East End are now sufficiently confident to go around warning local shopkeepers to cease selling alcohol. In theory, you might still enjoy the right to sell beer in Tower Hamlets or be a practicing Christian in Iraq, but in reality not so much. The asphyxiating embrace of ideological conformity was famously captured by Nikolai Krylenko, the People’s Commissar for Justice, in a speech to the Soviet Congress of Chess Players in 1932, at which he attacked the very concept of “the neutrality of chess.” It was necessary for chess to be Sovietized like everything else. “We must organize shock brigades of chess players, and begin immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan for chess,” he declared.

Six years later, the political winds having shifted, Krylenko was executed as an enemy of the people. But his spirit lives on among the Commissars of Gay Compliance at GLAAD. It is not enough to have gay marriage for gays. Everything must be gayed. There must be Five-Year Gay Plans for American bakeries, and the Christian church, and reality TV. There must be shock brigades of gay duck-hunters honking out the party line deep in the backwoods of the proletariat. Obamacare pajama models, if not yet mandatorily gay, can only be dressed in tartan onesies and accessorized with hot chocolate so as to communicate to the Republic’s maidenhood what a thankless endeavor heterosexuality is in contemporary America.

Look, I’m an effete foreigner who likes show tunes. My Broadway book was on a list of “Twelve Books Every Gay Man Should Read.” Andrew Sullivan said my beard was hot. Leonard Bernstein stuck his tongue in my mouth (long story). But I’m not interested in living in a world where we have to tiptoe around on ever thinner eggshells. If it’s a choice between having celebrity chefs who admit to having used the N-word in 1977 (or 1965, or 1948, or whenever the hell it was) and reality-show duck-hunters who quote Corinthians and Alec Baldwin bawling out some worthless paparazzo who’s doorstepping his family with a “homophobic” slur, or having all of them banished from public life and thousands upon millions more too cowed and craven to speak lest the same fate befall them, I’ll take the former any day.

Because the latter culture would be too boring for any self-respecting individual to want to live in, even more bloody boring than the current TV landscape where, aside from occasional eruptions of unerotic twerking by sexless skanks, every other show seems to involve snippy little Pajama Boys sitting around snarking at each other in the antiseptic eunuch pose that now passes for “ironic.” It’s “irony” as the last circle of Dante’s cultural drain; it’s why every show advertised as “edgy” and “transgressive” offers the same pitiful combination of attitude and impotence as a spayed cat humping.

Such a pansified culture is going nowhere. I hasten to add I don’t mean “pansified” in the sense of penetrative sex with other men, but in the Sarah Silverman sense of “I mean ‘gay’ like ‘retarded.’” Miss Silverman can get away with that kind of talk because she’s a Pajama Boy–friendly ironist posing as a homophobic disablist. Unless, of course, she’s a homophobic disablist posing as a Pajama Boy–friendly ironist. Maybe we should ban her just to be on the safe side.

How do you make a fruit cordial?

Be nice to him. Or else.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/366896/age-intolerance-mark-steyn

 

[Katzndogz]

A&E didn't sign up for illusion. They signed up for reality. That's what they got, reality. They didn't sign someone up to play a part but someone who was the part. They knew exactly what they were getting. The network just thought they could exercise more control than they really could.

No doubt the network imagined that if they gave Phil Robertson celebrity he would start acting like a celebrity and consider that celebrity worth protecting. He doesn't. He literally is above anything the gay/ liberal cabal can do to him. Even the race card is useless. Robertson can refuse to play. Pick up all the marbles and go hunting.

Nonsense.

They ‘signed up’ for money.

And the cast member was suspended out of concern for the proverbial bottom line, no other reason.

Yep. It's the bottom line. The network just never expected the owner of the bottom line to take it away. It's not like they can hire a replacement Papa.

Meanwhile Phil and the Dynasty will be running marathons until the new season WITH Phil starts in January.

Meanwhile I just heard that Cracker Barrel just caved and put the DD stuff back, except for some isolated items.

 

[LoneLaugher]

.

Interesting to see the American Left - the folks who so passionately proclaimed their commitment to free love, free expression and freedom from The Man not two generations ago - now so cynically clamping down on freedom of expression as they move to control and micromanage our lives more and more with each passing day.

.

That American left that you speak of was passionately involved in the Civil Rights era and were very concerned about the racist hate speech of the time. That is why the "n" word is not openly used anymore

I wonder if Mac wants to use the word "******" and is being intimidated into not using it?

It must be terribly difficult to bite one's tongue so.

 

[Katzndogz]

The show is scripted.

All reality shows are plotted. Scenes and situations are set up, "actors" are given lines to say in response to certain set ups. While not scripted line by line, they are far from spontaneous

And all the shows are edited.

The people at A&E knew that line was left in.

As I said before this is a manufactured publicity stunt that most people are stupid enough to believe.

Of course it's all edited. Each episode might have 50 hours of film.

 

[TemplarKormac]

What's funniest about this thread is that the author of it is now claiming to be right,

while having reversed his original position completely.

I reverse my opinions because of my open mindedness, something you are wholly incapable of doing. If I remained rigid in my stances all the time, I would be seen as unreasonable. Satisfied?

You reversed your opinion because people like me and others in this thread proved you wrong.

When someone proves me wrong on something, then I'll stand corrected.

No. I reverse opinions regularly. Just how did I become a libertarian from a hard right Republican?

I don't stand corrected, I stand convinced. Big difference.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Actually NO it hasn't.

Jon Gosselin Violates Morals Clause, Moves On with Reality Show

The above was already posted.

Now either shut up or say something else stupid.

You have still yet to prove there was a "morals clause" in his contract. I don't remember A&E citing that as the reason for his suspension either. Unless you have something proving otherwise.

I've never tried to prove that. You and your posse of braindeads like Katzndogz and Kosh keep insisting this:

He can't be punished like an actor would be punished

Yes, he can. Just because he's playing himself (at least sort of) doesn't make him a non-performer/actor/artist.

Stop making me repeat stuff.

 

[Vox]

It all boils down to this:

While a TV network has all the right in the world to regulate what is put on their programming, they are always and ultimately at the mercy of their viewership. People could have simply changed the channel, but nope. Some of them see it as an outlet to attack people of faith, irregardless of what rights the actors/network have.

^^^this

and that is what is happening. they have the absolute right to fire according to their views( or lack thereof), since they are the private enterprise.

He has the absolute right to sue if he feels like it.

"Sue" huh?

On the basis of .... what?

we have the absolute right to support whomever we choose to.

what all of us are doing.

"all of us" huh?
Lemme loin ya a truth about mass media. "Boycotts" don't work. For every regular viewer who commits to turning off the show there's five more on the side who weren't really watching that will now tune in to see what it's all about. That's how mass psychology works. That's why we say there's "no such thing as bad publicity". That's exactly what that means.

Lush Rimjob's ratings also spiked after he slandered that student. Same thing. That's why I keep pointing out that audience ratings do not measure assent, they measure attention. And attention can be acquired in a lot of ways, especially negative spectacles.

A&E was already making money off this goofy-ass show. Now they stand to make more. Their competitors are envious.

that is HIM to determine - he has the contract

A&E will lose money if they don't backtrack. and they will.
or will loose money. If the whole situation is for real.

I won't be surprised if the whole plot was not arranged between the participants altogether. That's a show business, isn't it

 

[Vox]

.

Interesting to see the American Left - the folks who so passionately proclaimed their commitment to free love, free expression and freedom from The Man not two generations ago - now so cynically clamping down on freedom of expression as they move to control and micromanage our lives more and more with each passing day.

.

the motto of the left is

YOU must love ME, or else

 

[orogenicman]

As a "lefty", and one who loves freedom of expression, as do many Americans of all persuasions. Look how they express themselves:

Cracker Barrel pulls 'Duck Dynasty' merchandise | Fox News

 

[TemplarKormac]

Jon Gosselin Violates Morals Clause, Moves On with Reality Show

The above was already posted.

Now either shut up or say something else stupid.

You have still yet to prove there was a "morals clause" in his contract. I don't remember A&E citing that as the reason for his suspension either. Unless you have something proving otherwise.

I've never tried to prove that. You and your posse of braindeads like Katzndogz and Kosh keep insisting this:

He can't be punished like an actor would be punished

Yes, he can. Just because he's playing himself (at least sort of) doesn't make him a non-performer/actor/artist.

Stop making me repeat stuff.

Simple logic as I have stated elsewhere: