Things we can learn from Duck Dynasty

I think there are some teachable moments here.

There is a lot of interesting material for which I am not needed. Photos of the family without their beards and speculation on whether the interview was a deliberate attempt at martyrdom, getting out of the show, or tone-deaf sincerity, I don't know. I've never watched the show, and I can't imagine that I would.

Also, I am not going to spend a lot of time on the difference between freedom of speech and responsibility to corporate sponsors. I kind of already covered that with Paula Deen.

So here are some new things that stood out to me, and my thoughts.

First of all, it was interesting reading about the ratings. The season 4 premiere drew in 11.8 million viewers, and this is apparently phenomenal. The United States population is 317 million, so phenomenal is about four percent. Whether you are impressed with how much money can be made off a small percentage of the population, or disheartened by the popularity of reality TV and the behavior it portrays, it's worth keeping some perspective.

This is probably also a good time to remember what suppression of speech means. A punk band in Russia is in jail for criticizing Putin (and they way they did it, but they would not get jail time here). Or we can remember what religious persecution means. Falun Gong members are imprisoned in China. Huguenots were massacred and had to flee France; Mormons were massacred and needed to flee Missouri. Quakers, Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson - I can keep going. People being offended by your beliefs that you remain free to practice is pretty minor, and reflects that the freedom is for everyone, not just some. This is a good thing.

Also, and this is probably my biggest thing here, it's probably good to take a moment and think about those beliefs.

If Robertson had only said that he believed that men and women should be together, there would be people who wouldn't like it, but it would be less of an issue. What he did was put homosexuality together with many other things that are not really fair comparisons, and then went off rather crudely about sex organs in a manner that shows a little too much preoccupation.

Many people are taking this as an attack on Christian beliefs, but this seems to be a bit of a knee-jerk reaction. (I covered similar territory writing about the Duggars.)

If you believe that homosexuality is wrong, it is worth stopping and examining what that means. If you automatically agree with anyone who is against homosexuality, you are going to be automatically agreeing with some very ugly things. Let's say you believe it is best that men and women marry each other, okay. Do you also believe that men marrying men is equal to bestiality or terrorism? Do you really believe that they should lose their jobs? Is beating them up okay? Do you really believe they recruit? Because there are people who believe those things, and will say those things; is that the side you want to be on?

It requires some thought, and that leads to the other point. This comment has not been getting as much attention, so I am going to quote it, about blacks in the South before the Civil Rights-era:

"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's funny in how literally wrong he is about "singing the blues", but okay, I have a point that may be useful here.

When discussing marginalized groups, we use the term "privilege" a lot, meaning that if you are not in that group you may not be aware of the downside of being in it, because you don't have to be aware of it. That is your privilege. Not knowing about the problems they face does not make you a bad person; that's just something that happens.

Being clueless that they are not necessarily being completely open with you also does not necessarily make you a bad person. There would have been a lot of danger in complaining, or doing anything else that was perceived as being out of line - "uppity" - and there are plenty of stories about that, but okay, you did not see the problem with the hierarchy that had you near the top. Fine.

However, if when you do hear that there might be problems, that this system is not working for others, you get irritated and you feel threatened, and you resent the changes, that is the kind of thing that can turn you into a bad person, because to do it you will either need to cling to ignorance or you will need to actively choose to side with the oppressor against the repressed, and neither of those are what good people do.