The Rage Generators

By now you’ve heard about the fellow from the television, um, series, Duck Dynasty, who said some hateful things about homosexuality, likening same-sex sex with bestiality and terrorism. He also suggested that all non-Christians are terrorists and murderers and that African-Americans were happier under Jim Crow laws.

Dean Obeidallah explains what happened next:

Robertson’s comments led A&E, the network that airs his megahit show, to suspend him indefinitely. They didn’t fire him. Nor did A&E pull Duck Dynasty off the air. They didn’t even say they weren’t going to pay Robertson. Bottom line: A&E acted swiftly to save the brand of Duck Dynasty, a show that generates millions in ad revenue for the network. A&E made the right call.

However, this measured response outraged many on the right. Some took to Twitter to scream that “freedom of speech” is being destroyed. GOP USA has blasted A&E.

Obeidallah and Steve M both point out that when somebody associated with the Left says some hateful, jerky thing on television, usually they lose their jobs. Martin Bashir and Alec Baldwin come to mind. Yet not a peep out of the Right about “free speech” in those cases.

And for the record, when an employer sees an employee doing something that will likely hurt the company brand and cost the company money, the employee is lucky to keep his job at all. I don’t see this as a free speech issue.

The richest response must be Erick Erickson’s. Just a taste:

A & E has now joined much of mass market culture in the Western World in picking sides in a fight — tolerance for gay rights, but not for Christians expressing honest answers to questions asked of their faith. The only surprise is that the Christians of Duck Dynasty could last there as long as they did. A&E has as much right to do this as you have to turn the channel. But they have clearly aligned themselves against us in the culture wars.

The world is at war with Christ and those who put their faith in Christ. The silver lining of this act is that many Christians who decided they could sit on the sidelines and not have to care will have a wake up call — particularly millennial Christians.

Don’t miss Alex Pareene’s hilarious spoof of Erickson (written before the Duck Dynasty flap), which ends:

Now I’ve just said a lot of vitriolic, mean-spirited things about Erickson, and obviously he deserves every one of them, but now is the part where I adopt a pious tone and talk about Christ and scripture for a paragraph. Christ teaches us to forgive our enemies, after you “joke” about the ones who were murdered by death squads.

It must be noted also that on the same day the Right rose up in solidarity in defense of the Duck Dynasty star, they are also engaged in a hate frenzy over “pajama boy,” a young man who posed in an Obamacare ad from Organizing for Action while wearing pajamas. They are so outraged by the photograph that they’ve identified the young man and are attacking him personally. Because they don’t like the way he looks.

Um, have they focused their eyes on Erick Erickson lately?