Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty – You better duck cause A&E’s acting without Ethics

I guess I had better start today’s blog with a public service announcement: Reality Tv is not real. It is staged and most of it follows a loose script. That said, goofballs who can take a skill such as surviving on an island within a stone’s throw of a 4-star hotel, or buying the contents of a stinky storage locker, or those who are famous by being remotely related to a basketball player or those who can catch catfish with their feet, and turning those talents into a business empire is OK by me. It is America and a buck is a buck (as long as it’s an ethical buck). But it’s still a show.

Reality Tv began when a bunch of Hollywood writers went on strike and the moguls needed something to stuff into time slots. Much to their amazement, these staged slices of “life” have turned into gold mines. Whether the show is the “Real Housewives of Terre Haute” or “Hippopotamus Makeover,” people will generally tune in and buy whatever the sponsors are selling. And, I might add, these shows are cheap, cheap, cheap to produce (Ka-ching!).

Here’s the problem:

As Reality Tv became more popular, the producers had to get more crazy and each idea just a bit more whacky. Sometimes the stars of the shows are just a bit off the radar, if you get my drift, or they might have a loose screw or sometimes they forget they’re not supposed to be real, but fake people pretending to play real people.

Enter Duck Dynasty

Only in this Reality Tv era would America be tuning into a show about an “exotic” looking family who made a fortune on duck calls. I am not saying they are bad people or bad business people or that they didn’t deserve their success.Duck Dynasty is abouta family, the Robertsons, who live in the bayou country of Louisiana. They are not Harvard-trained neuro-surgeons, or inventors of cloud-based computing or drama professors from Yale. They make duck stuff, they live on the bayou and they have a set of publicly stated beliefs.

But unlike virtually every other Reality star who pretends at being real, the Robertson’s are real playing real. Every slicky person at A&E (the station making mega-bucks from the Robertson’s) knew exactly who the Robertson’s were when they launched the show and in fact, I would argue, they delighted in the thought of making people raised in a humble background look like sheer idiots (and that, my friends, is a whole other ethical topic).

Phil Robertson, the star of the Duck Dynasty circus speaks his mind. Because, well, because he’s a real person. He is devout in his beliefs because he is real in his beliefs. We may or may not agree with his beliefs – and that’s not the point here. The fact is, A&E knew exactly who Mr. Robertson was when they fell all over themselves to launch the show.

The GQ Article

Mr. Robertson is similar to other successful Reality Tv stars in that his stage went from the confines of a television show to national, out-of-all proportion status. The names “Snooki” and “Kim” come to mind but there are many more.

Robertson gave an interview to GQ magazine and in the interview and he made what were considered disparaging remarks against the Gay lifestyle, Gay marriage and how he perceived Blacks as being treated down in the south.

The interview prompted outrage. Again, I neither defend nor reject his remarks. I will say that they reflect his Christian beliefs, his frame of reference and his choices and personality.

A&E has decided to indefinitely suspend Phil Robertson because of what he said, but to keep airing the show — and that does outrage me. It not only smacks up against Robertson’s First Amendment rights, but in my opinion it turns A&E into a bigger group of fools than even I could have imagined. They knew who he was and what he felt and they made a ton of money off of him. Now they’re suspending him because he was caught committing the biggest crime of all on Reality Tv; he was real.

Phil Robertson will be just fine because he is completely comfortable in his beliefs. I don’t feel sorry for A&E because they will ride the Duck Dynasty show until they come up with another show; “Barnyard Animal Poker” perhaps, or a show about opera singers who like to jump from airplanes without parachutes.

I guess I feel most sorry for all of us. We are being manipulated yet again.