There I was, Wednesday morning, enjoying a nice coffee and pumpkin muffin, watching a thought-provoking and highly intellectual documentary streaming on Peacock. Just after Meredith drunkenly tears into Angie K in approximately seven different accents and demands a 70-pound waiter drag her out of the restaurant by force, it goes to commercial.
And what commercial was it? Well, it wasn’t the one with all the people singing about mailing their poop for a colon cancer screening to the tune of “My Way,” and under normal circumstances, I would be incredibly grateful for that. No, it was a preview for a movie about the life of Phil Robertson. Like, got his “Duck Dynasty” show canceled for saying unbelievably racist and homophobic shit, Phil Robertson.
What the actual fuck?
The Blind, which premiers today, presumes to tell the story of an alcoholic, philandering, abusive husband who changed his ways after he found Jesus and then became super rich when he invented a duck whistle that made it easier for people to shoot ducks (I guess?). It does not, however, show much indication that it will be depicting any of the Black people Robertson claimed were so much happier under Jim Crow.
“Duck Dynasty” was canceled in 2017, and while you might have expected to see the Robertson clan up there getting arrested on January 6 with their many clones, it seems they kind of disappeared around then as well.
In case you forgot, exactly, what Robertson said that was so bad … let us refresh your memory!
In a 2013 interview with Drew Magary for GQ Magazine, Robertson shared his thoughts on Black people in Jim Crow Louisiana
I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I'm with the blacks, because we're white trash. We're going across the field.... 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.
A lot of people, were, in fact, singing the blues at that time, both literally and figuratively. Largely because of all the lynching and the not-having-human-rights and what have you.
He also made some pretty grotesque comments about gay people in that same interview:
It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man's anus. That's just me. I'm just thinking: There's more there! She's got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I'm saying? But hey, sin: It's not logical, my man. It's just not logical.
Did it end there? Of course it did not. Robertson was briefly suspended from “Duck Dynasty” for his comments — for nine days to be exact — and then after that worked out so well for him, he (and his family) went around saying even more horrible things!
There was the time he suggested that if people don’t like being flooded, they should just move to areas where there are not floods — also claiming that “the founders” would have opposed giving people who lost everything in a flood any kind of aid.
He also claimed that calendars are proof of the existence of a historical Jesus, on account of how we started counting forwards instead of backwards after he was born.
Well, that was just stupid. It wasn’t nearly as offensive as the parable he told a year earlier at a prayer breakfast in Florida, about how a murderer raped and killed an atheist family while telling them that it’s all okay and acceptable because God doesn’t exist.
“I'll make a bet with you. Two guys break into an atheist's home. He has a little atheist wife and two little atheist daughters. Two guys break into his home and tie him up in a chair and gag him. And then they take his two daughters in front of him and rape both of them and then shoot them and they take his wife and then decapitate her head off in front of him. And then they can look at him and say, 'Isn't it great that I don’t have to worry about being judged? Isn't it great that there's nothing wrong with this? There's no right or wrong, now is it dude?'
“Then you take a sharp knife and take his manhood and hold it in front of him and say, 'Wouldn't it be something if this [sic] was something wrong with this? But you’re the one who says there is no God, there’s no right, there’s no wrong, so we’re just having fun. We're sick in the head, have a nice day.'
“If it happened to them, they probably would say, 'Something about this just ain't right.'"
I always say, the ones you have to watch out for are the ones who only think they shouldn’t rape and murder and dismember people because God exists and will punish them. Especially since we do know that people who believe in God do all of those things. Serial killer Albert Fish was a devout Christian who, in fact, believed God ordered him to torture, castrate and eat little boys. Ted Bundy? Methodist, Mormon convert (later a Hindu convert). John Wayne Gacy, Catholic. Ed Gein, Lutheran, super religious mother. Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, was a devout, devout Baptist known to regularly cry at church sermons.
In fact, the evidence suggests that atheists commit crime at a far lower rate than the religious and that the least religious countries tend to also be the least violent. But I digress!
Phil Robertson has also claimed that listening to Beyoncé can cause STIs, that hippies and beatniks were responsible for STIs, and that AIDS is God’s “punishment for perversion.”
"I mean, a great question to ask is 'Why is it that all of these just—is this coincidental that viewing all of the immoral conduct that America now is participating in, I've asked a lot of people, do you think it's a coincidence that all of these debilitating — and literally, it can cause death — diseases follow that kind of conduct?" Robertson said, in a 2014 interview with Tony Perkins.
"God says, 'One woman, one man,' and everybody says, 'Oh, that's old hat, that's that old Bible stuff' and I'm thinking well, let's see now. A clean guy, a disease-free guy, and a disease-free woman, they marry and they keep their sex between the two of 'em, uh, they're not gonna get chlamydia and gonorrhea and syphilis and AIDS. It's, it's safe," he continued, adding "Now to me either it's the wildest coincidence ever that horrible diseases follow immoral conduct, or it's God saying, 'There's a penalty for that kind of conduct.' I'm leanin' toward there's a penalty toward it."
There is a reason this repulsive man went away and was otherwise frozen out of polite society. He’s a vicious, racist, homophobic lunatic who should not be given some opportunity to rebrand without any of that being brought back up.
Now, it is hardly shocking that, following the success of movies like The Sound of Freedom, which depicted the entirely made-up adventures of accused sexual harasser Tim Ballard, more people are making higher budget movies meant to pander to the far Right. But theaters don’t need to carry them and, more importantly, Peacock absolutely does not need to be streaming advertisements for them. Particularly trailers for movies about a rabid homophobe that air during a Bravo show that features drag queen Trixie Mattel as a guest star.
This shows an incredible amount of disrespect for not only their audience, but for the actual cast and crew of many shows and movies currently streaming on Peacock. Surely, they can do better than this. Even if it means that someone has to come up with more lyrics to the Cologuard commercial jingle.
If you need a magic sky daddy and the threat of an eternity in hell in order to be a good person then you are NOT a good person. Simples.
I scrolled past the duck guy's comments. because I just don't respect someone who doesn't wear a suit.