It's not art and it's not entertainment

     I am finding myself almost compelled to write about that which has been spoken about far too much recently, Phil Robertson and the show he is on, "Duck Dynasty" on the A&E channel.  In a way I come into this somewhat unprepared, for no other reason than I wouldn't be caught dead watching a show like "Duck Dynasty" to begin with.  Perhaps there is some redeeming quality to that show that I am missing, but it comes across as more mindless reality show tripe from where I am sitting.  Reality television has reached the Mad Lib stage of development where the idea for a show can be boiled down to the following formula, pick a random occupation, lifestyle or hobby, find more than one person that does it, then follow them around with cameras and see what happens.  Yes Georgia, even you can be a television producer in this day and age.

     Robertson only fell on to my radar because he recently gave an interview with GQ magazine, and in the interview he made the all too sad argument of homosexuality being a sin, then goes on to suggest that it morphs out into, amongst other things, bestiality.  Of course there never has been a correlation between the two, and to make the leap of logic that he does would be like me suggesting that since some priests have molested young children, then Christianity must breed pedophilia.  However it is not my purpose here to get into a flawed logic debate, Phil Robertson believes what he believes and he has been pretty straightforward about it from the get go.  Which is why A&E suspending him after the GQ interview makes no sense.

     A&E knew exactly who they were putting on their air long ago, Robertson's faith and beliefs were not hidden, and the folks at A&E liked the demographic the Robertson's attracted, it was why they programmed for them.  Let's not kid anyone, the idea that a gay Christian man who believed he was living in sin and was also an avid duck hunter would be a subset of a subset of a subset of the "Duck Dynasty" audience, as would the black persons who believed things were better during the Jim Crow era (another of Phil's enlightened statements) and were also avid duck hunters would again be a subset of a subset of a subset of the total audience.

     Phil Robertson's grave sin in the eyes of A&E wasn't Phil's beliefs, but that he announced them in another media besides their own when he did the GQ interview. The interview led to a deeper scrutiny of A&E and "Duck Dynasty" by people who otherwise would have been blissfully ignorant of the show.  Phil, in essence, aired the dirty secret that A&E didn't want known, that being just what type of audience A&E was pandering to all along.