The persnickety outrage game

When it comes to the ghastly incivility and celebrations of low culture by cable news networks and reality shows, I'm afraid I've lost track of the ever-mutating cultural rules as laid down by culture critics. 

Sarah Palin, for instance, unloaded on the "intolerant" ones of some all too real "Duck Dynasty" clown who grouped gays with terrorists and sheep lovers, whereupon she concluded, with typical hyperbole, that "Free speech is an endangered species." And yet, as the Daily Beast's Dean Obeidallah observed, "when Martin Bashir made despicable comments about Palin, she didn’t defend him by saying, 'Free speech is an endangered species.'"

But Sarah Palin is an imbecile and hypocritical fraud of the right, you say, which of course she is. But what of the left, large parts of which celebrated Pat Buchanan's termination by MSNBC? Had Buchanan said anything as explicitly offensive as Bashir's remarks? Not that I recall. But's let face it. The left cheered Buchanan's firing because of Buchanan's ideology, and not because of any isolated indiscretions--just as Palin takes pleasure in Bashir's termination, but abhors that of A&E's Ducking clown.

And then we come to the curious middle of all this ideologically driven muddle, Andrew Sullivan, who says he's "befuddled" by the Duck Affair.

I seriously don’t know what A&E were expecting when the patriarch Phil Robertson was interviewed by GQ. But surely the same set of expectations that one might have of an ostensibly liberal host of a political show would not be extended to someone whose political incorrectness was the whole point of his stardom....

Robertson is a character in a reality show. He’s not a spokesman for A&E any more than some soul-sucking social x-ray from the Real Housewives series is a spokeswoman for Bravo. Is he being fired for being out of character? Nah. He’s being fired for staying in character – a character A&E have nurtured and promoted and benefited from. Turning around and demanding a Duck Dynasty star suddenly become the equivalent of a Rachel Maddow guest is preposterous and unfair.

If Sullivan thinks he's befuddled ...

Whoa. Sullivan protested Buchanan's MSNBC firing at the time (as I did), yet he applauded Alec Baldwin's sacking (whose show was far more artsy than political) by the same network, although now he seems rather supportive of A&E's Phil Robertson. The objection will be raised in Sullivan & Co.'s defense that these three cases are different, but hell every discrete case of slander and prejudice is as inherently unique as it is tediously undistinguished. So why does one essentially undifferentiated offender deserve a critical pass, while another deserves the boot, and yet another mere bafflement? Beats me.

Still, I too am baffled by what should be allowed, and what shouldn't. But then again it is, thankfully, hardly my decided place to rule on either Victorian prudishness or cultural anarchy. Societies have forever undergone collective shifts in the culturally permissible; and my contributions to those shifts are so infinitely small, I might as well embrace some general tolerance of them, rather than futilely piss against their winds.     

That's not to say, however, that I must forego opinion on the the whole Duck thing, which is this: I really don't give a shit what some redneck clown says on the Arts & Entertainment network, which is about as artsy and entertaining as the History Channel is historical.

 

Comments

[AnneJ]

...and as educational as the Learning Channel.

[Peter G]

I am not baffled at all. What should be allowed? That means nothing to me. Baldwin, for example, could not possibly be of use to his employer in his role of articulating progressive or liberal points of view having said what he said. And it is entirely up to his employer to make that decision with regard to Baldwin or Buchanan or anyone else if their contract language permits it. This has nothing to do whatsoever with first amendment rights unless all Americans are somehow entitled to their own television show on which to expound their views. It's a business decision and that is all it should be.

And I will venture to suggest that the contracts signed by these on air personalities all contained clauses permitting their firing. Which means they knew all about requirements restraining things they could personally say. If they had not agreed to those terms they never would have gotten on the air in the first place.

[Turgidson]

Wait what? I thought Buchanan was sacked from MSNBC because he was an irredeemable racist. I still remember his "WHITE FOLKS BUILT THIS COUNTRY" tirade on Maddow's show. He may have avoided slipping the n-word in there, but it was still quite the spectacle. In his Greatest Hits collection next to his 1992 convention speech, which, as Molly Ivins said, probably sounded better in the original German.

I really don't think it was because he was a paleoconservative. I think it was because he was a racist scumbag.