Excerpts from Dr. Gary North's column on the Robertson issue, which can be found here:
Phil Robertson, A&E, and GLAAD
What A&E has done was best described by astronaut Gus Grissom half a century ago, as recorded for posterity in The Right Stuff. It has committed a deviant act: symbolic bestiality. A&E has screwed the pooch.
A&E has just lost a franchise that generates almost half a billion dollars a year in product sales.
Can you spell "dumb"? The only hope is that buyers do not figure out that they are making money for A&E.
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We see here a failure to honor a familiar principle: count the cost. Choose your tactics accordingly. Do not overplay your hand.
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From day one, the people at A&E violated this tactical rule.
"LET'S SHOW PHIL WHO'S BOSS!"
Phil Robertson is a curmudgeon's curmudgeon. He is almost perfect. As the folks in Hollywood are said to say, it is as if he was sent by central casting.
If you have seen him on Duck Dynasty, you know that he is articulate. He has a peculiar way of speaking, which I noticed almost from the beginning. But his eloquence is unique. It is a strange eloquence. He grabs your attention, not simply because of what he says, but because of the way that he says it. It is no-frills speech. He does not waste a word. And he chooses his words carefully.
There is no question that A&E had no idea that this program would become the dominant cable show in history. There is no way that anybody could have predicted that. Robertson himself did not think it would work. But it did.
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Robertson lives in a very simple home, located far out in the sticks. He is not motivated by money. His son Willie is already worth $20 million, and Duck Commander, which sells duck calls that Robertson invented, is a $40 million a year business.
In one of the early shows, Robertson says on-screen that he told his son he could do anything he wanted with the business, as long as he got his monthly check. I suspect he is getting a very large monthly check.
Robertson has no debt. He has a lot of money coming in. He never wanted to do the TV show in the first place. He is therefore beyond any negative sanctions that might be imposed by the producers at A&E. The producers at A&E are not used to people being in this situation.
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From the moment that story hit, Robertson's statements to GQ became a sensation. By suspending him, A&E created a firestorm of resistance.
Millions of Christians saw that someone had said in public what they have always believed, but have not talked about publicly in the last 40 years. Then he was placed under negative sanctions in full public view. The response was immediate.
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My wife woke up very early Thursday morning. She got up, logged into Facebook, and found a page called "Stand with Phil Robertson." The people clicking "like" agreed to boycott A&E until Robertson is restored to the show. The site had only been up for a few hours. It already had 79,000 "likes." By the next morning, there were 250,000. By Thursday night, there were over 1 million. By Friday morning, there were 1,250,000.
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A&E has left the re-runs on. It plans to run the next season's shows -- with Phil! This is a half-hearted response to GLAAD, and now they are going to eat an enormous helping of crawfish by restoring Robertson to the show, or else they're going to see the show end. That will hit them where it matters most in Hollywood: the wallet.
Robertson's hostile opinion regarding the practices of homosexuals is shared by the vast majority of Americans. He called this a sin. I don't think most Americans believe this any longer, but American men fully accept his preference for women. This is why GLAAD has a problem. They responded by putting pressure on A&E. They did not resist lighting the fuse.
Within 24 hours, the powder keg blew up. It is now clear to the people at GLAAD that they are facing pent-up opposition, which had not gone public for 40 years. In one 24-hour period, the curtain lifted, and behind the curtain are millions of people who are mad as hell, and are not going to take it any longer.
Legal tolerance is not the same as social acceptance. You can get toleration as a favor: "no harm, no foul." "Live and let live." But you can't get social acceptance as a favor. That has to be earned. You can demand it, but you cannot get it. When you are in a small minority, you would be wise strategically to use the courts to gain legal tolerance. But when you take the step of imposing economic sanctions on those who do not share your views socially, you make a tactical error. This is what GLAAD has done. It was a huge blunder. It has backfired.
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Millions of Christians have come out of their prayer closets and onto Facebook protest pages.
When they click "like," they are implicitly clicking "don't like." They are clicking "fed up."
The reason why they did this, is clear: their enemies, who really are their enemies, decided to make an example of someone whose ideas these people are committed to, but committed to in silence. A&E unleashed a firestorm of resentment, which has been festering for 40 years.
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Robertson did not call for any legal discrimination against homosexuals. He simply described, in graphic terms, what the vast majority of humanity believes today, and which it has always believed. When A&E attempted to impose negative sanctions on him, A&E was imposing symbolic negative sanctions on everybody who agreed with him. Finally, a large chunk of the silent majority made it clear that they have had enough. Too much, in fact.
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I would be very surprised if A&E buckles. I would be even more surprised if the Robertson family buckles. The network is going to lose the show. The network deserves to lose the show.
Phil Robertson is now a hero to millions of straights. He is a villain in the eyes of GLAAD. There is no way to reconcile this conflict of opinions.
From a cultural standpoint, GLAAD has overplayed its hand. It has enabled millions of people to recognize that they are not alone. This is always the worst nightmare of any minority group which has adopted a policy of activism, suppression, and retaliation. When you seek to impose negative sanctions on a public figure, you had better be prepared for massive public resistance.
For decades, the Christian community has been under assault by its enemies. Christians tend to keep quiet. They assume such hostility is normal, and they live with it. Most minority groups accept this. Jews do not accept it, which is why there is the Anti-Defamation League. Homosexuals do not accept it, which is why there is GLAAD. But a minority group that uses public negative sanctions to get its way is risking massive public resistance by the targeted majority.
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If A&E had said something like this, the blow-up would not have happened.
The A&E network does not agree with Phil Robertson's statements regarding homosexuality. But A&E is committed to free expression as a matter of principle. It is the opinion of A&E that Mr. Robertson's statements are unacceptable, and should be rejected by every American. But A&E does not intend to make an example of Mr. Robertson by imposing negative sanctions of any kind. A&E will continue to broadcast Duck Dynasty, which is the most popular cable television show in history.
That would have gotten GLAAD off their backs. They would have gotten the advertisers' money into A&E's bank account. But A&E also overplayed its hand. That is always the risk of a minority group that seems to have been successful in silencing the opposition. Without warning, the opposition gets very noisy.
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A&E is holding two pair: aces and eights. The Robertsons have a straight flush: king high.
