Bobby Jindal Angles to Lead the Stupid Party

As would be leaders of the Republican Party jockey for position to jump into the 2016 GOP presidential contest, it seems that it's in many ways a race to the bottom - something that has sadly become necessary as the GOP base has increasing gravitated toward the celebratory embrace of ignorance, religious extremism and open racism.  Joining in this race to lead the "stupid party" is Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, an admitted dark horse given his Indian descent.  And irony of ironies, he has totally forgotten his admonish from just two years ago that the GOP needed to cease being the "stupid party."  Salon looks at Jindal's willingness to prostitute himself to the ugliest elements of the GOP base.  Here are excerpts:

Following the Republican Party’s humiliating defeat in the 2012 elections — a loss that polls indicated was coming but which nevertheless stunned no small number of Republicans — Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal was scathing in his assessment of the state of the GOP.

It was high time, Jindal told Politico, for Republicans to discard its “simplistic” sloganeering and knee-jerk opposition to President Obama — time, the governor said, for the GOP to “stop being the stupid party.”

“We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism,” Jindal added. “We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”

Of course, boastful ignorance and anti-intellectualism largely define the modern American right, so Jindal’s summons for a more level-headed, ideas-based GOP never stood any chance of success. And Jindal himself refused to specify what would substantially differentiate a non-stupid Republican Party from its stupid iteration.

But Jindal, eyeing a 2016 bid for president, has completely abandoned his anti-”stupid party” crusade, desperately doing all he can to burnish his Know-Nothing credentials.

Some of the latest evidence emerged Wednesday, when his administration issued a letter asking Ebola researchers who had recently traveled to afflicted west Africans not to attend an upcoming conference of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in New Orleans. Experts have condemned such sweeping bans as not based in science, noting additionally that travel bans and other restrictive measures targeting health workers and researchers may well discourage other professionals from traveling to Ebola-stricken countries. But Republicans, happy to demagogue the Ebola issue ahead of the forthcoming midterms, have little interest in the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and public health advocates. And Jindal is happy to join in.

Jindal’s latest forays into right-wing rhetorical red meat come on the heels of other public statements that put the lie to his self-fancied image as the GOP’s ideas man. He was among the first conservatives to rush to the defense of homophobic “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson, alleging Robertson’s critics were engaged in a “war on religion” and suggesting that pushback against anti-gay remarks somehow threatened free speech. Meanwhile, the Brown University biology major and Rhodes Scholar won’t say if he accepts the theory of evolution or climate science, putting him to the right of the pope on those issues.

So Bobby Jindal, recognizing that thought and ideas are anathema to the contemporary GOP base, no longer has any interest in eradicating the stupid from the stupid party. Instead, he’s angling to become its leader — once he’s gained a little more weight.

The Price of Racism and Homophobia: Nearly 50% of Viewers Dump Duck Dynasty

While homophobia may be popular in Russia, it apparently is increasingly associated with a real financial cost in America.  Just ask the folks at Duck Dynasty where viewership has dropped nearly 50% after Phil Robertson's diarrhea of the mouth which included the bashing of gays and a Jim Crow version of race relations.  A&E proved spineless in the face of Christofascists outrage over Robertson's suspension from the show.  But thankfully viewers are demonstrating their disapproval by simply changing channels.  Policticususa has details.  Here are excerpts:

After family patriarch Phil Robertson’s racist and homophobic remarks during a GQ interview, Duck Dynasty’s viewership has dropped by nearly 50%.

When Duck Dynasty returned for their fourth season last year, their premiere episode was watched 11.77 million people. After Phil Robertson’s racist and homophobic remarks season five debuted to 8.5 million viewers. The second episode of the season dropped to 6.65 million viewers. The third episode stayed nearly even with episode two at 6.7 million viewers. By the fourth episode the show rebounded to 7.49 million viewers, but last night’s fifth episode dropped to new low of 6.51 million viewers.

Phil Robertson’s racist and homophobic comments to GQ definitely pushed viewers away from the show. Beneath beards and duck calls, millions of Americans found an ugly intolerance for others that they refuse to support.

When Republicans and right wingers like Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Fox News support a show, that’s a good sign that a program has fallen out of the mainstream, and their ratings are about to take a tumble. There aren’t enough right wingers out there to support the kind of extremism and hate that Phil Robertson was preaching.

More viewers are leaving Duck Dynasty by the week, because the United States is not a conservative country. The Obama years have demonstrated that the nation is moving left, not right. Duck Dynasty is slowly fading away.
[T]here aren’t enough right wing Republicans in this country to take the place of the millions who stopped watching the show after Robertson’s remarks.

Nearly 6 million television consumers have decided that they don’t want to spend their evenings with the Robertsons. Hate and intolerance have not been rewarded. Almost half of Duck Dynasty’s audience is gone, and more are deciding not to tune in each week.

Duck Dynasty Ratings Continue to Drop

A face of bigotry

I continually say that bigotry carries an economic price - typically in the context of Virginia's homophobic and racist rural areas where unemployment is high and where few new businesses want to relocate.  After all, who wants to locate a business or plant in an area inhabited by social Neanderthals who will be hostile to educated and moderate individuals.  Sadly, the inhabitants of Southwest Virginia and parts of the Shenandoah Valley haven't yet figured out this reality.  But, based on the continued plummeting of the ratings for Duck Dynasty, the same economic truism holds true in the realm of television.  The New York Times looks at the show's apparent continued downward spiral and notes the homophobic mindset of the cast while ignoring their racism.  Here are excerpts:

For a second week in a row, ratings for “Duck Dynasty,” the prodigious success for the A&E network, were off sharply from its previous cycle, suggesting — though far from proving — that there has been a significant backlash to comments made by Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the family at the center of the show.

Those remarks were criticized for being homophobic by the network’s management, which first suspended Mr. Robertson and then retreated under pressure from conservative voices.

So far, the new season, the show’s fifth, is showing a significant audience falloff. The second episode, Wednesday night was down to 6.6 million viewers (before delayed viewing is counted) from 8.5 million for the second episode of the show’s previous cycle, which aired in August.

The audience for last week’s premiere, also 8.5 million, was down from 11.7 million for the show’s previous premiere.

Similarly, the show has fallen off in the category that A&E sells to advertisers, viewers between the ages of 18 and 49. The premiere last week came in at a 3.3 rating in that group, down from a 5 rating for the premiere in August. Wednesday’s episode dropped to a 2.9 rating.

Personally, I hope the ratings continue to plummet.   History is moving on and it is the Christofascists and white supremacists who deserve to be thrown on the trash heap of history.

Duck Dynasty Ratings Tank for Season Premier

While the swamp fever ridden members of the far right and the Christofascist ranks have continued to vigorously supporting the batshitery of Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty, the most important critics - i.e., TV viewers - seem to be voting against Robertson's homophobia, racism and male chauvinist pig beliefs by turning the channel dial to something other than Duck Dynasty.   Americans Against the Tea Party has details:

It seems that homophobia, racism, Islamophobia, and suggesting that people marry teenagers is not what Americans want in a role model. Fundamentalist whack-job Phil Robertson and his merry band of fauxbillies saw their ratings plummet with the beginning of season five.

While conservatives were expecting their hero to enjoy a healthy boost in popularity due to his support of “real” American “Christian” values, they instead found Bibleman and crew losing about 28% of their viewership compared to the previous season premier.

While fake Christians have staunchly defended him to the point of lunacy (even if they hadn’t read the interview), after Robertson’s remarks that people with darker skin were happier in the Jim Crowe era, likenings of homosexuality to a predisposition toward animal fornication, comments that the Chinese and Muslims have been trying to take over the world for the past eighty years, and suggestions that men should go out and bag a fifteen year old wife, Americans seem to finally be realizing what sort of person their “role model” truly happens to be.

If the flight from Duck Dynasty continues to hold, then perhaps Americans are less easily duped that I sometimes think is the case.

The LGBT Community's Fair Weather Friends in Hollywood

Cracker Barrel - which, candidly I have never liked - and now A&E have knuckled under to the rants and boycott threats of the white Christofasists who have been "outraged" by A&E's short-lived suspension of gay hater Phil Robertson and falsely claimed that their "religious liberty" and "free speech rights" were under attack.  Meanwhile, of course, it is they who are the victimizers of others.  But that doesn't stop Hollywood from cave in into these purveyors of hate and bigotry.  Not when the targets of such hate are gays or even blacks.  Can one imaging how the Hollywood crowd would have reacted if Robertson's rant had been against Jews and called them Christ killers or some other outrageous bullshit?  Michelangelo Signorile has a justified condemnation of the LGBT community's spineless fair weather friends in Hollywood.  Here are excerpts:

Too many people are dismissing the action of A&E at reinstating Phil Robertson so soon after suspending him from Duck Dynasty. It's just a TV show, they say, and we have all of these wins on marriage equality -- and look at Utah!

But this is not about, "Oh, we're 'winning,' so who cares about Duck Dynasty? As long as our so-called "friends" in Hollywood promote and tolerate this kind of hate for money, we've not won much.

Tomorrow they'll throw an AIDS benefit to assuage their guilt, or come out and say some wonderful things about LGBT people, while making millions of dollars by promoting hate against us, shrouded in religious beliefs, and raising America's kids on hate. And the racism they're promoting with Phil Robertson, who posited that blacks were happier under Jim Crow, while they claim to be so inclusive and anti-racist, is appalling, and shows the height of Hollywood hypocrisy.

Challenging homophobia and racism is not just about "rights" and "winning" in courtrooms and legislatures. It's about what culture promotes and what's acceptable to make money on -- what bigotry is clearly able to be marketed and sold to the masses who've been fed this crap for decades.

Hollywood and it's supposed pro-gay, anti-racist liberals allowed Sarah Palin and the right to give them "free speech" cover -- when we all know this has nothing to do with free speech -- to make millions of dollars off of hate. As blogger Pam Spaulding wrote, the "problem with brushing this DD flap aside as just meaningless, is the fact that corporations, with this quick slap in the face of LGBTs (and black folks) is that it's a recognition of bigots as a demographic that must be catered to. That is no small deal, people."

Search the hate group and white supremacist websites - they are all jumping for joy that they have "won" and that open bigotry is perfectly acceptable.  It's not.  At least not among decent and truly moral people.  And that rules out both the Christofascist/white supremacists and the spineless crowd in Hollywood (which is showing about as much fortitude as the "good Germans" during the 1930's).

RenewAmerica: A Sectarian War is Coming

Among the many lunatic far right Christian groups that holds undue influence in the Republican Party is RenewAmerica, which seeks to take America back to "its founding principles" which all too predictably include "biblical principles."  To say that the organization is extreme is an understatement.  Likewise, it should come as no surprise that a common theme on the organization's website is the supposed persecution of godly Christians who, even as they persecute others, always want to play the role of the victim.   Now, a piece on the website is predicting that Christians will have to resort to armed conflict to stop the homosexual agenda, "Barack Obama's morally corrupt federal government" and other things that stand in the way of a Christofascist ruled theocracy.  To say that these folks are nuts is likewise an understatement.  These people pose a clear and present danger to constitutional government and, as blogger friend Bob Felton notes, comes close to sedition.  Here is a sampling of what passes for reasoned argument at RenewAmerica (Note: the pervasive anti-gay thread):

As the Left foams at the mouth over Phil Robertson, the Christian man who described Almighty God's take on homosexuality and other gross sins, their fear is becoming more and more apparent. They seem gradually to be realizing that they are a pernicious minority that only thrives because they are bolstered by Obama's morally corrupt federal government; intellectually lightweight media, devoid of principles; and interestingly, a general decency of American people influenced by the nation's Judeo-Christian roots. 

[S]ome leftists actually think that they can dictate to those of us who oppose their worldview how we should say things that offend them. 

It is also interesting that those who oppose biblical Christianity (and a few who claim that they do not oppose it) have trotted out their list of affirmed homosexuals who proclaim Phil Robertson's right to "his opinion." To any but the scripturally ignorant, Robertson's statements are not "his opinion." He did not inspire the writing of the scriptures that condemn homosexuality; God did. In paraphrasing Scripture, Robertson did not compare homosexuality to bestiality; God did. Robertson's "opinion" is only that he chooses to accept God's directives. What homosexuals and the rest of the Left fail to comprehend is that their ultimate fight is with God, not believing Christians. We just happen to be visible objects to which wrath can be directed.

[T]he biblical truth that the inclination to homosexuality itself is condemned by God. . . . Pope Benedict XVI, who preceded the current Pontiff, described homosexuality as a "disordered orientation," allowing for the fact that the behavior can be "ordered" if the homosexual chooses to seek help, obviously from God and, if necessary, from medical professionals.

Frank Camp, a commentator posting at the Last Resistance blog site (12/23/2013), states that the latest strike by the Left against Christians (in the person of Phil Robertson) is a defining moment in time. He predicts, and I agree, that this moment is only one of many coming in the near future as the agenda of the Left becomes more and more hostile toward "average American values."

Before this nation's founding, a group of pilgrims were able to escape the repression of the Church of England by seeking safe haven in a new territory. There are no more new worlds. There is nowhere else to run, and there will be no coming together in peaceful coexistence. The reason is that Christians are being required to do what we will not and cannot do – defy God for the sake of a corrupt, rotting culture. And not all Christians will passively bow to force.

This space called America cannot be concurrently occupied by the existing opposing worldviews. How this tragedy that is the destruction of America will play out remains to be seen, but I predict that it will not end peacefully.

That's right.  The writer seems to be arguing for armed sedition.  Thus, the actual "pernicious minority" that endangers America is, of course, those crazy enough to subscribe to and support RenewAmerica and insanity such as set out above.  These people are NOT nice and decent people and average Americans need to recognize the danger that they pose.  These are not you church ladies running a bake sale or a clothing drive.

"Duck Dynasty" Racism and Quackery

FRC's Tony Perkins addressing a white supremacist group

Having followed a number of "Christian" organizations - many of which are designated hate groups - for many years, one constant under current one finds in these organizations is racism and white supremacist yearnings.  This holds for American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council and, here in Virginia, The Family Foundation.  Racism is a twin pillar with these organizations hatred towards gays. It's all part of a mindset that America belongs to white conservative Christians and that everyone else is unwelcome.  While the "Duck Dynasty" brouhaha has focused on the homophobic statements of Phil Robertson, blatant racism and an effort to promote the myth of the "happy and fell treated Negro" was prominent as well.  These fundamentalist simply put are NOT nice people.  A column in the New York Times looks at the racist element of the controversy.  Here are excerpts:

I must admit that I’m not a watcher of “Duck Dynasty,” but I’m very much aware of it. I, too, am from Louisiana, and the family on the show lives outside the town of Monroe, which is a little over 50 miles from my hometown. We’re all from the sticks.

So, when I became aware of the homophobic and racially insensitive comments that the patriarch on the show, Phil Robertson, made this week in an interview in GQ magazine, I thought: I know that mind-set. 

Robertson’s interview reads as a commentary almost without malice, imbued with a matter-of-fact, this-is-just-the-way-I-see-it kind of Southern folksiness. To me, that is part of the problem. You don’t have to operate with a malicious spirit to do tremendous harm. Insensitivity and ignorance are sufficient. In fact, intolerance that is disarming is the most dangerous kind. It can masquerade as morality.

I don’t want to focus on the employment repercussions of what Robertson said, but on the content of it.

In particular, I want to focus on a passage on race from the interview, in which Robertson says:

“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.” 

While this is possible, it is highly improbable. Robertson is 67 years old, born into the Jim Crow South. Only a man blind and naïve to the suffering of others could have existed there and not recognized that there was a rampant culture of violence against blacks, with incidents and signs large and small, at every turn, on full display.

Louisiana helped to establish the architecture for Jim Crow. First, there were the Black Codes that sought to control interactions between blacks and whites and constrain black freedom. The Jim Crow Encyclopedia even points out that in one Louisiana town, Opelousas, “freedmen needed the permission of their employers to enter town.” 

Then, in 1890, the State Legislature passed the Separate Car Act, which stipulated that all railway companies in the state “shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races” in their coaches.
Robertson’s comments conjure the insidious mythology of historical Southern fiction, that of contented slave and benevolent master, of the oppressed and the oppressors gleefully abiding the oppression, happily accepting their wildly variant social stations. This mythology posits that there were two waves of ruination for Southern culture, the Civil War and the civil rights movement, that made blacks get upset and things go downhill. 

Furthermore, Robertson doesn’t seem to acknowledge the possibility that black workers he encountered possessed the most minimal social sophistication and survival skills necessary to not confess dissatisfaction to a white person on a cotton farm (no matter how “trashy” that white person might think himself). 

It’s impossible to know if Robertson recognizes the historical resonance and logical improbability of his comments. But that’s not an excuse.

GOP Hopefuls Strive to See Who Can Most Prostitute Themselves to the Christofascists

In the grand scheme of things "Duck Dynasty" and the grossly bigoted and racist Phil Robertson do not add up to much.  However, the scramble of the potential 2016 Republican candidate field to support Robertson's hate filled and bigoted comments underscores just how sick today's Republican Party has become.  These individuals - Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz, etc. - might just as well have a tattoo saying "I'm a whore" emblazoned across their foreheads.  And its all about winning over the fetid swamp that is now the GOP base where racism, religious extremism, rampant homophobia and attacks on anyone deemed "other" are the guiding principles.  My Republican fore-bearers, all of whom valued knowledge and intellect, must be rolling over in their graves.  Note how the usual hate group leaders are also rushing to Robertson's defense.  The Washington Post looks at this race to go as low as conceivably possible.  Here are story highlights:

Few could have predicted that the story lines of the hit A&E reality show “Duck Dynasty” and the 2016 presidential contest would converge.

But that unexpected mash-up played out Thursday as conservative politicians rushed to defend Phil Robertson, the shaggy-bearded, homespun star of the breakout series, who was suspended by the cable network after his published comments about gays stirred a storm of controversy.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), a likely White House contender whose state is home to the show about a family that runs a duck-hunting gear enterprise, called Robertson and his family “great citizens.” 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), another probable 2016 candidate, chimed in on Facebook, writing: “If you believe in free speech or religious liberty, you should be deeply dismayed over the treatment of Phil Robertson.” 

Their embrace of Robertson — who in an interview with GQ described “homosexual behavior” as sinful and compared it to bestiality and infidelity — underscored how gay rights remain a potent political issue for many religious voters on the right. 

Conservative Christians “feel like they’re under siege in a culture that is increasingly intolerant and discriminatory toward their views, and they don’t feel represented,” said Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, who noted that Robertson paraphrased from the Bible’s Book of Corinthians in his interview. “I did not get any impression at all that there was animus expressed,” Reed said.   By jumping into the “Duck Dynasty” maelstrom, conservative leaders such as Jindal and Cruz sent a clear message to evangelical voters: We’re on your side.

Fred Sainz, spokesman for the gay advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, said that “the days of making gay a wedge issue are dated.”  “I think they are outliers,” he said of Jindal, Cruz and Palin, adding that he believes they jumped into the “Duck Dynasty” controversy to appeal to “a niche base.”  But that base remains a powerful force in the Republican Party, particularly when it comes to presidential primaries in states such as Iowa and South Carolina.

[T]he Faith & Freedom Coalition called on its members to launch an e-mail and phone campaign to let A&E know they will boycott the network until Robertson is reinstated.

Fundamental evangelical Christianity is a cancer on American society.  Any good works that might be done are far outweighed by the hate, bigotry and division that are its principle fruits.  That the GOP continues to prostitute itself to this putrid element of society underscores that the GOP is engaged in a slow form of political suicide. 

 

Whore Like Republicans Rush to Support "Duck Dynasty" Bigot While Decent People are Repulsed

Proving once again that there are no limits to how low today's Republican elected officials and Tea Party mouthpieces will go in order to prostitute themselves to the Christofascist element of the GOP base, one Republican after another has rushed to support redneck bigot, Phil Robertson of "Duck Dynasty" notoriety after he was suspended indefinitely by A&E for his verbal diarrhea in a recent GQ Magazine interview.  These Republicans  - and fame seekers like the mindless Sarah Palin - literally fell all over themselves rushing to defend Robertson.  Politico looks at some of the pandering whore-like behavior.  Here are excerpts:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Thursday criticized the “politically correct crowd” following the suspension of “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson over comments he made about homosexuality and religion in a recent interview with GQ magazine.

“Phil Robertson and his family are great citizens of the State of Louisiana. The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with,” Jindal said in a statement released by his office. “I don’t agree with quite a bit of stuff I read in magazine interviews or see on TV. In fact, come to think of it, I find a good bit of it offensive. But I also acknowledge that this is a free country and everyone is entitled to express their views.”

Not surprisingly, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin and others stampeded to join the parade of willing political prostitutes.  It is little wonder that the younger generations are turning their backs on the GOP in drovers. 

Meanwhile, serious thinking people are feeling revulsion towards Robertson and the hate-filled and bigoted mindset he represents.  Civil Commotion summed up well the reality that anti-gay animus is only part of the larger racist and bigoted world view that now permeates the GOP and the far right:

The Wartburg ladies give that bunch the heave-ho they deserve.

We believe that things said in public get to be critiqued in public. While many “gospel” conservatives are jumping up and down about A&E’s response to Phil Robertson’s views on homosexuality, they seem to be quite silent on some other views expressed by Robertson in GQ.  In the January issue of GQ, the Duck Dynasty star also comments on growing up in a pre-civil-rights-era Louisiana.

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person,” Robertson claims. “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.”

He adds, “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.”

While not totally condemning Robertson - given the freakish reality show format that his show represents - Andrew Sullivan takes umbrage that Robertson only equates homosexuality with a specific sex act:

This is a fascinating glimpse into the fundamentalist mind. You’ll notice that, for the fundamentalist, all sin – when it comes down to it -  starts with sex. This sexual obsession, as the Pope has rightly diagnosed it, is a mark of neurotic fundamentalism in Islam and Judaism as well as Christianity. And if all sin is rooted in sex, then the homosexual becomes the most depraved and evil individual in the cosmos. So you get this classic statement about sin: “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there.”

This emphasis is absolutely not orthodox Christianity. . . . And to posit gay people as the true source of all moral corruption is to use eliminationist rhetoric and demonizing logic to soften up a small minority of people for exclusion, marginalization and, at some point, violence. . . . . What we’re seeing here – and it’s very much worth debating – is how fundamentalist religion seizes on recognizable, immoral minorities to shore up its own sense of righteousness.

 

All we’re seeing here is the effect of cultural isolation. The only thing I find objectionable about it – and it is objectionable – is the reduction of gay people and our relationships to sex acts. Mr Robertson would not be happy – indeed, rightly be extremely offended – if I reduced his entire family life and marriage to sex with a vagina.

Bob Felton also chimed in to remind us of the depraved view of marriage held by the fundamentalist Christian crowd:

Sullivan is right about the cultural isolation and the reductionism, but it shows that he hasn’t spent much time amongst southern fundamentalists. If he had, he would know that they define marriage as sex — or, more precisely, as cosmic permission for sex. The mutual loyalty and shared ambitions that actually make a relationship a marriage are specifically and relentlessly condemned, for those things are presumptions upon … Him, who is to have all your loyalty and who will let you know what are your ambitions.  It’s childish, and it’s odious, but Robertson’s exposition of southern fundamentalist ideals is definitely authentic.

These fundamentalists - and this includes Robertson - are not nice, decent or moral people.  Hate and bigotry are the stock in trade.  More Americans need to recognize this reality and treat these people like the pariahs they deserve to be.

Duck Dynasty Bigot Suspended by A&E

I never cease to be amazed at how the Neanderthals of the far right feel that they have a license to say any kind of horrible and untrue thing they want about gays.  No other minority in this country is such open game for overt hate and bigotry - even white supremacists have learned some level of decorum as to where they unleash their racists vitriol.  But not so with the homophobes.  A case in point is "Duck Dynasty" star (if star is the correct term) Phil Robertson who let loose with a rant in an interview in GQ Magazine.  Thankfully, A&E was not amused and suspended Robertson's bigoted and prejudiced ass.  Not surprisingly, the usual hate merchants are crying foul.  What's truly foul is the hate and bigotry that comes from the "godly folk."  It is little wonder that less than a third of the Milennials see clergy as honest and why a third of them no longer identify with institutional religion.  The New Civil Rights Movement looks at the Robertson saga.  Here are highlights:

A&E’s popular reality series “Duck Dynasty” has just entered the culture wars. The father of the clan, Phil Robertson, told GQ Magazine in an interview published today that being gay is illogical. The 67-year old Louisiana patriarch also compared homosexuality to bestiality, adultery, prostitution, alcoholism, lying, stealing — and terrorism. He also, unsurprisingly, says gay people are not going to heaven.

“It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus,” Robertson says. “That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer.

GLAAD is speaking out, calling the comments “littered with outdated stereotypes and blatant misinformation.” And they’re talking with A&E about it.

Robertson’s “statement is far outside of the mainstream understanding of LGBT people,” GLAAD, in a press release notes. “In Louisiana, which passed a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality, 56% of the population support some sort of legal recognition, marriage or civil unions, for gay and lesbian couples according to Public Policy Polling released in August 2013.”

“Phil and his family claim to be Christian, but Phil’s lies about an entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe,” GLAAD spokesperson Wilson Cruz says. “He clearly knows nothing about gay people or the majority of Louisianans – and Americans – who support legal recognition for loving and committed gay and lesbian couples.

Unfortunately, Robertson is becoming more and more representative of the types of individuals who make up the Republican Party base.