Whenever Bill Maher, or any other evil secularist, says anything deemed offensive by Catholics, the Catholic League's Bill Donohue immediately goes into outrage overdrive. But in the bizarro world of the right wing, when an LGBT advocacy group reacted to the homophobic comments of the Duck Dynasty "patriarch," GLAAD was accused of being a bully - a meme aided and abetted on Fox News. Last week, Laura Ingraham, filling in for Bill O'Reilly, doubled down on the GLAAD as bully meme in accusing them of "attacking" (real) America's favorite network homophobe. Oh, and she also did some whitewashing of Robertson's racially ignorant comments about those happy, singing black people.
Fox News does love its "war" motif. So in keeping with the preferred lexicon, Ingraham, sporting her great big cross so you'll that she's a great big Catholic, reported that the "culture war" has "escalated." She reported that A&E, which reinstated Phil Robertson, is "under fire from liberal activists." She played video of Michael Eric Dyson's MSNBC's commentary about how, in his view, Duck Dynasty is "part of a white supremacist culture that incubates hatred of those who are different." (Fox News, anybody?) He was identified as an MSNBC contributor and not as a PhD Georgetown professor.
In her best nasal intoned voice, Ingraham asked Howard Kurtz how he felt about that comment. Knowing on what side his bread is buttered, Kurtz asked "what planet" Dyson is living on. When Kurtz suggested that Dyson should have talked about how Phil Robinson said that blacks were "happy and singing," Ingraham explained that this was Robertson's own perception. She ignored the fact that part of Robertson's comment included another observation that these joyful songs were sung in "pre-welfare" times.
When Kurtz accused Dyson of being "over the top," Ingraham, who is employed by a "news" network that specializes in race and gay baiting, responded that this "is part of the race baiting culture." In advancing the popular Bill O'Reilly and Fox narrative of the so-called black "grievance industry," she added "you gotta keep it going...not to say there's not intolerance...but, my goodness, our society is more pluralistic, more open, more tolerant than most major powers..." (While Russia is a hot spot of anti-gay bigotry, she alluded to Brussels and France as centers of intolerance.) Loyal Fox contributor Kurtz validated her points: "It's an outrage machine."
She spoke of the culture divide and how many "traditional" Americans are offended by the culture especially on shows like Glee and Modern Family. (Glee is on the Fox entertainment channel!!!) In questioning the outrage over Robertson's "personal views," she got all dramatic over how "GLAAD comes out, all these people, he's a horrible person, he's intolerant." (Ya think!) Calming down, she claimed that GLAAD has "stepped over the line and looks like the bully." She speculated that "a lot of people" see GLAAD as "bullying basically good people" who disagree with them on culture."
When Kurtz acknowledged that Robertson's gay comments were "inflammatory," defender of the faith Ingraham interjected that Robertson's views are shared by "millions upon millions upon millions of bible believing Christians who believe in First Corinthians." Despite the fact that Duck Dynasty is back in the good graces of A&E, Ingraham wanted to know why they "caved to GLAAD" and asked "why people are afraid of GLAAD." (Uh, was A&E afraid of the Christian right when they reinstated Robertson?) Ingraham quoted lesbian feminist gadfly (?) who said that GLAAD's response was "Stalinistic." She closed with the comment that "maybe GLAAD is irrelevant" and "a lot of people are whispering that."
Reality informs us that not only is homophobia alive and well in "traditional" America but there is an organized Christian cottage industry that foments the hate in, like Ingraham, claiming (Fox fave Tony Perkins) that their values are under the attack by the "gay agenda." Reality informs us that this is false but I doubt that Ingraham would say that these groups are irrelevant.
And yes, Robertson summarized St. Paul's list of those who won't go to heaven. So I guess that if Ingraham follows that teaching, she puts her gay brother in the same category as adulterers, idolaters, thieves, drunkards, and slanderer (Bill O'Reilly?) and swindlers! Just saying...
And 10 years from now, Phil Robertson and the rest of his klan (spelling intended) will be a distant memory while GLAAD continues fighting the filth being spewed by the future Robertsons.
Yeah, you get the very sparse commentary from people like Baier (which conveniently only bring up the gun nit victories,) but other than that… It’s almost like they don’t support the 1st amendment for gun reform activists, but they know what’ll happen if they say it out loud.