Talks With A Duck

Obscured in the kerfuffle over Mr. Robertson’s coarser comments on the Fairer Sex is a simple fact that any five-year-old can tell us: Adults say the darnedest things.

This has since been confirmed by the comments of many other adults, critiquing the original notes on the female form offered by the “Duck Dynasty” patriarch — responses as predictable as they are misguided.

Because the second fact of the matter is in some ways less simple (and in some ways not) and more far-reaching and profound: When saying the darnedest things, Americans have the particular privilege of legal protection.

More than mere permission, in fact, is that’s where the Constitution starts. It’s its default position. It isn’t simply OK. It’s assumed.

OK, that much we know. It’s obvious. People say it all the time. Except then we go off on each other anyway.

But our best response, whatever our beliefs, may be … nothing.

*

Meaning whether we agree with Mr. Robertson or not, we can say nothing of it.

Support free speech? Let him speak, that others may here — and that speech remain free.

Think him a fool? Then let him speak, that others may see — and that speech remain free.

*

Instead people on both sides of the question dive into the shallow end head first, and then we’re paralyzed by all the usual suspects shoveling up all the common critiques.

Christians absolutely affirm certain truths, in this case about marriage. Those who oppose us in this do the same: affirm certain truths. And both as Americans correctly also defend the U.S. Constitutional privilege of saying stuff, even if it’s stupid or silly.

For example, in expressing bafflement over certain beliefs, Mr. Robertson seems mainly to have affirmed this one —

women are beautiful, and men appreciate this.

Or, in his argot —

chicks are hot and dudes dig that.

And of course his special ways of saying stuff was until this point one of the chief attractions to Duck Dynasty viewers, and therefore his cable channel. A&E has made a lot of money off the Robertson clan’s way of seeing the world — what they believe, because of what/who they are, and then saying stuff about it.

It was quaint at the time, I guess. And of course profitable. Which explains their otherwise odd expression of shock and outrage at these views and their colorful expression. When it became that public and the money river was threatened … well.

Up ‘til now they’ve been — literally — banking on them.

Then, too, A& E’s response is entirely predictable.

Then, too, that’s entirely protected by law, as well.

Because we’re banking on it, too, and that’s more vital.

Because all of this is to gently remind all of us that, unlike what we seem to do with so many other things today, this isn’t a ‘something’ rights issue. It’s foundational and basic. This is a rights rights issue.

He may be right, he may be crazy, and he just may be the lunatic … well, you know.  Because if free speech is not simply a permission but an assumption, several things are so:

Anyone gets to. Including Christians, non-Christians, anti-Christians and Oldsmobile men.
Anyone else gets to do it back. Including that same list, in reverse. Or don’t.
Anytime we Americans assume, sometimes … well, you know.

Adults say the darnedest things, and here we get to.

And sometimes the best response is none.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent

Ensamples

Among the worst things about The Slap is how it has fed self-righteousness in all but the two participants, and they already had it or it wldn’t have happened. But there is Solzhenitsyn, again, with the line between good and evil that cuts through every human heart, and there is Dostoevsky, always, reminding us via

Read More »

Lipstick

Pig is revelation. Revealing is when what’s here is hidden then seen. It’s really many individual ones, though widely considered they’re the same, and all the individuals are related, perhaps only proximately at first, but also in ways they themselves don’t initially see. + Key is it’s here. Problem is we don’t see it. Action

Read More »

Not For Teacher

There’s an unfortunate instructor-y thing where the guy on stage [I’ve found it’s usually a male doing this] asks a question he already knows the answer to, one of the people in the audience … err, classroom … is the target, the answer given is wrong, and the stagehand just goes and gives the answer

Read More »

Diminishing Me

You’d think a guy’d remember if it was the first time he’d seen a body but I didn’t not at first. [Hadda chance to graduate from college into one of our acceptable wars but didn’t, into the war that is, and no shot at a medical profession: left HS Chem as it had only 28

Read More »

Random

Animal Planet

We’re watching Planet of the Apes. No, not the Charlton Heston one — this one. Only it’s supposed to be this one, from last year. So we’re on the middle one, the “first remake” (excluding the 17 sequels to the Charlton Heston one) and it’s by Tim Burton, with all that that entails, from Helena

Read More »

Touch

In Boston in the Back Bay on Boylston the Trader Joe’s looks built for the bite-sized. The storefront is not one-third the size of the usual glass portion of a TJ’s and far less than the width an entire layout usually commands. There is one set of double doors covering both entrance and exit —

Read More »

Just Win Baby

If Tim Tebow never plays another down as an NFL Quarterback it won’t be because he can’t. It will be because they say he can’t. I don’t even say “because they think he can’t,” since thinking — actually assessing the data they have in front of them — hasn’t been much involved here. And the bottom line

Read More »

Related

What Are The Stories

“What are the stars?” No, not “big balls of gas” — that’s just their form. Just as people aren’t blood and guts so are stars not big balls of gas. What then are the stories?  I started with two divergent thoughts — There is only one plot: things are not what they seem. Jim Thompson and With a

Read More »

Un Success Full

Thomas Merton was asked once to contribute to a book on success — specifically a statement of how he’d achieved it in his own life. I replied indignantly that I was not able to consider myself a success in any terms that had meaning to me. If it happened that I had once written a

Read More »

On the Rock

I often vow not to hope, and always break that vow. And the next thing I’m supposed to say is that finally my hopes are realized, my desires achieved and all my wildest dreams come true. But this is not what’s happening just now. Just now I break that vow and I don’t get what

Read More »