If It Talks Like a Duck . . .

Phil Robertson

Ever since the A&E cable television network suspended Duck Dynasty paterfamilias and resident philosopher Phil Robertson over his announced scripture-based views of homosexuality, and the subsequent revelation about his somewhat less than progressive observations of pre-Civil Rights era African American life, the debate has raged. One side wants Mr. Robertson put away for good, while the other has forwarded a petition, now with hundreds of thousands of signatures, decrying A&E’s censorship and either supporting his views or at least defending his right to spout them.

Perhaps it is coincidental, but it seems that a lot of the folks who support a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment (including duck hunters, one might surmise) are now insisting on upholding Robertson’s First Amendment rights to say what he wants.

So let’s just take a peak at those hallowed words:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Just as some would argue that the key phrase in the Second Amendment is “well regulated militia,” I would argue that the key word in the First Amendment is “Congress.” Though we recognize certain limits on free speech, it is the government that is prohibited from interfering in religion or free speech.

If the government tried to restrict Phil Robertson’s right to say what he liked about gays or African Americans, I would be right up on the barricades defending him, along with a lot of my friends, though we don’t share any of his views or agree with him one gnat’s navel’s worth.

But if a commercial network doesn’t like what he says and believes it doesn’t adhere to the corporate policy or beliefs, well, they have the right to throw him out on his camouflage covered can.

If the government tries to restrain a newspaper reporter from printing a scoop, that is a very serious matter indeed. But if the publisher of said newspaper decides not to print that reporter’s scoop, that is no story at all.

Every time high school journalists come to me and complain that the principal has censored one of their stories from the school paper – and this has happened at least five or six times – I remind them that the principal is their publisher, and he is ultimately responsible for the content, not them. And if they don’t like that, they need to go off campus, get their own facilities, fund the enterprise themselves and take out libel insurance.

It is the same issue as in trials. When John Douglas and I were interviewed for a national magazine while the O. J. Simpson murder trial was underway in Los Angeles and we opined that the evidence against the defendant pointed overwhelmingly to his guilt, a number of readers wrote in to chastise and admonish us that Mr. Simpson was innocent until and unless proven guilty.

We responded that in the court of law, that was certainly the case and that it had to do with the assurance of a fair trial and applied to the government‘s burden of proof. It had nothing to do with us. If Mr. Simpson had a problem with what we said, he could sue us for libel in a civil court and we would defend ourselves vigorously. He did not, and John subsequently advised the plaintiffs’ side in the wrongful death civil case against him.

So this Duck Debacle has nothing to do with the First Amendment. It has to do with the marketplace of ideas and the marketplace of money. Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, right wing and white supremacy groups regularly boycotted television dramas by my late great friend and mentor Rod Serling, and network censors were always coming down on him as a result. He wrote two scripts reflecting his outrage over the Emmett Till racial murder in Mississippi, both of which the networks butchered after the White Citizens Council threatened massive protests. Rod even received hate mail from Jewish groups after he portrayed a young Nazi soldier as having a conscience in his Warsaw Ghetto drama, “In the Presence of Mine Enemies.”

So the kind of public dialectic surrounding Phil Robertson and his Duck Dynasty family is not new. My guess is that A&E will soon reinstate him, after soberly making its point, because there is too much money involved not to.

By the same token, I also believe that history moves in one direction, and that equal rights and dignity for gays is as just and inevitable as equal rights for blacks, Asians, Hispanics and women. Gay civil rights will become a matter of law and public acceptance; it is only a matter of when.

In the meantime, it is the marketplace of ideas that should regulate this current debate, and the more debate the better. And as long as the government stays out of it, that marketplace will handle it just fine.

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