Shelter in place!
The tide has turned in America!
The race towards full equality for all our citizens has been thwarted and it is game, set and match!
A&E has caved on the biggest controversy in all of American history and has restored the bigoted Elmer Fudd of the ducking world to his reality television program.
Will and Grace? Forever banished to the dustbin of history right alongside Stonewall. Real Americans can now move forward in full camouflage, duck calls in hand to quash any remaining hope that the tyrannical LGBT community will ever achieve its cheeky goal of being treated just like every other American citizen.
Bwahahahaha!
In reality, the breathless headlines heralding the triumphant return of Phil Robertson back to Duck Dynasty strike me as a pretty miserly bone to gnaw on. I suppose in the shriveling world of the unabashed bigot, this scrawny little scrap must look for all the world like a grand feast. My reaction to this is to give all the dizzy celebrants a hearty pat on the back with a sportsman-like "You sure got us!" and "Great win!"
Only it isn't. Duck Dynasty is not some new trend shaping the nation. It is actually the product of very old trends quickly becoming less acceptable in our public squares. I'm not talking about family or values, but rather bigotry and racism. The fact the patriarch made some very ugly yet stereotypically expected remarks about gay people and black people didn't really shock anyone. It just provided yet another match to ignite the deeply entrenched factions who have been foes for a very long time. After all, money was to be made.
So they can have this tempest in a teapot victory today. It will quickly fade from memory as we work on the real hurdles remaining to be jumped. Given the solid foundation we have built our road on these past few decades, I predict we will be looking back on this in a few years and saying things to each other like "Remember that duck show flap from '13? Whatever happened to that Robinson guy? Retired in Boca Raton? What a sad, pathetic little distraction that one was."