So the big hullaballo whipping it's way around the intertubes and the tv-tubes today is Phil Robertson suspended Duck Dynasty star after his various comments about gays being sinful and how he never saw a single unhappy black person in Louisiana during the civil rights era.
[Full disclosure: My Family is from Louisiana, and yes, I'm Black, so I know exactly how probable that statement to be as I described yesterday]
But now, on top of Megyn Kelly, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Monica Crowley and all chiming in to declare the abridgement of Mr. Robertson's "Free Speech" [to earn $200,000 an episode from A&E] now - NOW - we have Geraldo saying this while trying to draw a parallel to the departure of Alex Baldwin from MSNBC.
Geraldo: "[Cock-Sucking Faggot] is not a slur, if you grew up with it."
What. the. total. Fuck?
Yeah, wow.
We got the entire kitchen sink thrown into that one. We got Martin Bashir and Paula Deen and Cocksucking Faggots.
Ok, so Geraldo is an ignorant douche. I'm younger than Geraldo, almost everyone is including Phil Robertson, but I know that calling anyone anything near that is about as vicious a slur as I can imagine. Yes, I do consider it worse - IMO - than the N-word because it's so personal and specific. That is a verbal dagger aimed at someone's heart. Phil himself did not go that far. Paula Deen [who actually DID discriminate, not just talk about it] didn't go that far. Martin Bashir [who was historically accurate] didn't go that far.
Does MSNBC, and A&E and Food Network or whoever have the ability to decide they - as corporate entities - don't want to be associated with those types of comments?
Of Course They Do!.
Let's look at this from another angle, from the Rand Paul, John Stossel point of view. Y'know from that angle of people who - as Phil Robertson seems to intimate - think that the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act shouldn't have been enacted. And /or that we shouldn't have "Entitlements" like Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, CHIP, General Assistance or Disability.
A view which, if we're honest with ourselves, is the CENTER of the Tea Party platform. Repeal the Great Society. Repeal the New Deal. Give us back our Robber Baron Era, because everything was "better then" [with the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, Jim Crow & Lynchings right before we went into the Great Depression].
To Stossel, it doesn't matter what the rights of a person is, it only matters what the rights of a Business Are.
STOSSEL: Totally. I'm in total agreement with Rand Paul. You can call it public accommodation, and it is, but it's a private business. And if a private business wants to say, "We don't want any blond anchorwomen or mustached guys," it ought to be their right. Are we going to say to the black students' association they have to take white people, or the gay softball association they have to take straight people? We should have freedom of association in America.
KELLY: OK. When you put it like that it sounds fine, right? So who cares if a blond anchorwoman and mustached anchorman can't go into the lunchroom. But as you know, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came around because it was needed. Blacks weren't allowed to sit at the lunch counter with whites. They couldn't, as they traveled from state to state in this country, they couldn't go in and use a restroom. They couldn't get severed meals and so on, and therefore, unfortunately in this country a law was necessary to get them equal rights.
STOSSEL: Absolutely. But those -- Jim Crow -- those were government rules. Government was saying we have white a black drinking fountains. That's very different from saying private people can't discriminate.
Jim Crow rules didn't come from the government, they were set up by Private Institutions and the government didn't
prevent their implementation until the CRA. Some of those private institutions were
involved in government, influenced the law, and were members of the law enforcement. But let me not digress too much, the point Stossel is trying to argue is that private industry should be able to do
whatever it wants to do and the big bad gubment should just stay out of the way and let the chips fall.
When Rand Paul was asked about his public accommodations stance he argue that "No business would WANT to discriminate because of the public outcry". He felt that the Markets Would Decide.
This view, not coincidentally, is the central tenet behind Dinesh D'souza book "The End of Racism" from the 1990s. He spends hundreds of pages railing that the progressive approach to race relations - "creating divisions" - has been a total absolute failure. In the end, the only solution, the only way to "End Racism" - is to End the Civil Rights Act. To abolish it. Let private people do what they want to do, then let the Market Sort it all Out.
People like D'souza, Stossel and Paul don't understand why these protections are in place because they never consider what it might be like to become a member of the disfavored group and have someone discriminate against them. It's easy to say "Let the Market Decide" when you figure the market will always go YOUR Way.
And when it doesn't, when the Market leans toward the inclusive phase "Happy Holidays" rather than the exclusive one "Merry Christmas" - they cry "Fascism". They say it's a WAR, when all it is - is the Market, doing what the Market does.
So it's not like Robertson's suggestion that "Entitlements and Welfare" and other progressive efforts have taken Black people "away from Godliness and Happiness" that the Market would provide - is something new. It's pretty old actually.
However, what do these champions of private choice and liberty for private business say when the person who is damaging the market brand happens to be a Homophobic, Race Ignorant "Christian"?
Do they defend Market Freedom or do they scream "Oh those mean bad Companies and Businesses have taken away their Rights?"
Mm, how quickly the worm does turn.
It's just too bad these people are too thick to realize that the Civil Rights Act doesn't just protect people on the basis of Race, it also protects them on the basis of Gender, Age, Veteran Status, Disability and Religion.
If they truly thought Phil Robertson's rights had been violated, that he'd been singled out unfairly for being "Too Christian" - they could file a wrongful termination and or discrimination suit on the basis of Religious Persecution under the Civil Rights Act.
Yet, Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen.
Because being a Discriminator and a Hater against others isn't a protected right that you can claim has been perpetrated against yourself. when you get called on your own Discriminatory words and actions.
Vyan
P.S. If you want to have your True Rights as an full American Citizen Upheld and Protected in Stossel-Land, head out right now to LegalZoom.com and get your Family Incorporated as an LLC. Then you'll be a REAL Person, you betcha.
