The same media currently looking the other way with respect to this, this and this, are once again — out of bigotry, ignorance, or both — attacking “Duck Dynasty” patriarch Phil Robertson for doing absolutely nothing wrong (unless you count being a Southern Christian wrong — and let’s face it, many in the media do).
A little over a year ago the predominantly anti-Christian mainstream media attempted to personally destroy and “other” Robertson for talking about sin, including homosexuality. Now he’s being attacked as an intolerant freak for making a perfectly valid point about atheism and moral relativism.
Look at this — this toxic left-wing mix of ignorance and propaganda was all manufactured in less than 24 hours. Here’s a small taste:
Washington Post: Phil Robertson slammed for imagined tale of an atheist family’s rape and murder
E!: Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson Attacks Atheists at a Florida Event Using Rape
Entertainment Weekly: Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson condemns atheists at prayer event
HuffPo: Phil Robertson’s Appalling Atheist Fantasy
Hollywood Reporter: ‘Duck Dynasty’s’ Phil Robertson Imagines Brutal Attack on Atheists in Graphic Speech
Every one of those headlines is wildly misleading and designed to make Robertson look like a lunatic who is attacking atheists and/or fantasizing about something horrific happening to them. The exact opposite is true of course, but that doesn’t matter.
Here is a full transcript of what Robertson actually said:
I’ll make a bet with you. Two guys break into an atheist’s home. He has a little atheist wife and two little atheist daughters. Two guys break into his home and tie him up in a chair and gag him. And then they take his two daughters in front of him and rape both of them and then shoot them and they take his wife and then decapitate her head off in front of him. And they can look at him and say, ‘Isn’t it great that I don’t have to worry about being judged? Isn’t it great that there’s nothing wrong with this? There’s no right or wrong, now is it dude?’
Then you take a sharp knife and take his manhood and hold it in front of him and say, ‘Wouldn’t it be something if this [sic] was something wrong with this? But you’re the one who says there is no God, there’s no right, there’s no wrong, so we’re just having fun. We’re sick in the head, have a nice day.’
If it happened to them, they probably would say, ‘Something about this just ain’t right.’
It is so obvious what Robertson is doing here it feels silly to have to explain.
Robertson is not “fantasizing” about an atheist family suffering a home invasion. It’s glaringly obvious he is portraying this scenario, not only as terrible, but as the most terrible thing imaginable. He is using an extreme scenario to drive home an important point about right and wrong, and where the notion of moral relativism can ultimately lead.
Robertson is in no way saying atheists deserve this. Quite the opposite. It is horrifying and tragic situation and presented within that context. Robertson is telling a parable, a graphic parable, but still a parable using shock value as a way to bring home a perfectly valid point about a Godless world in which there is no Ten Commandments and by extension no basis to judge right from wrong.
Writing for the Washington Post, Abby Ohlheiser is especially egregious in her intellectually dishonest attack on Robertson. To keep everything dishonestly framed within the context of Robertson attacking atheists, she writes:
Robertson seemed to be addressing the question of whether atheists, because they don’t believe in God, are unable to distinguish between good and evil acts.
What?
Actually, if you read what Robertson actually says, he makes clear that atheists do in fact know the difference between good and evil and right and wrong. His point is the horror show of a world that can come from refusing to acknowledge the right and wrong of God’s Commandments. This is all about the slippery slope of moral relativism.
Ohlheiser is even more irresponsible in the way she frames Robertson’s argument against the ideology of modern liberalism. She writes, “At the same prayer rally, Robertson also said that American liberals follow Satan and are worse than Stalin and the Nazis.”
What Ohlheiser doesn’t do is tell her readers what Robertson actually said:
I gave you four ideologies in the last one hundred years, I see a pattern. You say, ‘why do they do what they do, why is there always murder?’ You know what the scary thing is? The fifth ideology right in behind all of this bunch of stuff we’re dealing with now, has its roots in the United States of America? You know how many they’ve killed? You say, ‘who are they?’ People call them left-wing loons, Bill O’Reilly calls them, political correct crowd, orthodox liberal opinion. You say, ‘what are they famous for?’ They’ve killed 63 million of their own children. 63 million. More than Hitler, more than Stalin. We’re slaughtering ourselves. You say, ‘who is behind it?’ Their father is, he was a murderer, from the beginning, they are slaves to sin, they are controlled by the Evil One. Duh.
Duh, indeed.
If you don’t believe an unborn baby is a human being, I guess you can argue Robertson’s point. Like many, however, I happen to believe an unborn baby is every bit the human being I am, and because of that I can’t argue Robertson’s point. Abortion is a full-blown holocaust and Robertson isn’t the only one saying so.
There is no question that many in the media simply hate Christians, especially Southern Christians. Some, though, just don’t seem to understand Christianity and the Southern notion of firebrand preaching. It’s called scaring the Devil out of you, and it’s a tradition as old as John the Baptist.
What the media is doing here is pointing, judging, and laughing at a culture they don’t understand, and don’t want to understand.
I was born in the Midwest but have lived 15 of my adult years in the South, 9 in Los Angeles, 2 in an inner city, and 1 in Florida. Because I’m not a media provincial, because the only American culture I haven’t experienced is the New York/DC provincial bubble, I don’t see Phil Robertson as a freak. He doesn’t scare me. He’s not unique. He’s just folks.
Grow up, media, not everyone believes in the same things you do or talks like you.
I also find it revealing where your tolerance for other cultures ends.
Breitbart emailed and left a phone message for Ann Ohlhesier. We will update this post if she responds.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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