I agree. And as such Mr. Duckman can attempt to exercise his freedom of speech. If his employer says he is not allowed to express his thoughts while employed they he has a choice to make about what is more important to him.
What if you weren’t allowed to voice your experience - not opinion - while working for someone? I know what I’d think. I’d Godwinize the whole dang place before I turned in my resignation. Heh.
Sure man; more power to ya. I might not be such an earnest optimist.
Yeah! People should be allowed to voice all their opinions, at any time, without any repercussions whatsoever! I know I can’t wait til the pizza delivery boy favors me with his thoughts on Hitler’s policies. When I go to the grocery store, I love to hear about the dangers of fracking. And when I’m checking out a library book, there’s nothing I enjoy more than being told that Jews caused 9-11. That’s what makes America great.
What Phil Robertson said was not on the job. If he said anything like that on the show and A&E edited it out, it would be A&E exercising editorial control over the show they own, and fully logical and legitimate.
Censoring Phil’s opinions outside of the show by “hiatusing” him is much more problematic. I am glad he and his family are taking the stand they are. And the fact that A&E stands to lose tens if not hundreds of $millions (while Robertsons, with this publicity, are raking it in) is just icing on the cake.
People DO have the freedom to say whatever you want. What you do NOT have is the freedom from consequences of saying whatever you want.
Phil Robertson got to spout off and show that he’s a homophobic racist. The rest of the world, for the most part, got to show that they think he’s a fucking imbecile for it. Neat how that works, eh?
Sure. We will see if A&E is ready to lose millions while creating great publicity for Robertsons’ business - all because it objects to Phil’s opinions.
There was more racism in the South because there were more black people in the South? You really believe that? Because you say a New York kid flip off a black maid? Wow.
Certainly the fear wasn’t just of lynchings; if, for instance, you forgot to step off the sidewalk to make room for a white person, you’d probably just get beaten up bad enough to send you to the hospital, not that you’d actually go. And given the constraints of life for blacks in the Jim Crow South, it’s hard to separate economics from everything else, when you might get your shop burned down if you do too well. Economics and fear routinely intersected.
I posted:
There may very well be more racists in the South. I do not know.
I’m not sure what your point is. 
So where’s my TV show? I’m being denied my freedom of speech!! Did you see them repressing me? That’s what I’ve been going on about! Come see the violence inherent in the system!
Seriously, if you want everyone’s POV to be represented more or less equally on the airwaves and cables, then lobby for a return of the long-lost Fairness Doctrine.
I believe you are confusing African Americans in the 20th century South with Jews in fifteenth century Spain. 
Exactly. “Po’ whites” were only a skin’s width from the very bottom of society. A white skin’s width. And that being the case, they were by god going to make sure the blacks stayed lower.
Harper Lee caught this perfectly in To Kill A Mockingbird. The “decent” white people of Maycomb were horrified and disgusted by Bob Ewell and his virulent racism, and it’s clear, by the end of the trial, that they had greater respect for the Robinsons than for the Ewells. Even the country folks on the jury, one of whom initially was “‘rarin’ for an acquittal”. But in the end, they supported the white man over the black, because race trumped justice. Nevertheless, Maycomb passes judgment on Bob; he’s “trash”:
"As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, he is trash.”
And what does Maycomb’s judgment mean to Bob? It enrages him, to the point of violence; because now he’s lower than a black man.
To Kill A Mockingbird is fiction, of course; but it’s autobiographical, and by no means the only example of how lines of class mingled with lines of race in the Jim Crow South. I once found a bit of doggerel from that era, in a 1930’s collection of Southern folklore:
My name is Ran,
I wuks de san’,
but I’d ruther be a nigger
than a po’ white man.
For my own part, I can remember my Grandmother - born in 1901 in North Carolina and every inch a grande dame - absolutely hated the N-word. Not because it was hateful, but because it was “common” - her greatest pejorative.
Shades of Atticus Finch.
A&E shouldn’t have suspended the guy. White trash need entertainment too.
I make no assumptions here about that. However, the consequences to blacks of white racism in the North were considerably less. You got stuck with shit jobs, but it was a better class of shit jobs than in the South. If you were able, you could start your own business, and you weren’t likely to have it burned down simply because you did well. You didn’t have to step off the sidewalk every time a white person came along. If you stayed home on Saturday, you didn’t get paid for Saturday, but the overseer of the white man you worked for wasn’t going to come to your door and tell you to get into his field or else. The violence from whites was more episodic in the North; in the South, violence and the threat of violence were omnipresent and continual.
Your display of logic overwhelms me. What can I say?
Wow, there are racists in/from the North. Who knew?
Basically, you have no point that you are willing to defend. You’re painting a picture of a world where there was racism in the North and in the South, there were lynchings in the North and in the South, potato, potahto. But you’re not willing to actually say it in so many words. So all this stuff you’ve been saying, that you’ve been investing with the apparent appearance of meaning, means nothing.
But don’t worry, I’ll always think of you as “The Intelligent and Witty Carnivorousplant.”
Indeed, it applies to everyone, including A&E. Not sure why you consider yourself PC here, but your attitude of denying free speech to A&E is pretty terrible.
As for the idea that he was off the job, I call shenanigans. GQ wasn’t conducting a man-on-the-street interview; they were interviewing the star of a television show. When you’re the star of a show participating in a media campaign, the act of participating in the campaign is part of your job.
If he said these things to the dude at the grocery store, that’d be different, and maybe I’d feel a teeny bit different (although I’d still respect A&E’s first amendment rights). But he wasn’t mouthing off to his cashier, or to some random asshole at a bar: he was speaking to a reporter in an interview made possible by his job at A&E.
I’d recommend Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. Nonfiction, won quite a few awards. Might clear up your confusion.
Also, I don’t know shit about fifteenth-century Spain (other than Ferdinand, Isabella, and Christopher Columbus), so it’s hard for me to confuse anything with it.
Having kicked the Muslims and Jews out of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella felt safe enough to finance Christopher Columbus.
Under Muslim rule in Spain, Jews had to wear identifying clothing and step off the side walk for Muslims.
Shame on you for using a Groucho Mark moniker and being so ugly!
I admit it, we Southerners are moronic, Neanderthal, Low Browed racists who hate everyone who isn’t exactly like us, and wake up in the morning making a list of folks we will hang.
Are you happy now, Rufus?
Ferchrissakes, I’m a southerner born and raised, and I think you’re being ridiculous here. If someone suggests that things were only bad for black folk in the South, they’re being dumb–but nobody’s suggesting that. Instead, the point being made is that certain areas of the country were far worse for black folk than others, and Louisiana was among the very, very worst. Yes, there were bad racist people in Maine, but the cultural and legal racism were so, so much worse in the south.
I can’t figure out whether you doubt this–your posts about numbers of black people in different regions don’t really help to clarify what you’re saying.