December 24, 2013

Quote of the Day: I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to….Um….

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From Sarah Palin, five days after defending Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson for his anti-gay statements in a GQ interview:

I haven’t read the article. I don’t know exactly how he said it.

That’s a shocker, isn’t it? But no matter. For Palin, this is basically affinity marketing. It doesn’t really matter what Robertson said, only that he represents the kind of right-thinking real Americans that Palin fancies herself a spokesman for.

And as long as I’ve now broken my vow not to comment on this idiocy (or Pajama Boy or Justine Sacco), here’s something I’ve been idly wondering about. Since I’m not a real American, I don’t watch Duck Dynasty, but I’ve seen a few episodes here and there while channel surfing. And even from just a few minutes’ viewing it was pretty obvious that it was very heavily edited. These guys clearly have a lot of seriously un-PC views, and A&E is pretty careful to make sure that none of them end up on the air. They prefer lovable old coots to a bunch of backwoods culture warriors.

In other words, the lack of anything even remotely political on the show seems pretty plainly artificial. Right? So it surely wasn’t a surprise to A&E that Phil Robertson has the views he has. I’ll bet they have miles of tape that ended up on the cutting room floor because it was likely to offend someone.

Anyway, I’m curious: Am I off base about this? It was practically the first thing that crossed my mind when I first saw an episode of the show. Is it really as obvious as I think, or did I jump to a conclusion I shouldn’t have?

UPDATE: Actually, it sounds like I might have been off base about this. It turns out that the whole Duck Dynasty redneck schtick is much more an invention than I realized, and the show is tightly scripted (not just edited) before the season even begins. That said, it’s still a virtual certainty that A&E knew Phil Robertson’s views on hot button cultural issues perfectly well. In fact it seems more likely than not that this entire controversy was deliberately engineered by A&E to generate publicity. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me, anyway.

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From the desk of Mother Jones CEO, Monika Bauerlein...

Newsrooms can be funded in many ways. One of the most controversial (and volatile) ways is by a for-profit corporation or a billionaire owner. We see it across the headlines on a weekly basis: the claw backs in public media, the gutting of The Washington Post, the bending over backwards to appeal to Trump and his allies.

But not here.

When Mother Jones first started publishing 50 years ago, our founders made a critical decision: to be a reader-supported nonprofit. They knew that no corporate owner would be interested in a muckraking newsroom; they also knew that no muckraking newsroom would be interested in following the agenda of a corporate owner.

And so, we’ve been reader-funded for half a century. We rely on contributions from our readers—readers like you—whether it’s $50, or $15 a month, or whatever fits your budget. People give what they can, and every donation makes a difference for our newsroom, which has grown tremendously—in size and reach and renown—since its inception in 1976.

You may be wondering: What does it take to publish an investigation? And what does my donation actually fund? The answers are one and the same: It takes people, resources, and time. And that’s what your donation funds directly.

Every donation Mother Jones receives from readers fortifies our newsroom, whether we’re covering underreported scandals out of Washington, DC, or the most important news of the day. And right now, each donation will be doubled because of our $50,000 match. So when you make a donation—$5, $50, any amount—it’ll go twice as far.

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