Phil Robertson, Christian, hunter, homophobe, and Duck Commander (aka patriarch) on the execrable television show Duck Dynasty, was brought onto Sean Hannity’s television show to give his opinion on ISIS. After flaunting his Bible (“I never leave home without my Bible and my woman”), he proposes to either convert ISIS to the gospel of Jesus or, if that fails, engage them in a gunfight.
Why this loon is taken seriously as someone whose opinion carries weight defies me. It’s America, Jake! And I apologize to the rest of the world on behalf of my country.
I agree. Ship him out immediately.
We ca all chip in for the plane ticket.
I’ve heard someone offered a plane ticket for the Westboro Church to protest the ISIS. May be they could all fly together!
Not a bad idea. Start one of those internet fundraising things to raise funds to charter a plane big enough to take the whole lot over in comfort.
I’d be very curious to see if the Westboro Church would be willing to prove their convictions when the stakes are significant, instead of only when they know there will be no significant consequences for their actions. Who are they more scared of? Their god, or IS?
I mean, it’s all good right? Shouldn’t matter to them whether they are successful or die trying and go straight to heaven.
Wouldn’t they be happier if they flew over in dis-comfort?
I’m an idiot.
Of COURSE they would!
See. I would never make a good christian. But, hey, most christians don’t make good christians either.
You are thinking of the challenge issued by Australian comedian Adam Hill:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=60ETdhgLA8U
From what I gather, the WBC accepted the challenge, & badgered him to cough up airfare for their entire (75 member) church. It seems that Hill elected to ignore them (can’t say I blame him).
See Darrelle’s idea above! Let’s crowd-source this!
It’s an appealing idea — especially if precise conditions are attached to the offer (e.g., exact location, activities they must undertake, etc.).
Should anyone undertake to organize it, I would make a (financial) contribution (as a grad student, I am rather short on time at present).
Maybe the potato salad guy has some time on his hands.
All you need to know about this clan of posturing phonies can be seen in their online family album: http://tinyurl.com/nvq72tk
Something odd here?
Even the Christians can’t stomach them: http://tinyurl.com/netz2z2
They are phonies aren’t they? I make it a point to never trust anyone with that much facial hair who doesn’t play in a stoner-metal band.
I LOVE stoner rock/metal!
Your second link is about the Duggars, but doesn’t seem to mention the Robertson family.
Sorry; I assumed too much intimate knowledge of the DD world. The actor Kirk Cameron who is associated with the DD show is a disciple of the Duggars and Robertson’s on camera philosophy is right out of the Duggars playbook.
I must be a bit more obtuse than y’all as I missed whatever was odd about the family album. Can you enlighten me?
The way they dress in their private lives is not the image they project on teevee.
The Duck Dynasters are supposed to be actually like the way they’re portrayed.
Thanks. I’ve never watched the show and therefore couldn’t detect the discrepancy.
The following Phil Robertson has is troubling.
First of all, given his comments on African American life in Louisiana, I think it’s fair to say Mr. Robertson is a racist as well. Also, how in the world do people not understand that the sort of Christian ISIS (or ISIL, or IS, or caliphate…) would be no better than the Islamic one? Truly religious zealots deserve one another.
Do you really think that Robertson and co would tie a women’s hands to one car and her legs to another, and then drive off splitting her in half? Do you think they would behead someone like that?
Extreme religious should be fought against, but a false equivalence is not helpful and it is wrong.
As Sam Harris has pointed out, the failure of ‘the left’ to properly apprehend and condemn these movements(Isis, Hamas) allows the extreme right the room to do it instead.
Sam Harris does have a valid point in that regard. However, in this case, is anyone criticizing ISIS? There might be some but Robertson certainly seems to be focusing his attention on the “convert them or kill them” aspect. That is truly scary.
Whether they’d kill a person in the gruesome ways ISIS has done, I can’t say. I think in this case, Sam Harris’s criticism of moderate religion is more applicable. It is because of moderate religion that these nuts can thrive and have some semblance of credibility in this country. If fundamentalist types took over this country, I would not be the least bit surprised if people refusing to conform to their religion were threatened. You’re right, it’s not an equivalency, but it’s certainly still well into the spectrum of insanity.
I don’t about Robertson – he may not be that extreme. However, I think that freed of the constraints of secular, liberal democratic institutions, fundamentalists might easily get to the point (i.e., revert to the point) where Islamic fanatics are now. The KKK was very much a “Christian” organization and they did things just as horrific as what you have described – even within a nominally democratic society.
Fox News ≠ “taken seriously”
I have no problem with the “kill them” part; converting them would be like replacing someone’s case of syphilis with gonorrhea and saying, “There- you’re all better, now!”
:))), Appology!
Replace the camo headband with a turban, and you’ve got someone who looks a lot like an ayatollah.
Exactly, our Jihadist looking guys are better than yours, even if we know the beard thing is all marketing anyway. But actually I’m much much more concerned with what comes out of his mouth.
So many jokes possible with that set up.
One example. Does he get dingleberries in his beard?
I’d better stop.
Why does anyone ask him anything about anything other than ducks?
You’re probably going to get an angry response from a mallard exclaiming “Phil Robertson does not speak for us.”
“Convert of be killed” …
That’s not fair: that’s ISIS’s motto .. they had it first!
.. OR be killed .. *sigh*
The irony is that if he could join ISIS and no one there would think twice about it.
I totally think he should go there and ask them to convert. He’d fit right in until he opened his mouth.
What point are you making? That people with long hair and beards are de facto evil?
Don’t forget Hair started a different kind of revolution.
“This is my beard.
Isn’t it weird?
Don’t be skeered.
It’s just a beard.”
-George Carlin
When people ask me why I grew a beard, I say, “All men grow beards. Some men just shave theirs off.”
I loathe that show. This guy is Hannity’s model citizen. That’s all you need to know about him.
It is a tragic commentary on the state of our society that this show, and similar ones, are so popular. Sometimes it really pisses me off, and other times it makes me want to cry.
Just like Hannity’s other model citizen, Cliven Bundy. What an unforgivable moron.
Propaganda, all is phony. -Dylan
Notice how Hannity gets someone like Richard Dawkins or David Silverman on there and they can’t get a word in edgewise. Not so with Phil Robertson. The Mark Twain quite comes to mind here, you know something about a fool, his mouth and leaving no doubt…
Because a virulently racist religious fanatic with a rifle who hates the US government wearing a kheffiyeh is a terrorist, but a virulently racist religious fanatic with a rifle who hates the US government wearing a cammo headband is a patriot.
My seven year-old nephew idolizes these people. His parents won’t let him watch the news because they’re afraid of what he might see, but they have no problem exposing him to marathon viewing sessions of the Robertson Family’s televised effluvia.
I have a neighbor who requires his 5-6 year old son to spend a certain specific amount of time per day, like homework, playing first person shooter video games. Among many other things. You know, to train him for when they come for us. They are good christians, good conservatives and good Obama haters. Apologies for repeating myself there.
In a few years, when the boy is 9 or so, they’ll take him to the shooting range – strictly for fun, mind you – and let the boy learn to shoot an Uzi. What could go wrong?
That’s deeply unsettling. If for no other reason than FPS video games are about the worst training method imaginable for properly handling firearms.
Aarrgghh
I hold no brief for this bible-hugging wacko, but to be fair, I have a hard time seeing any solution to the problem posed by ISIS that DOESN’T involve killing rather a lot of them. Conversion to Christianity would be a preferable alternative if we could persuade them to become wishy-washy tea-sipping Anglicans, but somehow I don’t think that’s very likely.
Maybe killing quite a lot of them must happen – but it isn’t a strategy. How about we face up to where these assholes get their money? The university where I work has a sister campus at Qatar – a big supporter of terrorists. As far as I can see, the only reason for this is money. Saudi Arabia is our “ally” and they funnel huge amounts of money to shitheads like ISIS. Until we in the west, and in the US especially, are willing to risk the cost of alienating the corrupt bastards who bankroll organizations like ISIS, I don’t see how killing them off willy-nilly will do much good.
And face up to why they *exist*. Yes, religion is how the outrage and dysfunctional social systems produce effects. But one has to ask *why* are the bastards able to get in charge? Answer, in part, is the imperialism. Same reason in Russia, in part – smash the state and get the bastards flow in.
Earlier this year the Reince Preibus was making major statements about the GOP being more inclusive towards blacks, gays, women etc, to show the party is for them too. At the same time, they had Phil Robertson as a keynote speaker at the Conservative Leadership Conference. Nuff zed.
And is this how far the right has sunk. The Duck Dynasty homophobe is a spokesperson on aspects of American foreign policy. Is this a step up from Dick Cheney?
A step up from Dick Cheney? Hard to gauge. Ahhh, Duck, it’s Cheney fixin’ ta shoot🐤
Oh, to muzzle both before they trigger more violence.
He just a hillbilly Ann Coulter.
Ann Coulter is the hillbilly Ann Coulter. 😉
Check out Robertson’s clean cut crew cut college boy look circa 1967 at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phil_Robertson_La_Tech_1967.jpg
In the meantime I still wish I owned my recording of the Pete Seeger song with the lines
Is that your hunting rifle?
Why Yes. I go huntin every Sunday.
Hunting on Sunday? Don’t you fear the Lord?
Why, no. I take my gun where-ever I go.
(As Harlan Ellison once said, sometimes the only way to answer crazy is with more crazy.)
From what I can tell, he’s not that much different from any of Fox’s other commentators as far as expertise is concerned.
Oh, please let him go to do the converting. It would be like watching two drunks arguing about which religion is right. Ending with one getting his head chopped off.
“Convert or kill” as an answer is just embarrassing. The Quran itself teaches stuff like killing apostates, cutting thieves’ hands off, and so on. If you try to stop them by practicing their own religious guidelines against them, you may as well be affirming their horrible, backwards beliefs (and they may very well see it that way).
What’s more, if we respond to them killing some of our guys by killing some of their guys, they will respond in kind, and so on ad nauseam. That’s the algorithm for genocide.
Getting through that 8 minutes felt like an hour. That was damn near unwatchable, from the double pair of glasses to the clichéd torn and tattered Bible to the uncanny parallel between a crazy bearded dude with headgear yelling about converting the enemy or killing them while simultaneously running a clip of a crazy bearded dude yelling about converting the enemy or killing them, it was all a nearly unwatchable mindfuck.
It’s incomprehensible how the obvious similarities between our far right and ISIS seem to escape us. I think my IQ may have just dropped 40 points watching this.
So why did you watch? Why do you watch something as deliberately upsetting as cable tv? It’s poisonous.
I suppose it was somewhat like a train wreck that once you start watching, you can’t turn away. Once I was a minute or so in, my blood would be boiling whether I turned it off or not. But, it’s good to know what a large proportion of our society is thinking, even if it is sadly the same as it’s always been.
I’m glad to say that I’ve never seen more than a few seconds of these redneck retards (apologies to the mentally damaged and others insulted by the association. Ducks too.). And whenever I get a focus group invite from Discovery channel, I’m pretty blunt about not needing any more programming about American weirdos.
Doesn’t Australia have a plentiful supply of weirdos? Canada? Even Britain’s various fractious nationalities. Why is it always American weirdos?
American exceptionalism!
We have Canadian weirdos. I think the thing with the US is that they are much more *numerous*, at least in principle. Also, there’s more of an echo chamber for them. (These two factors are of course not independent.)
So the response to “Islam, or we kill you.” is “Christianity, or we kill you.”
Thousands of years of religion, and we’re no better for it.
While it should be quite obvious that using christinsanity to combat islame is not a good solution, and that the only possible solution is the eradication of religion, is it possible using one against the other could open a path toward eradication? I am thinking that once the Westboro Baptist Ducks engage with IS the resulting debacle might lend itself to a larger audience making a determination along the lines of what for WEIT Ceiling Cats is an obvious solution. I’m sure I’m not seeing it quite clearly enough, but that’s where my imagination had led me.