Here's the bottom line:
He was suspended as a kneejerk reaction to what A&E thought would be market pressure to have him taken off, forgetting that the show appeals to a market segment that would be, at worst, indifferent to his comments. Being concerned that gays and urban liberals will stop watching duck dynasty is a little like fretting over Republicans boycotting Rachel Maddow. They were never and were never going to be the target audience in the first place.
They-and the gay lobbyists-also ignored that their star was an independently wealthy hillbilly that wasn't going to apologize for his beliefs. Nobody who lives the way that guy does is anything but in iconoclast.
And as far as advertisers go anyone advertising on duck dynasty has already figured out who the viewers are and whether they want to reach those viewers with their products. And again it isn't homosexuals or urban liberals
Poorly conceived suspension and poorly conceived boycott threat.
I dunno, here's the thing even if it's a show no one watches people can still boycott the network and the advertisers. The network certainly doesn't want that and the advertisers are going to have a wider scope than just the audience of the show. I mean say if Ford advertised on the show (I really know who the sponsors were, just an example), now, sure, Ford advertised on the show because they felt the audience of the show was a demographic they wanted to reach. But Ford wants to reach other people beyond Duck Dynasty viewers and probably wouldn't like being associated with the show that has that kind of bad-press especially if there was an active boycott. More over advertisers will be less willing to pay a premium for ad space on a network with declining viewers due to a viewer boycott of other programming.
I'm not going to buy into the conspiracy theory that this was all done as a calculated attempt to boost ratings because it seems like a risky route to take on a show that was already getting good ratings in the first place. Why potentially mess up a good thing?
I think that the Religious Wackados of the country just "won" this fight because, unfortuantely, those who think the Bible is the absolute end-all, be-all authority on EVERYTHING above and beyond everything else whether you believe in it or not out number those of us who think The Bible is filled with good ideas but also has some bad ones and that it DOESN'T apply to everyone because God is kind of a dick to those people who don't meet His standards. Oh also that whole "Constitution" think that we all ARE beholden to.
Remember we're a country founded by Puritans, people who want to live in a magical land where everyone is just the personification of Adam and Eve and no one sins whatsoever. We all are straight and have missionary-position sex between two sheets with strategic holes in them with the lights off.
I guess it's not too much a surprise the Religious Right, the bigots, the homophobes and the racists won this fight. Because we must absolutely defend someone whose views, beliefs and ways are quickly becoming out-dated.
But it all comes back to hypocrisy of that Religious Right because of Phil there has spoken out against The Bible, Jesus, God, Christians or whoever the Religious Right would have done everything that could to shut this man up pretty much like they do to ANYONE who speaks out against The Bible and Christianity (see: "The War on Christmas.")
