is a column well worth reading, in part because Blow, a black man, grew up about 50 miles from where Robertson is based. He knows the Louisiana white culture, the history of the state with respect to segregation and discrimination (remember, Plessy v Ferguson is a case from Louisiana).
The column is titled "Duck Dynasty" and Quackery, and I highly recommend it.
Blow notes that Robertson's GQ interview read in a matter-of-fact fashion, one could consider it to be absent of malice, a kind of Southern folksiness.
To me, that is part of the problem. You don’t have to operate with a malicious spirit to do tremendous harm. Insensitivity and ignorance are sufficient. In fact, intolerance that is disarming is the most dangerous kind. It can masquerade as morality.
I want to stop on that idea of masquerading as morality. We have already seen that in the response of the likes of Bobby Jindal, who also demonstrated either an abysmal lack of understanding that the First Amendment protects only against government actions, not those of private parties or organizations, or things subject to contractual provisions, or else is of the crassest kind of pandering.
Too often when those who are bigots are called on their bigotry they hide behind a presumed