Three months following the controversy surrounding Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson’s interview in GQ, Robertson’s son Jase Robertson has spoken up on his father’s behalf. Jase’s comments come following the season finale of the fifth season of the show.
As you likely remember, the head of the Robertson family ruffled quite a few feathers with some comments he made regarding homosexuality last December. “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” Robertson said. Following a brief blowup where A&E suspended Robertson, only to lift the suspension a little over a week later, things went mostly back to normal in Duck Dynasty land.
Since the fifth season of the show is completed, Jase decided to speak out on the situation with his father with People, and Jase suggests that parts of the GQ interview were nothing more than a setup to make his dad look bad and draw controversy.
“For those of us who were there for the interview, we knew what was happening,” Jase said. “I was uneasy right off the bat. We felt like the guy doing the interview kind of inflamed things and took them out of context. You don’t have to agree with someone to love them, and my dad loves all people, regardless of their race and sexual orientation. He said that in the interview, which went on for four hours. But that didn’t make the final story, of course.”
Another part of the interview that bothered Jase was how his father’s comments on race led people to accuse him of being racist.
“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person,” Robertson said in GQ. “Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash.”
While some people accused Robertson of being racist because of those comments, Jase says that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“My dad is the most non-racist person I’ve ever been around my entire life,” Jase said. “We were taught at an early age that you don’t base any kind of opinion on people’s external appearance. Everyone was made by God. That was the part that made us a little mad, to make it sound like my father is a racist.”
Now that Jase has had his chance to clear the air, maybe the tiresome controversy will go away once and for all.
Is Duck Dynasty in a ratings slump?
In other Duck Dynasty news, the season finale that aired on Wednesday night brought in 6 million viewers, which is about a 25 percent drop off from the number of viewers that tuned in to the premiere of season five. Blame it on the Phil Robertson controversy or people getting bored with the Robertson family antics, but either way, things aren’t looking quite as good for Duck Dynasty, which has led to some speculation that the end of the show could be near. Filming for season six has already begun, but if the show continues to draw in less viewers, people may not get their Wednesday night beard fix for much longer.
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