IT'S LONESOME RHODESES ALL THE WAY DOWN.

As I have observed a few times, Duck Dynasty holds a special place in the American conservative pantheon, and they're going to get a few more votive candles now that one of the Dynasty's rich sporting goods salesmen has told GQ that homosexuality is a sin and been disciplined by the corporation that holds the contract on his TV show. Let PJ Media's Bryan Preston translate that into moron for you:

Robertson gave an interview to GQ, in which he is reported to have expressed opinions that run afoul of the current political correctness, which places gay rights and sensitivities above the rights of others to their opinions. Expressing such opinions often leads to conflicts with the thought police, proving once again that a liberal doesn’t really care what you think, as long as you agree with them entirely.

Let's not pretend there's a principle involved here -- these guys aren't known for defending workers' rights, outside of those rare occasions where some millionaire has gotten into trouble for saying something bigoted that they agree with. (Though to be fair this isn't a hard and fast rule -- I don't recall them rushing  to Alec Baldwin's defense, for example.) If you got fired for organizing a union, I wouldn't expect Sarah Palin to stick up for you.

As for Papa Duck or whatever he's called, I imagine he can afford good lawyers, and wouldn't have given A&E room to suspend him if he could have gotten away with it. Maybe he wanted to be on TV that badly. That's capitalism, comrade.

But I think the Dynasts are actually playing it cagey here. They warmed up the wingnuts with their fundamentalist Christianity, but eventually they had to take things up a notch or their fans might come to realize they were watching just another shitty reality show. Gay-baiting would be a brilliant way to get that crowd to feel the magic all over again.

Maybe conservatives will have a new version of "Chick-fil-A Day" in Duck Dynasty's honor. That should be a huge success -- hell, the brethren don't even have to haul their asses out to a fast-food joint; they can just vote with their clickers: a perfect simulacrum of democracy for angry shut-ins.

UPDATE. In comments, Spaghetti Lee explains the confusion: For these people, "'capitalism' is not so much an economic system as a talisman that they use to destroy the liberals." In the abstract, they'd agree that a contract is a contract -- in fact, they'd probably be very strong on honoring commitments to one's employer, since worker protections are according to their theology mooching  -- but in the particular they consider Martin Bashir getting canned to be common decency because Palin, and Duck Daddy getting canned to be Hitler because Obamafag. Economics had a place in the conservative landscape -- say Hayek and frack! -- but, as we saw in the previous post, symbology trumps all.

UPDATE 2. Also from comments, I must thank Xecky Gilchrist for the apposite quote from William Gibson (boy, never thought I'd say those words!): "[Slitscan's audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed..."