Phil Robertson Gets Slammed by Jesse Jackson

Calls him worse than Rosa Parks' bus driver
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 26, 2013 10:03 AM CST
Phil Robertson Gets Slammed by Jesse Jackson
This undated image released by A&E shows Phil Robertson from the popular series "Duck Dynasty."   (AP Photo/A&E, Zach Dilgard)

Phil Robertson's anti-gay comments have been getting the lion's share of attention in recent days, but he also said a few things to GQ about African Americans that, along with those aforementioned comments, aren't sitting so well with Jesse Jackson. In discussing his youth in pre-civil rights era Louisiana, the Duck Dynasty patriarch said, in part:

  • I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. ... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues."

In a Dec. 23 statement obtained by ABC News, Jackson addressed Robertson's comments in no uncertain terms. "These statements are more offensive than the bus driver in Montgomery, Alabama, more than 59 years ago. At least the bus driver, who ordered Rosa Parks to surrender her seat to a white person, was following state law. Robertson’s statements were uttered freely and openly without cover of the law, within a context of what he seemed to believe was 'white privilege.'" Jackson, his Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and GLAAD in the statement demand a meeting with A&E execs ... along with Cracker Barrel's CEO, to discuss content and merchandising. (More Jesse Jackson stories.)

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