Similarly with an old country man like Phil Robertson. If you lived in the South and went to pieces every time you heard a Southerner of that generation say something that offends contemporary sensitivities, you’d never get out of bed. I’d wager that it’s true in most parts of this country — and of all kinds of people. This past summer I spoke to a young black woman in my own town about local politics. I told her how shocked I was to go to meetings of the parish council, and to hear the most paranoid racist things coming out of the mouths of older black people. She told me that she had grown up hearing that sort of thing — just like I did. I was taken aback by what I heard in those meetings, but when I thought about it, how could I expect black men and women who had had their racial opinions formed by what they had been taught, and what they had seen, during the Jim Crow era to think differently? It’s right to hope that they see the change, and resist judging all white people today by the standards of 40 years ago and more, but how realistic is that? How realistic is it to expect that of country people, black and white, who live in more of a monoculture than many others do?

It must be said that one of the most irritating aspects of the New York media environment is how narrow and monocultural it is, while flattering itself that it is cosmopolitan, diverse, and tolerant. You think Phil Robertson is bigoted? I have been around and worked with liberals in Washington and New York and elsewhere whose opinions were so obnoxious and dismissive of those not like themselves that they make the Duck Commander sound like Dick Cavett.