Duck Dynasty

Under President George W. Bush, the United States withdrew from its decades-long role as a global leader in supporting family planning, driven by a conservative ideology that favored abstinence and shied away from providing contraceptive devices in developing countries, even to married women.

Bush's mammoth global anti-AIDS initiative, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, poured billions of dollars into Africa but prohibited groups from spending any of it on family planning services or counseling programs, whose budgets flat-lined.

The restrictions flew in the face of research by international aid agencies, the U.N. World Health Organization and the U.S. government's own experts, all of whom touted contraception as a crucial method of preventing births of babies being infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The Bush program is widely hailed as a success, having supplied lifesaving anti-retroviral drugs to more than 2 million HIV patients worldwide.

However, researchers, Africa experts and veteran U.S. health officials now think that PEPFAR also contributed to Africa's epidemic population growth by undermining efforts to help women in some of the world's poorest countries exercise greater control over their fertility.

The high-fertility cues start from the top: The longtime president, Yoweri Museveni, has often said that a large population could turn his landlocked nation into an economic power. His wife, Janet Museveni, is a born-again Christian who's urged women not to use birth control because it goes "against God's clear plan for your life."

Opposition to birth control also comes from the Roman Catholic Church, the country's largest, and from husbands who consider big families badges of masculine accomplishment, health workers say.

In national surveys, 41 percent of married women say they want to practice family planning but aren't. Every year, some 775,000 Ugandan women get pregnant without intending to, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based reproductive-health advocacy group.

Before PEPFAR, an estimated 100,000 people were on anti-retroviral drugs in sub-Saharan Africa. By the time Bush left office in 2008 that number had increased to about 2 million.
In 2005 Bush started a $1.2 billion initiative to fight malaria. He defended the request for funding in 2007, saying, “There’s no reason for little babies to be dying of mosquito bites around the world.”

• Unintended pregnancy is common in Uganda, leading to high levels of unplanned births, unsafe abortion, and maternal injury and death.
• According to the 2011 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), more than four in 10 births are unplanned.1
• Ugandan women, on average, give birth to nearly two children more than they want (6.2 vs. 4.5). This difference—which represents one of the highest levels of excess fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa—illustrates just how difficult it is for women to meet their fertility desires.1

Not to married women who wanted effective family planning.

Jefe, that rant is awesome.

Duck Dynasty: The Show That Got Away

by Pat Archbold Thursday, December 19, 2013 11:58 AM Comments (176)

After A&E fired Phil Robertson for saying what every good Christian should believe, social media has been abuzz. One of the recurring themes has been puzzlement about why A&E would cut off its nose to spite its face. Duck Dynasty is the franchise right now. Why would they risk destroying their own cash cow?

To understand the why, we have to go back to the beginning. Duck Dynasty is not the show that they wanted, it is the show that got away from them.

It seems what the producers intended and what A&E envisioned with the show is much different than the show that they ended up with, but they didn't do anything about it because it was so wildly popular and so wildly profitable. But even with all the money, they have never really been comfortable with what happened.

This is what happened. The whole idea of the show was to parade these nouveau riche Christian hillbillies around so that we could laugh at them. "Look at them," we were supposed to say. "Look how backward they are! Look what they believe! Can you believe they really live this way and believe this stuff? See how they don't fit in? HAHAHA"

When the producers saw the way the show was shaping up, different than they envisioned it, they tried to change course. They tried to get the Robertson's to tone down their Christianity, but to their eternal credit they refused. They tried to add fake cussin' to the show by inserting bleeps where no cussword was uttered. At best, they wanted to make the Robertson's look like crass buffoons. At worst they wanted them to look like hypocrites.

They desperately wanted us to laugh at the Robertsons. Instead, we loved them.

A&E wanted us to point fingers at them and laugh at them. But something else happened entirely. Millions upon millions of people tuned in, not to laugh at them, but to laugh with them.

And then we pointed at them. We pointed at them and said things like, "I wish my family was more like them. I wish we prayed together as a family. I wish we were together like the Robertsons."

By the time this all happened, A&E had a conundrum. They knew who the Robertsons were and what they believe and they still held it in disdain. But they really liked the money. Really liked the money. So they lived with it.

But the progressives whose bank accounts were not growing fatter because of these backward rubes were never inclined to look the other way. They hate the show and they really hate the response to the show. They want it destroyed.

Many magazines and interviewers have tried to get the Robertsons to trip up so they could pounce. When Phil backed the Christian viewpoint on homosexuality and added some personal asides about how he just couldn't understand it, they had their moment.

I suspect that the folks at A&E, who always disliked the positive Christian message in the show of which Phil is the primary proponent, saw their chance. They want to keep the cash but dial down the Christianity. With Phil out, perhaps they could get the show they always wanted.

I suspect that the Robertsons are more principled than that and A&E will end up disappointed on many levels. The Roberstons are who they are and I suspect the money means a great deal more to A&E than it does to them.

It will be interesting to see whether A&E likes the money more than they hate the Christianity. I wouldn't be surprised if the hate wins.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/pat-archbold/duck-dynasty-the-show-that-got-away-from-them#ixzz2o7dX3cCg