Desert Dynasty Dynamic

Despite some major controversies, the reality show, Duck Dynasty has maintained its popularity. For some reason, the show reminds us of the ancient family of this text.

Picture an extended family where all the men dress scruffily, have long hair and beards of biblical proportions. Because of their appearance, a security guard tries to have them removed from an event, not realizing they are the featured guests. On another occasion, although they are quite wealthy, their appearance leads a well-meaning passerby to offer them meal money.

Call it "facial profiling," as one of these bearded men has labeled it.

You may have guessed we're talking about the men of Duck Dynasty, the family Robertson whose show is the most popular non-scripted reality-TV program in the history of cable television (a show that's continued to be popular even after the patriarch's unfiltered comments branding homosexuality as sinful showed up in a GQ magazine interview last December).

The show is about the various escapades of the Robertson family, including hunting, fishing, running their duck-hunting-supplies business, undertaking projects of their daily lives and engaging in...