Except, they鈥檙e not. Yet the outlet has put a lot into that effort, nonetheless: Recently, Caroline Kitchener, the outlet鈥檚 鈥淎merican family鈥 reporter, charted Duffy鈥檚 course from MTV show The Real World to his current role in the Trump administration. More than anything else, she presents the now-flourishing Duffy family as theatrical, rather than redemptive. Special emphasis is on Duffy鈥檚 proclivity for reality television and his youthful promiscuity, along with his wife鈥檚 similar MTV history.
The outlet gave Kitchener the leeway (she 鈥渨atched 15 hours of MTV reality TV鈥) and the resources (鈥渓ocated all of the nearly 50 archival episodes featuring Mr. Duffy鈥) to work on her Duffy hit-piece.
Its plain premise is to expose hypocrisy in socially conservative spheres, especially within the pro-fertility faction that threatens to drown out dominant anti-child messaging. As a former abortion reporter for the Washington Post, Kitchener knows this well. Her problem isn鈥檛 his old ways, but his new ones.
Kitchener鈥檚 opening line tells as much: 鈥淪ean Duffy would like you to watch his family making pancakes.鈥
The comment is in reference to a Fox News segment showing the Duffy family cooking breakfast together. It鈥檚 a common activity, and one which some might even call cute.
At the same time, the segment is an overt step toward normalizing their family style. A traditional family platformed in this manner is one regression too far. So, Kitchener zeroes in on Duffy鈥檚 knack for knowing 鈥渨hat makes people tune in,鈥 on TV and elsewhere.
In a society where liberals tend to do art better, it鈥檚 difficult to imagine that serious conservatives might be good at media, too. So Kitchener tries to square those impressions, and lands on the consistently confusing reality that a devout Catholic might take many forms. The church has clear moral guidelines, but everything else ranges from the media-savvy Duffys to the entirely offline no-name family. In that, it鈥檚 unfathomable that one such family might have an effective platform.
More prominent, and deeper, is the disbelief that anyone actually converts from libertinism to conservatism. The Left鈥檚 concept of volition extends only as far as its prescribed lifestyle, in which sexual freedom is the defining characteristic. Conversion away from it, into something like the Duffy family, is always and everywhere inauthentic.
It isn鈥檛 just disbelief, however, but willful deplatforming. For Kitchener, the Duffys can have no media presence without being boastful or oppressive.
鈥淭hey present their way of life 鈥 marriage, pancakes and many children 鈥 as a far more fulfilling alternative,鈥 she said.
In fact, it is: Ideology and family model are consistent predictors of happiness.
Her posture aligns with modern sentiments, if it brushes against the Democratic Party鈥檚 hopes to take over pro-family political messaging with items such as in vitro fertilization and universal childcare. What no leg of the party will admit, though 鈥 media, philanthropist, or political 鈥 is that its hope for 鈥渢he American family鈥 requires normalizing the one that works best and is most common. It requires an admission that we can rank such things, a no-go area for the social liberal.
BRINGING 鈥楻ESISTANCE鈥 TO THE FERTILITY DEBATE
With all this evidence in tow, Kitchener does an excellent job of revealing how much of a threat the traditional family is to its alternatives. This is true not only in Duffy鈥檚 own life but also in the outlet鈥檚 aversion to giving the traditional family any platform at all. In the end, Kitchener winds up criticizing the concept that a policy might be family-centric, generally.
The Left, here coalescing in the New York Times, will back the piece despite its being a simple personal attack and one that explicitly advocates against the family. Inasmuch as it is clear their preferences are unchanged, their priorities will never be the family unit because they don鈥檛 intend it to succeed in the first place.