In related news, Nugent is being investigated for another hunting violation. This time in South Dakota, it stems from his conviction on misdemeanor deer-baiting in California.
The Rapid City Journal reports:
State wildlife officials have begun an investigation to
determine whether musician Ted Nugent broke the law when he hunted
pheasants near Hot Springs prior to his Oct. 16 appearance in Rapid
City.
Nugent was featured at a Second Amendment rally sponsored by
Citizens for Liberty, a Rapid City area tea party affiliate. Before
the rally, Nugent shot pheasants and partridge on a hunting
preserve east of Hot Springs, under a special preserve license and
regulations.
Now there is a question about whether Nugent could legally hunt
in the state, because of his no-contest plea in August to two
counts of misdemeanor big-game violations in California.
Before appearing on stage Saturday night, rocker and activist Ted Nugent went pheasant hunting. But once he grabbed the microphone, it was red meat that Nugent threw out to an appreciative audience.
“The evidence is overwhelming if you’re not asleep,??? Nugent told the small crowd at the rally sponsored by Citizens For Liberty, a tea party group. “If we don’t make a dramatic change this November, we’re done. They will rape and pillage your paychecks to reward monsters.???
Nugent castigated Democrats in Washington and around the nation, describing them as tyrants and power abusers. He told the audience of about 250 people that it wasn’t enough for them to vote out “leftists.???
The Mao Tse-Tung Fan Club in the White House, his positions “reek” of logic, etc.
Here’s Ted, still complaining about his California hunting infraction conviction.
Ted fell on his sword to protect his buddies, taking one for the team because the state’s evil-doers were putting on the pressure. He could have fought it in court for years but legal advised him not to speak of details.
Then Nugent goes off on a tangent, querulous over the news media not publicizing his charitable work. And this has been a conspiracy, of sorts, to pick on Ted.
Memo to Mr. Ted:
That’s how the media works. And, coincidentally, the media was actually rather generous to Ted Nugent this summer. It gave him print space, in small to large publications, every time he came to town on his tour of casinos and fairgrounds in the hinterlands.
It’s chronicled here and still readable, from original source, on the web.
And Ted also gets regular land in the pages of the Washington Times, and via syndication in a Detroit newspaper, to promote whatever he wishes, including his music, along with his political views.
So whine all you want about the hunting foul-up in California. However, the media has been very good to Mr. Ted Nugent, all things considered.
I suppose one would call them Reagan Democrats, if pressed. Drunk manly men who own Civil War patches, look like the guy on HBO’s Eastbound and Down and adopt the Democratic camouflage to, perhaps, impress women they’re unsuccessfully courting.
Since the mainstream media is now back in such places, looking for stories which show the obvious — that they don’t dig Obama — they’ve reappeared.
A newspaper in Pittsburgh ran a Politico piece today with this laugher (it was on the race in Arkansas):
Such an argument may attract John Miller, a Democrat and owner of a Civil War-era antique shop, sporting a revolver on his holster. After meeting with Lincoln, he said there isn’t a “nickel’s difference between Republicans and the Democrats” in Washington, but he believes Obama is a “socialist.”
Asked about his vote, Miller said: “I’ll vote for whoever Ted Nugent tells me to vote for.“
It’s difficult to understand how any journalist could be a stenographer for such a comment without immediately throwing it out. Or at least pressing the man on his real political identity. But such is the state of the rotting carcass these days.
Speaking of Ted Nugent, now that he’s off the road his columns have not disappeared. However, they’ve slumped in inspiration and vehemence. No run-on sentences in a while. It’s been a couple weeks sans Islam-o-phobia and insisting Muslims need smart-bombing. The repeated references to ‘hunting season’ in November are gone, the calls for crowbar-swinging violence a bit more muted.
It may be that being on the losing end with the game wardens is still gnawing at him.
Smart Americans won’t be surprised if the president makes an announcement before the election that he is going to extend the George W. Bush tax cuts for all Americans, including those making more than $250,000. Though this will upset his ultra-liberal base, he will do it to try to prove to moderates that he is pro-business. Don’t believe him. It will be more political smoke and mirrors, more doublespeak, more balderdash and more Illinois political deception for fools.
The president is not pro-business. Regardless of what he says, he doesn’t know or truly believe the private sector is the engine that drives our economy and creates jobs.
Ted Nugent’s latest column in the WaTimes, more on trying to build his speaking engagements at Tea Party events. It’s unoriginal standard Tea Party cant, concocted by the wealthy men backing the movement: Give tax cuts to the rich, get rid of the IRS in favor of the Fair Tax, end all taxing of corporations, kill Social Security because it’s “a Ponzi scheme.”
Freeze all government hiring except for the military. Cut federal government by 25 percent at once, which would seemingly mean eliminating the Dept. of Education as well as other things most Americans take for granted.
It’s only startling in its degree of bootlicking for the interests of the most wealthy. The only thing not in it is some utterance like “Taxation eats the seed corn of freedom and democracy.”
More interesting is Ted’s appearance on a show called Deer and Deer Hunting.
Uploaded to YouTube, I’ve taken the only segment worth viewing.
Nugent’s misdemeanor conviction for deer baiting has rattled him. The hosts of the show, if one watches all the segments, never actually make him address it, though.
However, at one point Nugent does begin ranting about regulations. “We have to attack the game laws,” he begins. Seconds later he’s complaining about blue law preventing hunting on Sunday in eleven states, that it is unethical, anti-freedom, anti-goodwill and indecent.
Nugent continues that when he was a kid in Michigan, four counties prevented his hunting on Sundays. And he only had the weekend to hunt, being at school, so 50 percent of his time to do it was lost.
DD had to laugh. Having grown up in the heart of deer country in Pennsylvania, all the kids who hunted simply didn’t come to school on the first days of hunting season. Their parents were all right with it. So was the school.
After decreeing that Sunday prohibitions on hunting must go, Nugent then sputters on angrily about “spilled corn.” This is in reference to his deer-baiting conviction. He nearly blows a spoke over it.
Ted Nugent’s latest essay in the Washington Times is the third in a series of anti-Muslim rants he’s penned this summer. Bafflingly, some of these are now being reprinted in a Detroit newspaper.
Nugent endorses the Team B report that Muslim extremism, in the guise of Shariah law, is taking over America. Indeed, if so, it is nefariously subtle, since most cannot see it.
In the fact-based world, Nugent’s essay — as does the Team B report — takes on the air of something heard from General Jack Ripper, telling Lionel Mandrake at Burpelson AFB, why he launched the bomb wing at the Soviet Union.
Nugent uses the word “poisoning” twice in his essay. It’s a less elegant construction than Ripper’s dialog, concocted by Terry Southern and Peter George for the script of Dr. Strangelove:
A foreign substance is introduced into the precious bodily fluids, without the knowledge of the individual and certainly without any free choice. That’s the way the commies work…
In Team B’s case (and for Nugent’s essay), the nefarious foreign substance is Shariah law, not fluoride put into ice cream by the commies.
“What if it turns out that some of the people the Obama administration has been embracing are actually promoting the same totalitarian ideology and seditious agenda as al Qaeda, only they’re doing it from White House Iftar dinners?” is the stand-out quote from Team B.
In Dr. Strangelove, Jack Ripper was the plainly nuts character.
The most bone-chilling finding by Team B is that America faces the threat of Islamic Shariah law slowing poisoning our legal system and ultimately destroying it.
He continues:
Shariah should be banned in the United States and those Muslims and imams in America who advocate Shariah should be charged with sedition. Trying to overthrow our constitutional government through peaceful or violent means should never be tolerated.
Shariah will only be allowed to poison our legal system and culture if we allow it.
This from a guy who only shouts and writes about overthrowing the present US government.
Team B is the work of Frank Gaffney. Earlier this week, I wrote about him in connection with a post on the Cult of EMP Crazy, of which he is a charter member.
He represents the core of the Cult — the sole property of the GOP — also sharing double membership with Islam-o-phobes and those who believe the President is a secret Muslim.
You can think of them as a lamentable collection of poor men’s Jack Rippers. They hold political office or seats in insane right-wing think tanks but do not have command of a strategic bomb wing.
Yet.
The only reason they’re not truly dangerous right this instant is because they don’t have majority power.
Hoekstra is famous for being mostly a loud Congressional do-nothing. And an Islam-o-phobe. I wrote about him back in 2006, when he was first venting rubbish on Islam sapping and impurifying the precious bodily fluids of America.
As with the Tea Party, Nugent has adopted ever more extreme positions. These ideas are not new, having always been present in the US politics. However, in gentler times they were easily suppressed and kept to the fringe.
Now they’ve been vetted as acceptable by large sections of the population. They anticipate and welcome an even more harsh and cruel country, one of great social and economic inequality, intolerant of everything except its paranoid white appendix of wealth and power.
Ted Nugent suggested torching the Muslim world with more precision munitions a couple weeks ago in the WaTimes. It was part of the general extremist GOP reaction to park51.
The jump-out graf was:
Slice it any way you want, but the Muslim community is being tremendously rude and stupid for wanting to build a mosque so close to Ground Zero in New York City. Instead of using the $100 million for their proposed mosque, I recommend that the Muslims donate the cash to the U.S. military so we can build more smart bombs to kill more radical, voodoo Muslims …
Not all Muslims are religious whacks who deserve a bullet …
Nugent picked up the thread again today at Human Events, with a column that will probably be republished in the WaTimes.
It reads:
While our legal system is far from perfect, it is vastly superior to the Muslim religious court system that ignores justice. I assume that makes Allah giddy with joy. Order up more virgins
Facts are facts. Muslims in the Middle East have zero respect for other religions.
The entirety is here, entitled Muslim Hate Crimes.
The essay begins with the statement that Ted doesn’t support burning the Koran. After this superficial pleasantry, Nugent delivers the meat implying the opposite: Muslims are subhuman.
It is another example of profound failure afoot in our country.
Very bad times have made that which should have no place at the table acceptable.
He is startlingly often too rude and extreme for the mass of old white cranks who believe the US government — and western progressive civilization in general — to be an abomination.
That Nugent is popular on any TV network (even Fox) is a disgrace another sign of the times.
That he has a readership at all — and he has a significant one — is discouraging. It’s an admission you believe your audience deserves shit sandwiches because a steroidally inflammatory attitude trumps everything.
Here is an example of Nugent’s prose:
The real insult is that President Obama and others spent more time and energy on the Florida pastor than they have actually condemning Muslims for their numerous condemnable and criminal acts against Christians and people of other faiths living in the Middle East.
This religious-inspired Neanderthal behavior is much more disgusting and condemnable than the pastor who wants to burn the Koran or the Christian creeps who show up at the funerals of military heroes with signs that say “God Hates Fags.”
Excluding the weird non-sequitur at the end, copy editors must surely be in tears over the repetitive misuse of the root word, condemn.
Yeah, we get it, Ted. You hate Muslims. And you can’t write.
It is a mystery to DD why not one music journalist has taken Ted Nugent to the mat over his public record. Nugent is an easy target, like many in the Tea Party and the GOP.
And it explains part of the failure of the Democratic Party’s argument, defined by the gut realization that many in the party are just too scared to take on the extremists. They lack spine.
All of the music journalists I know are liberal. Privately, they are appalled by such beliefs. But when they’re needed in the clutch, required to call a spade a spade, they’re just not there.
Don’t ask us about Nugent, they say, shrugging their shoulders.
Ted Nugent lost most of his Michigan audience and fled to Waco, TX, for very clear reasons. He despises the middle class despite insincerely professing the opposite — particularly in Detroit because of the auto industry and the demography of the inner city, chisels his bottom-out-of-sight fans for autographs, likes sucking up to celebrities on Fox and is an Ayn Randian kook by way of proxy admiration for nuts GOP pols who have read Atlas Shrugged and adored Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead.
Called Citizens for Liberty, it’s your standard collection of white Tea Party crazies — global warming is a hoax, Obamacare must be repealed, stimulus money to South Dakota for schools and public services is a drug that will addict the people to the Federal government.
The Tea Party candidate is Kristi Noem, who will be sharing the stage with Nugent. Like everyone else from the party, she’s someone from the American extremist fringe, but interestingly so.
A SD newspaper article notes Noem’s stellar record as a driver: 27 citations in 21 years. However, according to the newspaper, her Dem opponent also drives fast and speeding tickets seem to be a way of life in South Dakota, a state which has only 800,000 some people living in it.
Along with speeding, Noem’s 27 citations include not wearing a seat belt, two instances of running a stop sign, expired license-plate tags and no driver’s license. She missed court appearance or payment dates seven times. And in two instances, the court issued a warrant to force payment.
Noem points out that she did end up paying all of her fines, even if some were late.
Noem’s total of 20 speeding tickets in 21 years is “certainly
above average, but really not all that uncommon.???
It isn’t that uncommon in Noem’s family, based on court records
since 1989. Noem’s husband, Bryon, had 18 recorded traffic
citations during that period, 11 of them for speeding. Noem’s
brother, Rock Arnold, had 34 citations during that period, 25 of
them for speeding. He also missed court or fine payment dates four
times and had warrants issued three times. Another brother, Robb,
had 21 citations, including 12 for speeding.
And here’s me performing coincidentally perfect musical accompaniment, “Highway Patrol,” in 1985.
A NY Times column noted by Digby puts forward the mainstreaming of extremism and incivility as normal public discourse, a point I’ve made in connection with Ted Nugent all summer.
The problem is that elite media gatekeepers have abandoned their moral mandate to stigmatize uncivil discourse. Instead, too many outlets reward it. In fact, it is an ironic token of the ideological confusions of our age that they do so in the service of upholding what they understand to be a cornerstone of civility: the notion that every public question must be framed in terms of two equal and opposite positions, the “liberal” one and the “conservative” one, each to be afforded equal dignity, respect — and (the more crucial currency) equal space. This has made the most mainstream of media outlets comically easy marks for those actively working to push public discourse to extremes.
And so the mainstream is now defined by a balance between the reasonable and a demographic that represents nothing but the worst from the American fringe haunch — cranks, kooks and bigots, all aimed at tearing down what any modern western nation should stand for.
The media has no skin in this game, though. It has nothing to lose when it gives the crazies the megaphone.
Its marquee employees are all upper class and they’ll do fine, even when the nation lurches into disaster if the insane take over a part of government in November. It’s more entertainment for them, more opportunities for bigtime books on the subject, more television face time. More of everything while the rest shrivel up in the decay outside the mansions.
But back to Ted Nugent who was on radio prior to his Labor Day weekend show in Detroit.
The only parts of interest on this blog are Ted making excuses about his hunting screw-up and the standard misrepresentations of his various accomplishments.
I did a rough transcript and after exchanging opening pleasantries, Ted is asked about his hunting violations.
“What a klusterbuck the court system is. I wish I could talk more about it now but it’s still ongoing … Bottom line, I broke no laws.”
It was, Ted insists, part of a campaign against his Spirit of the Wild program. Animal rights activists and others who hate him watch it for all transgressions and harass him regularly.
“They monitor my Spirit of the Wild program … because it’s California they are overwhelmed with people who really can’t stand me …”
Ted explains that on his show he is shown killing three deer with captions saying when he shot them properly. One in one calendar year, two in another. But that this was used against him.
“Here it is … This is the perfect point, on this one show, I killed three deer, you’re only allowed two a year. We got thousands of calls at our office, people squallering that I killed three deer in one year…”
The conversation moves to the Park51 prayer center.
“Well, I would certainly welcome you guys [to my website]. On my website you see literally thousands and thousands of columns.”
Ted refers to his opinions at the Washington Times and Human Events.
“I get more hits than almost everybody … I reflected what I think is common sense America … I can’t think of anything more cruel and more intentionally outrageous than the Japanese building a monument at Pearl Harbor in 1942 …
“This imam … the jury is still out … he is not a friend of America.”
The radio DJ’s say the man is in the employ of the US State Department.
That is because, Ted replies, “We have the Mao Tse Tung Fan Club in the Whitehouse.”
Here is what Nugent wrote about the issue at the Washington Times, none of which is actually re-read on the air:
“Slice it any way you want, but the Muslim community is being tremendously rude and stupid for wanting to build a mosque so close to Ground Zero in New York City. Instead of using the $100 million for their proposed mosque, I recommend that the Muslims donate the cash to the U.S. military so we can build more smart bombs to kill more radical, voodoo Muslims …
“Not all Muslims are religious whacks who deserve a bullet …”
“Where the Muslims will claim they are wanting to build bridges, they will stab you in the eye less than a mile from Ground Zero,” Ted tells the DJ’s at one point.
The conversation moves on to Mexico, Arizona and illegal immigration. At one point Ted insinuates terrorists are coming over the border. The code is “otm’s” for other-than-Mexicans.”
On the President: “This guy is out of his mind.”
The DJ’s chime in: “Harry Reid and these sons of bitches …”
When the interview finally gets to music, Ted informs he would really like to have Kid Rock on his next album.
Nugent adds that he drew “45,000 at Fond-Du-Lac. I hold the the attendance record at every county fair in Wisconsin.”
While there is no reason to doubt the last sentence on being big in the hinterlands of Wisconsin, the reality is a little more nuanced:
From the local Fond-Du-Lac Reporter, actually reprinted at tednugent.com:
45,000 turn out for Fair
July 28, 2010
Ted Nugent brought out the fans for this year’s Fond du Lac County Fair.
About 45,000 people attended the 159th Fair, held July 20-25 at the County Fairgrounds on Martin Avenue. Fair Manager Matt Immel said it’s an impressive figure, considering how much it rained during this year’s event.
Saturday recorded the highest attendance of any day, with 15,000 people passing through the gates. Immel said Ted Nugent drew the big crowd; his concert sold 700 VIP tickets. The fair normally sells 600 VIP tickets at $15 apiece, but there was enough demand to add more seats.
Over five days, of which Ted Nugent was there on one, the fair drew 45,000. One third came on Saturday when Nugent played the grandstand. Common sense requires the concession that not everyone was there to see and hear Ted Nugent.
It is a bit underwhelming, much like Pine Grove Area High School’s football field grandstand, or any outdoor bleechers in some out of the way place.
For the purposes of comparison and conversation, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena holds 92,000, twice the capacity reported over five days at the Fond-du-Lac fair.
DD thinks readers can agree the Fond-du-Lac fair grandstand is not even close to a quarter of the Rose Bowl, which would be a generous 25,000.
DD thinks 700 to 1,000 is about right, absolute tops.
Ted Nugent was also recently reviewed in Des Moines — by a reporter for Grand View College’s student newspaper.
Ted Nugent didn’t waste a minute making his political views heard on Wednesday at the 7 Flags Event Center. The 62-year-old Nuge rocked the stage in front of 2,000 “American Blood Brothers.”
============
For a man who hasn’t released an album in over 15 years (wrong — but irrelevant to the essence of the review), Ted has a surprisingly large following. The majority of the crowd was at least 50 years old. That might be how I arrived 45 minutes before the doors opened, was the seventh person in the doors and stood front row for the entire show.
The stage was filled with big guns, small guns, machine guns, grenades and an air brushed canvas backdrop that showed Ted yielding guns and driving a tank over the top of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
The show wasn’t all political bashing, however. Ted took the stage and played four songs before stopping to catch his breath and welcome the sold out crowd. He was welcomed with an arousing ovation from the mix of military personnel, hunters, veterans and rock enthusiasts.
=========
The show wasn’t all redneck racism. Ted, being from Detroit, recognized his influences, Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson, by playing a few covers that sent the crowd into a frenzy. Nugent preached to always remember where you come from and thank those who made you who you are today.
As an avid hunter and rock and roll fan, I found the Ted Nugent concert to be an awesome experience.
“The show wasn’t all redneck racism.” Good to know.
However, since you’ve followed — along with me — Ted’s trek through the casinos and fairgrounds of the hinterlands this summer, these quotes will surely amuse:
I joyfully bring you a glowing report as I wrap up my tour across America 2010, where nightly, all summer long, I have been privileged to meet with great, hardworking and hard-playing American families from every imaginable walk of life in 68 cities. I share with you a powerful, united message of unstoppable good will, decency, indefatigable, positive spirit and a herculean work ethic that is absolutely dedicated to bringing America back from this embarrassing brink of unaccountable upside-down government gone mad.
Does that “good will” and “decency” include all the gratuitous profanity, so much they condemned you in Kennewick, WA? And Iowa, Ted?
Not exactly bastions of depraved liberal thought.
Ted continues:
It is overtly obvious that conservatives want an accountable, limited government to secure our borders, win the war against terror, have a victory strategy instead of an exit strategy, and take care of our heroes of the U.S. military.
I conduct daily interviews in city after city with brilliant historians, educated thinkers, clever leaders and thoughtful strategizers …
Overtly obvious, huh?
Copy-editors again forced to hide their lights under bushel baskets.
Now to the nitty-gritty.
Ted says he conducted interviews with brilliant historians and such, day after day, on his summer tour. “Educated thinkers” aplenty at the Benton Franklin Fair, Nemeier’s Rib Shack in Ft. Smith, Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa and the Donna Corn Maze.
If I were an editor at the WaTimes I’d want my money back from Ted. As he’s left the thoughts of all these unnamed brilliant people, if you even believe him, out of every single column he’s written.
I write this as someone who still thinks Ted Nugent is one of the great rock ‘n’ roll guitarists.
Go back to Spirit Wild Ranch in Waco, TX, Ted — now that your tour’s over. Don’t answer any tough questions.
