11.29.10

Ted Nugent not big on holiday spirit

Posted in Extremism, Ted Nugent at 12:18 pm by George Smith

The real Ted Nugent showed his usual colors just before entering the Thanksgiving weekend.

In the Detroit News, his usual totally-lacking-in-any-semblance-of-human-charity thing, an opinion piece full of irritation over ‘entitlements,’ having to pay taxes, and anything for future old people (not him):

We need to make the belt-tightening painful if we are going to climb out of this deep financial hole and save America.

====
Roughly 50 percent of all Medicare costs are spent in a person’s last six months of life. When a person is terminally ill or without hope of getting better, forcing taxpayers to keep them alive isn’t fair. If the terminally ill individual or his family wants to keep him alive for as long as possible, then they should pay for it, not taxpayers … Last time I checked, churches have a few billion dollars worth of gold, silver, jewelry, art, real estate and other assets. Maybe they could use some of it for such compassionate causes. Maybe not.

====

We should put Social Security on a path to extinction. How about this: Anyone over 45 will receive Social Security. Anyone under 45 will not receive it, but they will be forced to continue paying into Social Security to pay for those over 45.

Suggesting churches give up what he implies is loot in gold and silver is an unusually new and surprising low, even for someone like Ted Nugent.

When I started the Ted Nugent tab months ago I wondered what had shriveled him so much.

Here was a guy who had everything in the Seventies (and for a chunk of the Eighties). And as his career declined he folded like cardboard. Unable to reinvent himself gracefully in old age, he turned into a mouthpiece for the extreme right’s most vicious social policies, nothing more than a convenient gasbag for the Washington Times, or someone good for three minutes on Fox News.

Nugent fled Michigan for Crawford, Texas, starting a column for the Waco Tribune, where he was also run off for being uncharitable and rude.

Those who have read the entries on Nugent in this blog have seen the man in his words, ranting on obscure Internet radio programs and television shows. There he is, the strict law-and-order dude and mighty hunter, complaining bitterly and vituperatively over trivial troubles that were entirely his own doing in California. Opining that he’s been victimized by various conspiracies.

What motivates Ted Nugent is vindictiveness. And it is why he so identifies with the Tea Party.

Over the weekend, Paul Krugman pointed to an essay on the failure of US economic policy-making written by economist Brad DeLong. It is here.

Near the end, the author invokes “Nitzschean Ressentiment” to explain a common prevailing attitude.

It translates to ‘because (I or we) have suffered, it is appropriate and good that even more suffer.’

“Nietzsche talked about the losers, or about those who thought they were losers,” DeLong writes. “He discussed their tendencies in various ways to transvalue their values — to say what was thought to be bad was in fact good because it was thought to be bad.”

That’s Ted Nugent in a nutshell. He never recovered from losing his place at the top of the heap, a process all rock stars must inevitably go through. Many handle it with struggle and embarrassment. Others deal with it quietly and gracefully. A few die from it.

However, Ted Nugent decided he’d take it out on the values of the people who put him in the arenas during the high tide of classic rock. And he lost even more, gaining only a reputation as a panderer for people with fortunes which make his place in life look very small.


Krugman appropriately shits on the president for pandering — this morning.

1 Comment

  1. Dick Destiny » Nugent hears GOP dogwhistle, hates on Wisconsin protesters said,

    February 24, 2011 at 11:42 am

    […] here he attacks Social […]