The Nuge tries to put his hateful words in reverse
Ted Nugent sounds like a former cult member apologizing for rituals
Ted Nugent had an epiphany this week.
The geriatric rocker, gun enthusiast, conservative firebrand and longtime enemy of civil discourse believes it’s time to scrub away the “hateful rhetoric.”
I know what you’re thinking: fake news! Ted Nugent? The man who once called Barack Obama a “subhuman mongrel” and encouraged the former U.S. president to “suck on my machine gun”? The fellow who smeared Hillary Clinton as a “toxic c---” and insisted she be hanged for treason?
Ted Nugent is lamenting the poisonous state of political dialogue?
What’s next? Is Neil deGrasse Tyson about to join the Flat Earth Society?
Rattled by Wednesday’s shooting at a Congressional baseball practice in Virginia, Nugent called into a radio show the next day and sounded like a former cult member who now regrets taking part in an organ-harvesting ritual.
“I have re-evaluated my approach,” Nugent told WABC’s Eboni Williams and Curtis Sliwa, a euphemistic opening line that made it sound like he was switching accountants instead of disavowing a lifetime of “harsh terms” that are as central to his public persona as materialism is to the Kardashians.
“At the tender age of 69, my wife has convinced me that I just can’t use those harsh terms,” he said. “I cannot and I will not and I encourage even my friends-slash-enemies on the left in the Democrat and liberal world that we have got to be civil to each other.”
Thank you, Gandhi. But, again, the irony is too rich. Ted Nugent? The man who gave the world lyrics such as, “She’s so sweet when she yanks on my meat” is now preaching civility? The guy who, when asked about illegal immigrants, said, “I’d like to shoot them dead” is now worried about decency?
I’m reminded of his short-lived 2006 reality show, Wanted Ted or Alive. The pilot included a scene in which Nugent gives a contestant, a stay-at-home dad, a snarling once-over and says: “Well, looky there. Mr. Mom left his balls in the laundry basket. Hey, shut the (bleep) up, get in the kitchen and make me some cookies.” You can draw a line from that sentiment to those who now use the word “cuck.”
In fact, if you jotted down everything Nugent has ever said that was not obnoxious, you wouldn’t have enough material for the back of a cereal box. So if he’s truly serious about eliminating hate, he may need to trade his guitar for mime paint.
As a warrior in the theatre of partisan hostility, Nugent has always required an “other” to demonize, a list I summarized in my review of Wanted Ted or Alive as: “vegans, liberals, gun-control advocates, pansies, evolutionists, elites, sophisticates, urban snobs, atheists, treehuggers, feminists, useful idiots, moonbats and multiculturalists.”
That was 11 years ago. The Motor City Madman has not mellowed with age.
So while it’s great Nugent is delving deep into his heart of darkness, the fact he needed 69 years — and a nudging from his poor wife — to finally realize his profound shortcomings in the department of respect does not bode well for this reinvention.
I give it three weeks before he calls Nancy Pelosi a treacherous pig. Which he’ll no doubt rationalize as exuberance.
“I’m not trying to make excuses, but when I made those wild-ass comments on stage against thensenator Hillary Clinton and thensenator Barack Obama, I don’t know if you can grasp the degree of adrenalin and intensity and sheer, overthe-top animal spirit and attitude that I live on stage,” Nugent told WABC, before adding the whopper, “I have never referenced violence.”
Sir, you have. Even more troubling, you’ve made it clear that anyone who disagrees with you is scum.
Nugent is not alone. His fellow travellers on the far and fringe right have spent the better part of the last decade brutalizing and degrading political opponents instead of arguing with facts, which may explain why they rely so heavily on conspiracy theories, intolerance, xenophobia and a raging antipathy toward “the left” that blinds them to the real threats against freedom and democracy.
The “hateful rhetoric” Nugent is right to condemn does not exist in a vacuum. It’s the sludge of intellectual dishonesty, a byproduct of seeing the world as you fear it might be and not as it is. When Sean Hannity takes to the air and with a straight face condemns the left for dehumanizing the right, as he did this week, I can only pray he is doing so in a studio built to withstand lightning.
That level of gall is a demand to get struck down by the universe.
By all means, let’s get rid of the hateful rhetoric. But let’s not pretend this is only about words.
A rotten world view is equally to blame. vmenon@thestar.ca