OPINION/BILL COPE
ONE NOTE NUGENT Motor City moron throws a big handful of himself Quick. Name Ted Nugent’s other big hit song. Ha ha, just kidding. It’s a trick question, see? Because Ted Nugent didn’t have another big hit song. He just had that one—a loud, simple-minded thing where he’s claiming to be such a skilled fornicator that women flock to him like crows to roadkill and he gets all scratched up from the encounters—and that’s it. He’s what we’ve come to call a onehit wonder. Only, as a general rule, one-hit wonders fade away and we never hear from them again. Mungo Jerry, remember him? Of course you don’t. He was a one-hit wonder. Same with Gino Vannelli. Never hear much about Gino Vannelli these days, do you, even though his one big hit was about 10,000 times better than Ted Nugent’s one big hit? That’s because Gino Vannelli had his one hit song, then he faded gracefully away. Now, if Gino (or Mungo) had spent the last 30 years constantly telling us what a tough, wild animal-slaughtering hombre he is, he might not have faded away. In fact, he might have ended up being a spokesman for some prominent wild animal-slaughtering organization. The National Association of Dead-Souled Wild Animal Killers (NADSWAK), perhaps. Or the “We Have No Commendable Qualities, So We Hunt” Coalition. Ted Nugent, on the other hand, has ended up being a spokesman for a prominent wild animal-slaughtering organization—the National Rifle Association—even though that organization is known less for animal slaughtering than for how many American citizens have been slaughtered thanks to it. Clearly, at some point, the NRA leadership made the decision to diversify beyond the wild animal killing business and moved into the domestic people killing racket. In fact, I am confident the NRA would be proud to tell us—in different words than mine, of course—how their long-term lobbying efforts, coercive tactics and fringe fascist politics are a prominent factor in the gun deaths of more than 30,000 American citizens every year. Such tragedies would include high-profile slaughters like the one in Arizona last year in which 19 people were gunned down by an absolute loon who was allowed to load a 33-round clip in his handgun—thanks to the NRA—and the recent killing of Trayvon Martin by an accused Florida lump searching for his elusive manhood with a concealed weapon and a law that allowed him to use it any time he felt threatened. Again, all thanks to the NRA. But even though Nugent is a prominent public mouth for the NRA, he evidently doesn’t feel like he’s been getting his proper share of attention lately. Certainly, when he’s on stage building up to that moment when he starts performing his one big hit, he is able to hold the watery attention of dim-
6 | MAY 2–8, 2012 | BOISEweekly
witted hillbillies and immature boys who like to fantasize about what tough hombres they themselves are. I’ve seen him do it. He flashes his guns around and calls women bitches. How could a hillbilly or a backward child not pay attention? But for mature people, for non-hillbilly people, Ted Nugent is just a joke. And not one of the funny kind, either. He’s the kind of joke that makes human beings wonder what’s so damn great about being a human being. So to get more attention from serious, grown-up people, Nugent did what any fringe fascist, no-talent, fading one-hit wonder with no noticeable moral or spiritual components to his nature would do. He threatened the life of the president of the United States of America. You’ve heard about this, I’m sure: Ted Nugent implied he would do to Barack Obama what he has always made such a point of letting us know he has been doing to wild animals—i.e., slaughtering them. Oh he was sly about it, wasn’t he? He didn’t come right out and say, “I’m going to kill Barack Obama.” Nugent is stupid, but he’s not crazy. Uh, OK, I stand corrected. Ted Nugent is stupid and crazy, but he’s not ignorant enough to openly threaten the president. Ah, the hell with it. Ted Nugent is stupid and crazy and ignorant. And I suspect it was just dumb luck that what he said wasn’t a direct threat to Obama’s life. But that’s what he was indicating, wasn’t it? That if the president is re-elected, he (Nugent) would be either incarcerated or killed for doing what he felt was necessary to protect the nation from Barack Obama. Get it? Before an audience of drooling NRA faithful, people so stunted that they believe the answer to all of life’s complexities can be found in the chamber of a loaded firearm, Nugent hinted that the solution to the problem resulting from a majority of Americans voting for Obama could get a patriotic fella like him (like John Wilkes Booth in another time) imprisoned or executed. Now, as you know, the Secret Service found Nugent guilty only of the sort of inflated hyperbole we might expect coming from the mouth of an amoral, spirituality void individual who has spent his life trying to prove to anyone who cares that he is not a stupid coward by virtue of the fact that he can kill things. But if I am right about his craving for attention, he accomplished what he meant to do, didn’t he? He got the attention of serious, grown-up people. And remember, to a noxious brat like Nugent, it hardly matters what kind of attention he gets. Ted Nugent does everything he does for the same reason apes throw their own shit on each other—to make themselves impossible to ignore. WWW. B O I S E WE E KLY. C O M