“Indefensible By Any Measure”: Ted Nugent And How The Conservative Press Can’t Hide Its Hate Streak
It’s too soon to tell whether Ted Nugent’s noxious career as a conservative pundit reached a tipping point this week, but the moment he called in sick to CNN and backed out of a scheduled interview with Erin Burnett as Republican politicians denounced him might soon be seen as a flash point for the fading rock star and the incendiary brand of hate rhetoric he’s been cashing in on for years. It might also be viewed as a key stumbling moment for the conservative media, which have been unable in recent years to establish any sort of guardrails for common decency within the realm of political debate.
Increasingly reliant on bad fringe actors like Nugent to connect with their far, far-right audience, the conservative media have built up Obama-bashing personalities who no longer occupy any corner of the American mainstream. Yet Nugent enjoys deep ties with Republican campaigns all across the country. When those ties receive media scrutiny, they cannot be defended.
National Rifle Association board member Nugent found himself at the center of a campaign controversy this week when he was invited to two public events for Texas Republican Greg Abbott, who is running for governor. Of course Nugent, a former Washington Times columnist who now writes for birther website WND, recently called President Obama a “communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel” and has a long and vivid history of launching vile attacks on women. (He’s called Hillary Clinton a “toxic c**t.”)
Following waves of condemnations for the association, and a torrent of critical media coverage, with reporters and pundits wondering why a gubernatorial candidate would voluntarily campaign with someone who spouts “insane and racist talk,” as CNN’s Jake Tapper put it, Abbott claimed he wasn’t aware of Nugent’s history of racist and misogynistic comments. If so, Abbott’s campaign staff is utterly incompetent. (The “subhuman mongrel” comment, unearthed last month by Media Matters, was highlighted by a number of outlets at the time, including on MSNBC.)
It’s likely Abbott and his staff did know about Nugent’s dark rhetoric, since that’s all he traffics in. But because that kind of hate speech has become so accepted and even celebrated within the bubble for right-wing media, they failed to see the danger of embracing it.
Following the ill-fated campaign events, which made national headlines, Abbott has defended the decision to bring Nugent to the state, claiming that in Texas politics Nugent remain popular. But if inviting Nugent to become an Abbott surrogate was so clever, why did likely Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul step forward to denounce Nugent and his “offensive” Obama commentary?
Why did Abbott’s fellow Texan, Gov. Rick Perry “recommend” Nugent apologize? And why did Nugent back out of his CNN interview just two hours before taping?
As the media scrutiny settled on Nugent, even staunch conservative Republicans have been unable to defend him — his commentary over the years is just too vile. If the Abbott campaign didn’t directly insist on the CNN cancellation (Nugent cited illness), it’s fair to say his aides were greatly relieved that Nugent didn’t fuel the story for another 24-hour news cycle via an extended CNN interview where no doubt more confused Nazi analogies would have been aired. (CNN’s Wolf Blitzer had already condemned Nugent’s comments, noting that the phrase “subhuman mongrel” bore resemblance to “untermensch,” which is “what the Nazis called Jews … to justify the genocide of the Jewish community.”)
And then there was Fox News, Nugent’s longtime ally in the pursuit of Obama demagoguery, and where just last month Bill O’Reilly welcomed Nugent. As Abbott’s self-inflicted wound deepened this week, and as news outlets all across the country addressed the clumsy campaign association, Fox News went silent. Not only refusing to defend Nugent, Fox wouldn’t even cover the burgeoning controversy.
The network — which was happy to give Nugent a softball interview just two weeks ago — still hasn’t mentioned the firestorm over his campaigning with Abbott.
Ted Nugent has been practicing his brand of openly vile hate for a very long time. And with each passing year of the Obama administration he’s been welcomed deeper and deeper into the heart of the conservative media machine. This week’s Abbott uproar was instructive in that the bright spotlight shone on Nugent helped remind people just how radical, dangerous and out of touch that movement has become, and how that hate cannot be hidden.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America, February 21, 2014
“GOP’s Wango Tango With Ted Nugent”: Republicans Are Dancing With A Professional, Maniacal, Racist Freak
For well over a year now, Americans have been treated to the spectacle of GOP leaders plotting and planning and searching for clever ways to assure the public that it is not the party of old, angry, testosterone-heavy, and most of all white grievance politics. Granted, this is a delicate task, calling for a thoughtful, multi-faceted approach. But how’s this for a modest starting point: Stop sucking up to freak-show, has-been rocker Ted Nugent?
Honestly, it was sad enough when Rep. Steve Stockman took Ted as his date to the State of the Union address this month. Then again, these days, people pretty much expect that level of adolescent fuck-you from rank-and-file House members. But a leading gubernatorial candidate from our second-most populous state?
Sure enough, there was Nugent in all his unhinged glory, campaigning in North Texas on Tuesday for state attorney general and gubernatorial wannabe Greg Abbott. Texas Dems understandably threw a fit, pointing to some of Ted’s latest ravings, most notably his calling President Obama a “subhuman mongrel.”
Abbott’s team pushed back limply. Before the appearances, they pooh-poohed concerns about Nugent, praising him as a great patriot. As Abbott’s spokesman informed Politico:
Ted Nugent is a forceful advocate for individual liberty and constitutional rights—especially the Second Amendment rights cherished by Texans. … While he may sometimes say things or use language that Greg Abbott would not endorse or agree with, we appreciate the support of everyone who supports protecting our Constitution.
Likewise, following the rally in Denton, Abbott told reporters:
Sen. Davis knows she is suffering with voters because of her flipping and flopping on 2nd Amendment gun laws. And she knows that Ted Nugent calls her out on her disregard for 2nd Amendment rights. We are going to expose Sen. Davis’ weaknesses on the 2nd Amendment and show that in this area and in so many other areas, she represents the liberalism of Barack Obama that is so bad for Texas.”
Oh, so this is all about Abbott’s love for the Second Amendment? Bullshit. Yes, Nugent is loud and proud about his fondness for playing with guns. But the Texas governor’s race is not about protecting gun rights. Wendy Davis is no Michael Bloomberg here. She has voted to allow guns in cars on college campuses and to put armed marshals in schools. The woman supports open-carry laws, for God’s sake. She may not strut around begging the president to “suck on my machine gun” ala Nugent, but that’s only because she’s not a professional maniac.
Abbott’s snuggling up to Nugent is not about the Second Amendment or the Fourth Amendment or any part of the Constitution. It is about courting and stoking the absolute ugliest, most paranoid, most ass-backwards elements of the GOP coalition. We’re not talking here about garden-variety gun lovers or small-government enthusiasts or evangelical values voters. We’re talking about people who find it quaint when Nugent starts raving about how black people are lazy or how disgusting he finds gays or how Hillary Clinton is a “toxic cunt” and “a two-bit whore for Fidel Castro.” (Media Matters has a sprawling, multi-decade sampling of Ted’s greatest hits here.) We’re talking about people who find it hilarious when Nugent waves his little guns around and froths, “Hey Hillary! You might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch.”
A great patriot indeed.
To be fair, Abbott is hardly the only prominent Republican to embrace the unhinged rocker. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the very man Abbott is looking to succeed, asked his good buddy Ted to headline Perry’s 2007 inaugural ball. (With a respectful nod to Texas’s increasingly diverse populace, Nugent showed up clad in a confederate-flag shirt and started talking smack about the state’s non-English speaking residents.) Nor are Texas pols the only Nugent courters. Even poor Mitt Romney sought Nugent’s (grudging) endorsement two years ago.
That said, it was Romney’s—and the broader GOP’s—epic failure that touched off this recent round of soul-searching among Republicans. Sure, the trials and tribulations of Obamacare have given them breathing space of late, but the times they are a changing—along with the nation’s demographics—and Republicans’ cozying up to characters like Nugent is not a recipe for a healthy national party.
The morning after Ted and Greg’s road show, I emailed a handful of Republican strategists. Subject line: “Ted Nugent.” Question: “Why? That’s all I want to know. Why?” Not even the most conservative among them had a serious answer.
As for Gregg Abbott, when pressed by reporters about the appropriateness of his new pal’s comments, the candidate, predictably, claimed ignorance. “I don’t know what he may have done or said in his background. What I do know is that Ted Nugent stands for the Constitution.”
I like to think that Abbott is not actually this stupid. It’s far less troubling to assume that the man likely to become the next governor of Texas is a shameless liar than to imagine that he’d embrace the famously vile Nugent without some vague sense of what made the guy a wingnut celebrity to begin with. (Hint for the would-be governor: It’s not Nugent’s 40-year-old hit song.)
Then again, maybe Abbott really is that clueless. At this point, Nugent has been spouting racist, sexist, generally insane invective for so long that the ugly particulars of any one rant quickly dissolve into his vast sea of lunacy. People tend to roll their eyes and give Nugent a pass because the ranting is seen as just part of his schtick. I mean, he’s the Motor City Madman, right? And, this being America, the guy can say whatever the hell he wants, right?
That he can—and does. But so long as Republicans keep hitching their wagon to a star like Nugent, they really shouldn’t wonder why more and more Americans see the party as defined by an unsettling blend of rage and ignorance.
By: Michelle Cottle, The Daily Beast, February 19, 2014
“Guns And The Thug Life”: There Was Only One Thug In That Convenience Store Parking Lot, And It Wasn’t Jordan Davis
On Saturday night, the jury in the case of Michael Dunn rendered a strange verdict, convicting Dunn of attempting to murder the three teens who survived the hail of fire he sent at their car, but deadlocking on the charge of murdering the one he succeeded in killing. We may never know what went on in the jury room, but if nothing else, Dunn will not be driving into any more parking lots and getting into any more arguments that end in death, at least not for some time.
This case is, of course about race, which we’ll get to in a moment. But it’s also about—to use a word that crops up repeatedly in Michael Dunn’s written comments—a culture. It’s a culture where manhood must continually be proven, where every disagreement is a test of strength, and where in the end, your fellow human beings are only waiting to kill you, so you’d better draw first.
This was the culture of violence that Michael Dunn carried with him to the convenience store, the one that ended the life of 17-year-old Jordan Davis. It was Dunn’s manic hyper-vigilance, his fear, and the .45 he carried with him that brought death to the parking lot.
Dunn’s defense was built on his belief that he saw something that looked like the barrel of a shotgun (or maybe a pipe) emerge from the window of the car holding the teenagers with whom he was arguing about their music, though no shots came from their car and the police never found any gun. Unlike many people, I have no trouble believing that, for an instant at least, Dunn really did think he saw a gun. I also suspect that he realized afterward that there was no gun, which would explain why he never mentioned it to his fiancée.
What we do know is that when he encountered those black teens, Michael Dunn was sure he was facing down a group of dangerous criminals who might well try to kill him at any moment. We don’t have to wonder whether Dunn is a racist, because his own words make it pretty clear. The letters he wrote to family and friends while awaiting trial are full of statements describing black people as violent criminals who hate whites. “I’m not really prejudiced against race, but I have no use for certain cultures,” he wrote. “This gangster rap, ghetto-talking thug ‘culture’ that certain segments of society flock to is intolerable.” He wrote to a family member, “I just got off the phone with you and we were talking about how racist the blacks are up here. The more time I am exposed to these people the more prejudiced against them I become. I suppose the white folks who live here are pretty much anti-black, at least the ones who have been exposed to them.” And from another letter: “Remember when your mom was robbed? At gunpoint? Black thug.”
So when Dunn arrived at the store and heard that loud rap music, what it meant to him was clear: These are dangerous thugs. After all, they’re young and black, and they’ve got that awful rap music playing, right? And once he began to argue with them, you can bet that he was on high alert, ready to draw his weapon. Think about the last time you got into an argument. Your heart rate accelerated, the adrenaline started pumping, you entered into a state of heightened agitation and awareness. This physiological reaction was bred into us by millions of years of evolution, the fight-or-flight response to danger that ensured the survival of our ancestors.
The 7-11 is not the savanna, but Michael Dunn plainly believed he was a water buffalo surrounded by hyenas. So this time, he would be the predator. He grabbed his gun, exited his car, got down on one knee, and began to fire. And then he kept on firing, ten shots in all, even as the car drove away to escape him.
Just like the case of Curtis Reeves, the Florida man who shot and killed a man who irritated him by texting in a movie theater during the previews, the argument began over the most mundane thing, but ended in death. Michael Dunn couldn’t abide that loud rap music. Curtis Reeves got popcorn thrown at him, and threw back a bullet.
In a reasonable world—or in most countries other than ours—arguments like those would end with someone muttering “Jerk!” under his breath, then getting back to what he meant to be doing beforehand. An hour later, he’d think of the perfect retort that would have put that guy in his place. But in the world gun advocates have made, the result isn’t frustration or resentment, but death.
In his letters, Michael Dunn refers to black men, again and again, as “thugs.” But there was only one thug in that convenience store parking lot, one person who was ready to unleash violence at a moment’s notice, one man whose regard for human life had departed him somewhere along the course of his days. That thug wasn’t the 17-yead-old black kid. It was the 47-year-old white guy holding the gun.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, February 17, 2014
“A Few More Thoughts On Thug”: The Words We Use Are Often Encoded With Racial Presumptions And Expectations
“I hate that thug music.”
This, according to Rhonda Rouer’s testimony last week, is what her fiancé, Michael Dunn, said when they pulled into a Jacksonville, FL gas station next to an SUV full of black kids who had the stereo up high, pumping some obnoxious, bass-heavy rap.
Rouer was inside the convenience store when she heard the shots. Dunn, who is white, had gotten into an argument with the young men about their music, had gone into his glove box for his pistol, and started shooting. As the SUV tried to get away, he fired still more rounds. At least one of those rounds fatally struck 17-year-old Jordan Davis.
Dunn drove to his hotel. He did not call police. He ordered pizza. The next morning, he drove home to Satellite Beach, 175 miles south, where police arrested him. Dunn claimed he shot at the SUV because Davis threatened him with a gun. Davis was unarmed.
Dunn is now on trial for murder. He’s claiming self-defense in the November 2012 shooting, saying he felt threatened, though his victim wielded nothing more dangerous than the aforementioned “thug” music.
And we need to talk about that word a moment. But first, let’s try a thought experiment: Close your eyes and picture a California girl. Close your eyes and picture a chess prodigy.
Chances are, you saw the former as a sun-kissed blonde in a bikini running along a beach in slow motion and the latter as a studious-looking boy in owlish glasses. Chances are you saw both of them as white.
Now, close your eyes and picture a thug.
It is exceedingly likely the person you pictured was black, like Jordan Davis.
The point is, the words we use are often encoded with racial presumptions and expectations. Thus, your image of a California girl is more likely to resemble Farrah Fawcett (born in Corpus Christi) than Tyra Banks (born in Los Angeles) and your idea of a prodigy will not include Phiona Mutesi, a teenage chess champion from Uganda.
And thus “thug” becomes the more politically correct substitute for a certain racial slur. This is why Stanford-educated black football player Richard Sherman was called a thug for speaking loudly in an interview, but singer Justin Bieber was just a “bad boy” while facing charges of vandalism, assault and DUI.
And it is why, in jailhouse letters released to the media, Dunn uses that word to describe the boy he shot. But he doesn’t stop there. “The jail is full of blacks,” he writes, “and they all act like thugs. This may sound a bit radical but if more people would arm themselves and kill these (expletive) idiots, when they’re threatening you, eventually they may take the hint and change their behavior.”
In other letters he decries the lack of sympathy from the “liberal b—–ds” in the media, and takes heart that the counties surrounding Jacksonville are dominated by white Republican gun owners. He writes, “The jail here is almost all black prisoners. You’d think Jacksonville was 90-95 percent black judging by the makeup of the folks in jail here!”
What he describes, of course, is the great Catch-22 of African-American life. They decide you’re a thug from the moment you’re born, so they lock you up in disproportionate numbers. Then they point to the fact that you are locked up in disproportionate numbers to prove that you’re a thug.
Michael Dunn is a hateful man, condemned as a racist by his own words and deeds. But that’s his problem. Ours is that this sickness is not confined to him. And that it causes blindness, rendering sufferers unable to see what is right in front of them.
So one can only wonder with dread how many of us gaze upon this man who shot up an SUV full of unarmed kids, then fled the scene, and see a victim.
And how many will see a “thug” in a teenager just trying to dodge the bullets.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., The National Memo, February 12, 2014
“Clarence Thomas’ ‘Sadness’ On Race”: How Things Have Changed, The Views Of “My Grandfather’s Other Son”
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gave a speech in South Florida yesterday, where the jurist, one of only two African Americans to ever serve on the high court, reflected on racial issues.
“My sadness is that we are probably today more race and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school. To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Georgia, to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up,” Thomas said during a chapel service hosted by the nondenominational Christian university [Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach].
“Now, name a day it doesn’t come up. Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah. Every person in this room has endured a slight. Every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them – left them out.
“That’s a part of the deal,” he added.
At a minimum, the Justice’s comments appear to be at odds with his 2007 autobiography, which paint a different picture of Thomas’ youth. Yesterday, Thomas said race was “rarely” an issue growing up in Savannah,” but as Adam Serwer noted, Thomas wrote several years ago that as a kid in Savannah, “No matter how curious you might be about the way white people lived, you didn’t go where you didn’t belong. That was a recipe for jail, or worse.”
Thomas even said he left his seminary in 1968 after feeling “a constant state of controlled anxiety” over being a racial minority.
That said, Thomas’ broader point about Americans being more conscious of racial issues may be true, though it’s not entirely clear why he, or anyone else, would consider this a discouraging development.
Jamelle Bouie’s take rings true.
Let’s say that Americans are more sensitive about race (and gender, and sexuality) than they were in the 1960s. This is a good thing. If blacks in Jim Crow Georgia were willing to answer to “boy” and shrug at “ni**er,” it’s because they risked danger with any other reaction.
But that’s changed. We’ve made progress. And now blacks, as well as other minorities and women, feel entitled to public respect in a way that wasn’t true in the 1960s. In turn, there’s a public recognition that we should be sensitive to the concerns of these groups. This isn’t a setback – it’s progress.
Jon Chait added:
Maybe the reason race came up rarely is that the racial situation in 1960s Georgia was extremely terrible.
For instance, for the first 14 years of Thomas’s life, Georgia had zero African-Americans in its state legislature. Majority-black Terrell had a total of five registered black voters – possibly because African-Americans were so satisfied with their treatment that they didn’t see any reason to vote, or possibly because civil-rights activists in Georgia tended to get assassinated.
So maybe “reluctance to bring up racial issues” is not, in fact, the best measure of a society’s racial health.
By: Steve Benen, The Madow Blog, February 12, 2014
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