Suppose you’re an aspiring politician with low name
recognition running for Governor somewhere. You schedule a rally,
desperate to move the needle of the public’s attention. The last thing your
campaign needs are television reporters filming empty chairs for the 11 o’clock
news. So you do whatever it takes to put fannies in those seats and since you
know that Americans aren’t going to show up to hear some gasbag talk about the
minimum wage for an hour, you have to have a whiz-bang opening act.
Now, if you were a liberal politician running in
Oregon, or say, San Francisco you might run Barbara Streisand out there. She
would say a few vacuous words and then launch into a soaring rendition of “People
Who Need People.” If you were a conservative politician running in someplace
like Mississippi, or say, Texas you would pack those chairs with Ted Nugent who
would bring the house down with his thunderous, “Cat Scratch Fever.” But then,
he too would say a few vacuous words. And then all hell would break loose, because,
while Babs can be an infuriating, airheaded nitwit, Nugent can be a vicious
moron. And the powers that be in the national media who might give a liberal
celebrity a pass for some inanity, will rip Ted Nugent a new one.
Conservative reaction to liberal celebrity politicking
is usually something along the lines of, “shut up and sing!” Liberal reaction
to the relatively few examples of conservative celebrity politicking is more like, “off
with his head!!!!” But, in this particular case, they are right. Here’s what
Mr. Nugent had to say:
“ A Chicago Communist-raised,
Communist-educated, Communist-nurtured, subhuman mongrel like the ACORN
community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the
top office of authority in the United States of America.””
There’s plenty of over the top invective here to go
around, and frankly, I don’t have a problem with most of it. After all, this is
politics and we have a 1st Amendment right to say over the top inflammatory
things in the heat of a campaign. But, if a line has to be drawn somewhere, subhuman mongrel would certainly be a
good place to start.
Ted Nugent, being a washed up rocker, probably isn’t
aware of the history of this phrase, but knowing him, even if he were he
probably would still have used it. It’s the exact term used by the Nazis to
describe and denigrate the Jews. In order to pave the way for their final
solution, they first had to remove the humanity of their victims. If Jews aren’t
even human, but subhuman mongrels, then they are ultimately no different than
that rabid mongrel dog that must be put down lest he infect someone. To use
this hideous term to describe Obama is especially horrible considering the
darker chapters of our own national history of race relations.
So, does Mr. Nugent have a 1st Amendment
right to say such things without fear of imprisonment? Yes. But I have a right
to denounce him for his hateful ignorance and distance myself from his remarks.
If the politician he was shilling for has any brains, he will do the same
thing.
Mr. Nugent, shut up and sing!