The really sad thing about Ted Nugent

ordinarily, i just dismiss this certifiable moron with a shake of the head and a shrug of the shoulders... i don't believe in giving his kind of idiocy any more bandwidth than it deserves, which is zero, zip, nada...

i'm breaking my own rule with this one, however, because as i was reading it, i had the sad, if somewhat obvious, realization that nugent is merely saying out loud what a lot of people in the united states say on a routine basis... the only difference between those people and ted nugent is that ted nugent has a megaphone to broadcast his hate... and, make no mistake... nugent's hate is of the same variety as that of rush limbaugh, just less prettified... in fact, you can find the same thing coming from the likes of bill kristol, lou dobbs, and congressmen such as steve king and eric cantor... being congressmen, of course, they would NEVER resort to such crudities as nugent, but the mindset is the same...

On President Obama, the southern rocker said he believes "Mao Tse Tung" had arrived, "and his name is Barack Hussein Obama."

"I wanna throw up," Nugent said.

He started off the interview by jabbing supporters of animal rights, claiming he wants to kill 100 more of something every time he hears the two words together in a paragraph.

"I'm not just killing them I’m fucking slaughtering them and I’m going to gut them and skin them, quarter them and butcher them and feed them to the soup kitchen and homeless shelters of America," Nugent said. "Not because I need to, because it will cause Bill Maher to shit blood. That’s my goal in life."

Oddly, while he boasts about wanting to feed the poor and hungry masses, Nugent's words for his fellow Americans who depend on food assistance are quite vulgar and surprising.

"Welfare isn’t supposed to be used for hairdos," he said. "If you need food stamps, eat the fucking pet!"

what i'd like to do with this guy and others of his ilk is to put them on a plane to afghanistan, not to fight or be killed, but to have to live and work on a daily basis with afghans in an organization like the international rescue committee or the aga khan foundation... yes, he'd have to be dragged there, kicking and screaming, but getting exposed to some of the brutal realities of extreme poverty and despair and having to live with it in your face every day might give assholes like this a different perspective... otoh, maybe not... assholes of nugent's age are pretty impermeable to letting go of their bullshit...

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Establish a false premise and force your opponents to debunk it - "Are you still beating your wife?" [UPDATE: There will be blood]

kent nerburn blogs articulately on the insane trap we've allowed ourselves to fall into - YET AGAIN...!

The Republicans could have just as easily made the argument that by funding health care we are putting our troops in harm’s way, or curtailing our space program, or taking food out of our school children’s mouths. But they didn’t. They went to the single most frightened group available, and their only real, viable base — old white people. “Obama will tell you when you have to die,” they said. And then they used the absolutely brilliant technique of inciting these folks to go to Town Hall meetings and shout out. It was brilliant because Town Hall meetings are small venues. Had they said, “get out on the streets,” or “stand with signs on street corners,” like the Democrats do, it would have failed, because the tiny nature of the protests would have been revealed by scale. It’s always better to have a small theater completely full than a big theater half empty, and by flooding the Town Hall meetings with people who are incited to behave in an uncharacteristically uncivil manner, they make it look like both the scale and the intensity of the opposition is greater than it is.

It’s a perfect technique for a party with small numbers. It is contained demagoguery, spurred on by a small handful of angry white male radio folks like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Glenn Beck, who can increase their influence exponentially through the use of radio and television, and make the mainstream media run toward the argument because the media, as it is currently configured, always goes toward the loudest noise.

Ergo, we have a false premise, and a very threatening one at that, being promoted from behind the scenes by vast amounts of money, amplified exponentially by select media operatives, and carried forward by a small group of people who are being manipulated into action because they are very frightened by what that false premise portends.

The media, unable to resist going toward loud noises, reports the noise as if it’s a ground swell, and the Democrats do their part by continuing to think that rationality will win the day. Did they forget that this same Republican machine was able to paint John Kerry as anti-American and George Bush as a war patriot?

Thus, the Democrats have fallen for one of the oldest demagogic tricks in the book: Establish a false premise and force your opponents to debunk it, because if you argue a wrong premise, you lose. Witness “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”

i love the part about the media being "unable to resist going toward loud noises"...

[UPDATE]

i ran across the following shortly after putting up this post...

terence heath writing on the campaign for america's future blog...

It's clear now. There will be blood. It will take someone being seriously injured or killed before GOP leadership speaks up, if then. There will be blood.

It doesn't take a psychic to predict this. It just takes a look at the escalating rhetoric. To anyone familiar with the tactics of terror, is clear where this is going. First there is the threat of violence. It may be spoken, or it may not. It may be as simple as a hanging noose. The intended effect is the same: to put the target on notice to shut up, stay in his or place, and don't dare challenge the status quo.

It is delivered, often, with a smile that implies not merely a willingness to do harm, but perhaps even a desire to do so — "I will hurt you, and I will enjoy doing it."

[...]

There will be blood. Turning up the heat and stirring the pot already brimming with fear, lies, anger and violence will all but ensure that.

If Republicans continue to either stand silent or cheer on the mob we can assume one of three things: (a) they don't know what fire they're playing with, (b) it's what they want, (c) or — for the sake of ideology — they're willing to risk it.

my concern is this... if the threat of violence turns to actual violence, it could not only spread like an out-of-control fire tearing through sagebrush and scrub in a high wind, the kind we see all too often here in the high desert, it could also require an armed, national response to put it down, and where will that leave us...? for those of us who squirmed through eight years of the bush regime's toying with dictatorial powers, sidestepping the posse comitatus law, and carrying out the arrest and indefinite detention of american citizens, this development is, under a democratic president amazingly enough, even more alarming...

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Is David Sirota waking up?

maybe there's still hope for david...

To paraphrase Thomas Paine, these truly are times that try progressives' souls... . As Beltway progressives pat themselves on the back and think success means getting on Hardball and movement-building means getting one of the most anti-progressive U.S. Senators in America [Max Baucus, D-MT] to attack rank-and-file progressive Democrats and undermine organized labor behind logo-emblazoned podiums in D.C., the bloodshed in Iraq continues, and the economic war on the middle class seethes here at home.

do ya suppose david's getting a clue...? there's little to no daylight between the r's and the dems, just so's ya know... that's not to say there aren't some good dems and, lord help us, a few good r's, but those that hold the reins of power (power = $$ = power) are simply not about to toss it away simply to satisfy a few piddlin' ideals and principles... the vaunted "realpolitik" that enforces support for every "single tactic and decision" along party lines is, in reality, just more political b.s. as usual... while our dear leaders in congress engage in orgies of fulmination at moveon and rush, our constitutionally-based democratic republic is continuing to be torn asunder, with our civil liberties and the foundations upon which our country is supposedly based left in tatters... and, guess what...? unless strong action is taken NOW, the nightmare WILL continue long past 20 january 2009...

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Ya know what I'm REALLY sick of?

the amount of bandwidth, pixels, column inches and raw verbiage devoted to the likes of rush limbaugh, bill o'reilly, ann coulter, melanie morgan, bill kristol, and their ilk... i ran across a term in another blog a couple of weeks ago - "feeding the trolls..." it doesn't exactly apply to what's going on with those cited above but i think the general idea is right on... why the hell are we paying any attention whatsoever to these worthless people, wringing our hands, and bemoaning their latest outrages, when the fate of our country is at stake...? people who ought to know better like media matters, think progress, americablog and atrios should, imho, stop letting themselves get jerked around by these nitwits... (or maybe i'm overestimating them)... what's even more nauseating is watching our congress, ferchrissake, being sucked right in by submitting motions and resolutions, all while fulminating, weeping and gnashing their teeth... give it a rest, folks... our constitution is being abrogated while we waste time on bill o'reilly...? that's simply not acceptable...

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"Getting blogs"

atrios offers a fairly lucid view...

Left of center blogs filled various connected vacuums which were created by a triangulating-against-itself-Democratic party, a media with a "no liberals on TV or radio" rule, and the post-9/11 media prostration to the Bush administration and its complete abdication of its responsibility with respect to the Iraq war, all of which followed its campaign 2000 prostration to the Bush candidacy. Overall what blogs have been able to do is create an unfolding political narrative which has been largely absent elsewhere. Sometimes it's about emphasizing different things, sometimes it's about combating DC conventional wisdom, sometimes it's about highlighting things which are being ignored. But taken all together it's about telling the story of politics in a different way.

While there are other elements - fundraising, various types of activism, etc... - day to day the power of the blogosphere is that it offers up a competing version of political reality, in opposition to the Russert/Matthews/Dowd version and in opposition to the Limbaugh/Hannity/Fox News/Heritage Foundation version.

speaking entirely for myself, yes, i do see myself offering up "a competing version of political reality..." however, even more than that, maintaining this blog day after day helps me keep a grasp on my OWN reality... the mere act of putting up a post requires me to visit, read, absorb, digest, and, via my own mental processes, regurgitate a spectrum of current events selected on the basis of what i believe to be the most meaningful in the context of today... i can't sit on the sidelines and pretend that i know what's going on or that my opinions are static... one of the most fundamental elements of my life is to continue to learn and grow... blogging facilitates that as well or better than anything i have ever done... besides, there's always the anonymous commenter to keep me humble...

What a bunch of BS this blog is !!
cchas | 04.28.07 - 2:02 pm | #

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How high can the NYT pile shit in defense of Don Imus?

a lot higher than i would have suspected...

Mr. Imus is an old-school radio guy caught in a very modern media paradigm. When he started 30 years ago, if he made the same kind of remark, it would have floated off into the ether — the Federal Communications Commission, if it received complaints, might have taken notice, but few others.

this comment, to me, is almost as offensive as what mr. imus himself had to say... i've deliberately not posted anything on this tempest in a teapot because, plainly and simply, i don't give a rat's ass, but this knocked me off my early morning pegs...

i happen to have followed radio all my life (60 years this december), and, i can tell you, there is no way in HELL imus would have MADE a similar remark 30 years ago... 30 years ago, radio talk was a civil place, a benign place which, while maybe not all that substantive, was at least characterized by a certain decorum, the kind you would find in living rooms and coffee shops all over the country... imus may be old, but he certainly ain't "old-school..." imus represents the rise of the shock jock, the breed who made names for themselves by deliberately adopting the argot of the locker room and the all-night drinking and poker parties so beloved of testosterone devotees...

dating myself, i remember that it was morton downey jr. who really brought this type of broadcasting sewage fully into the public eye back in the early 80s... in fact, when downey left radio and turned to tv, his replacement was rush limbaugh... in any case, "old-school radio guy" is a patent lie and the new york times should be ashamed...

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Why is the Vice President of the United States granting an interview with a propagandist?

condi appears with o'reilly... cheney talks with limbaugh... it's an absolute disgrace that our senior government officials CHOOSE to speak with some of the most blatant propaganda mouthpieces in the country...

Vice President Dick Cheney told conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh during a phone interview Thursday that he was "disappointed" that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA-D) conveyed to Syrian Prime Minister Bashir Assad that Israel is ready for peace talks, and chided her for "bad behavior."

Limbaugh asked Cheney, "What's the administration view today, what's the emotion, what are you thinking about Speaker Pelosi's trip to the Middle East, specifically, the conveyance of the incorrect message to Bashir Assad in Syria about peace talks with Israel?"

"Well, it's not helpful," Cheney replied. "I made it clear earlier that I thought this was -- created difficulty, if I can put it in a gentle form."

Cheney added, "Obviously, she's the Speaker of the House and ought to travel to foreign nations and ought to conduct visits" but "she's not entitled to make policy."

and, of course, all darth is doing is puffing up rush's already incredibly swollen ego...

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Reasons to not ignore Ann Coulter

last week i begged for a respite from the ceaseless barrage of posts on the evil, extremist, bigoted cyborg, ann coulter...

no more about ann coulter... the amount of bandwidth that woman has sucked up in the last 24 hours is unconscionable... we complain over the media's obsession with anna nicole and then we go and do the same thing with someone who, in her own twisted way, is equally unworthy of any attention, much less the time spent blogging...

jamison foser at media matters smacks me down, and quite rightly...

All of which brings us to the first of two reasons why it is actually important that we don't ignore Ann Coulter.

If Coulter's seething hatred was hers alone, she might best be ignored. But that ugly and unthinking hatred isn't unique to Coulter.

Instead, Coulter's anger and venom are illustrative of the modern conservative movement. Her vitriol is embraced and rewarded by right-wing audiences far and wide. Her intellectual and rhetorical peers -- Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck, among others -- are, like Coulter, anything but "marginalized." They unleash vicious tirades against gays, women, minorities, and liberals -- and are paid handsomely for it. And they are paid not only in cash, but in respect: Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, sometimes seems to be auditioning to be Limbaugh's co-host, while President Bush opens the Oval Office to the likes of Neal Boortz and Sean Hannity.

[...]

But the most interesting -- and important -- thing about Coulter's hate speech isn't that it is representative the of attitudes of her ideological fellow travelers.

It is the similarity between what Ann Coulter was trying to do by calling John Edwards a "faggot" and what countless "respectable" members of the "MSM" do every day.

Coulter's comments, of course, weren't about convincing people that John Edwards is gay. They were about trying to strip him of his masculinity, to feminize him -- and in doing so take advantage of the cultural stereotypes that equate strength with men and weakness with women to portray Edwards as "wussy" (her word).

[...]

But the most interesting -- and important -- thing about Coulter's hate speech isn't that it is representative the of attitudes of her ideological fellow travelers.

It is the similarity between what Ann Coulter was trying to do by calling John Edwards a "faggot" and what countless "respectable" members of the "MSM" do every day.

Coulter's comments, of course, weren't about convincing people that John Edwards is gay. They were about trying to strip him of his masculinity, to feminize him -- and in doing so take advantage of the cultural stereotypes that equate strength with men and weakness with women to portray Edwards as "wussy" (her word).

excellent points, all... even so, i refuse to devote my limited resources of time and energy to paying attention to such bile... i may chuckle and shake my head from time to time... i may occasionally have to supress a gag reflex, but those creatures of the underworld will just have to figure out how to go on without me...

(thanks to atrios...)

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