Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Ted Nugent Says...Something Naughty!

The AP wire is a-twit-ter after Ted Nugent apparently said, how delicately they put it:

the words "g----" and "n-----" on live radio

Do you suspect the words are not goof and niggardly? Instead, I reckon, he might have used the words gook and nigger. (Let the insensitivity shine through! Brian J. typed the words without hyphens or cute, non alphanumeric cartoon-swearword characters.) I don't know what he used, because the news accounts are very clipped, not offering much context but instead focusing on the act of using the prohibited words.

What we do have for context is this:

Rick Lewis and Michael Floorwax, morning talk show hosts on KRFX-FM, said that during an interview Monday, Nugent said one of the members of a group called the Funk Brothers years ago complimented his guitar playing by using a racist term for blacks. Would that be these Funk Brothers? If so, a majority of them appear to be black. If one of them said Ted Nugent was his nigga, or something along those lines, odds lean toward a black man calling Ted Nugent the N-word. In which case, it wasn't used in the sense of a racial slur. And Ted Nugent reporting the word use is a not a racial slur, either.

Sorry. I understand these "special" words have magickal significance to aggrieved covens of the afflicted, but they are just words. Perhaps Ted Nugent was using them to draw attention to the fact that they're just collections of glyphs on the page or voiced velar stops, alveolar coronals and other articulations and not anything more. Actus reus without mens rea. As our society fundamentally shifts from criminal intent to strict liability template, it's no longer necessary to mean harm with words, just speaking the words is the offense.

We'll probably never know how Ted Nugent meant to use the words or how he really used the words. It's not like the inflammatory news article presents the context or a transcript. Don't bother going to the the Web site of the radio station 103.5 The Fox, or the dee jays with whom the Nuge was communicating, Lewis and Floorwax. Instead of information about this heinous crime, you'd just see the "sunken treasure chests" contest in which one woman with small breasts will win free breast augmentation! At least these holders of the moral high ground took the opportunity of this new-found celebrity to remove the photo of one of the morning show participants vomiting into a trash can after smelling rancid dog feces as part of some morning hijinks. Some marketing flack must have known the attention the Web site was about to receive. Any publicity is good publicity, especially when you're enlightened defenders of feelings AND you don't have puking interns on the Web site.

Ted Nugent's Web site probably won't glorify this "scandal" with a response. I cannot say I blame him. The whole thing smacks of a publicity stunt by a couple of drive-time losers with declining marketing share, deciding to pillory an outspoken conservative figure for fun and ratings.

Unfortunately, it will probably work.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:04 PM