No: this is exactly what they did to Clinton, and if we allow it, they’ll steal another legitimately elected presidency. Did you know that less than HALF of Obama’s top appointees are in office yet? The GOP strategy is to completely stymie the art and practice of governance until they can (they hope) retake the government by WHATEVER means, and you who were born before the 2000 election know precisely what I am talking about.)
~ this blog August 23, 2009 (President Obama’s first year in office)
Ten years ago, the printers were done, and the physical distribution of papers for the July 3, 2007 issue of the Wall Street Journal (pre-Rupert Murdoch) was complete. And Ted Nugent had written an editorial attacking a generation in a squalid slander* entitled “The Summer of Drugs” – Wall Street Journal, Jul 3, 2007.
[* Yes, I know it’s ‘libel’ but alliterative imperatives must sometimes prevail. Ars longa vita brevis]
And it said fun stuff like this:
Turned off by the work ethic and productive American Dream values of their parents, hippies instead opted for a cowardly, irresponsible lifestyle of random sex, life-destroying drugs and mostly soulless rock music that flourished in San Francisco. . . . A quick study of social statistics before and after the 1960s is quite telling. The rising rates of divorce, high school drop-outs, drug use, abortion, sexual diseases and crime, not to mention the exponential expansion of government and taxes, is dramatic. The “if it feels good, do it” lifestyle born of the 1960s has proved to be destructive and deadly.
Which is hilarious coming from the author of such deathless paeans to morality as “Cat Scratch Fever” and “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang.” But I responded with TWO blog posts:
WEDNESDAY, JULY 4, 2007
Nugent: Die HIPPIE! Die!Ted Nugent, the “Motor City Madman” has decided to retroactively rewrite history so that he can burnish his “conservative” bona fides.
Here’s your creepy Fourth of July card from the WSJ and Ted Nugent. Posted at 12:01 AM on July 4, 2007, in the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal online, came the slimy attack:
and:
THURSDAY, JULY 5, 2007
Another Dip in the Nugent SlimeThere is an important point about the Ted Nugent editorial I discussed yesterday that I didn’t touch on, but which seems, in retrospect, important.
I’ve been a professional writer for over thirty years…
And the Right went ape.
Actually, it began with a piece in Joe Farah’s sleazy WorldNetDaily:
MEDIA MATTERS
DEMOCRAT BLOGGER WANTS TO SHOOT RUSH LIMBAUGH
Also calls for volunteer to assassinate Ted Nugent
Published: 07/08/2007 at 9:51 PMA Democratic Party blogger says he wants to shoot Rush Limbaugh and is calling for volunteers to assassinate rock star Ted Nugent, who champions the Second Amendment.
Hart Williams, a former writer for porn magazine Hustler and who now toils for the Democratic Daily, was waxing incoherent about a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by Nugent, complaining that it was likely ghost-written.
The errors are rife, beginning with the error of “The Democratic Party” and NOT “Democrat Party” (which has been named the former since 1828, so it’s not like there wasn’t fact-check material). I CROSS-posted to The Democratic Daily (NOT the “Democrat Daily) from my blog, his vorpal sword, but that didn’t fit in with WorldNutDaily or Faux Nooz’s agenda so they changed the facts to fit their screed.
None of this should surprise any of us.
The analysis is crap and why Joe Farah decided he had to go after me is the subject of another column. Just note that Sean “brainiac” Hannity decided to more or less plagiarise the entire article. (Same opening Hustler ad hominem. Same quotation. Same general structure of attack.)
And then TWO days of Sean Hannity going after me, without affording me a chance to respond (as also practiced by the ENTIRE rightie blogosmear. Google it today, and you can still see the echo chamber turning me into Lucifer.)
Screenshot
Ted Nugent fears death by ‘lunatic fringe’ liberal blogger
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Friday July 13, 2007Alan Colmes began a segment on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes Thursday by saying, “Conservatives are outraged tonight, outraged I tell you, by the writing of one liberal blogger who appears to be — or they claim is — endorsing the assassination of both Rush Limbaugh and conservative rocker Ted Nugent.”
On July 4, Hart Williams, a former writer for Larry Flynt’s Hustler magazine*, had blogged about an op-ed by Nugent in that day’s Wall Street Journal, in which he [Nugent, sic] wrote, “Forty years ago hordes of stoned, dirty, stinky hippies converged on San Francisco to ‘turn on, tune in, and drop out,’ which was the calling card of LSD proponent Timothy Leary. Turned off by the work ethic and productive American Dream values of their parents, hippies instead opted for a cowardly, irresponsible lifestyle of random sex, life-destroying drugs and mostly soulless rock music that flourished in San Francisco”
“Yes, he hates his generation,” wrote Williams. “Substitute ‘Jews’ or ‘Blacks’ for ‘hippies,’ and you’ve pretty much got the depth of Nugent’s bigotry and the depths of his hatred for his own generation — who never particularly embraced him.”
In a follow-up post the next day, Williams wrote:
[repeated below; humor me]
“Are you really offended by that?” Colmes asked Nugent on Friday’s show.
Nugent replied, “Since the 1960’s, the animal rights and the anti-hunters have been threatening to kill my family and kill me. … This guy is obviously a nutcase, but he’s actually making a statement to assassinate fellow Americans.”
“No, he’s not, Ted,” exclaimed Colmes. “That’s not what he said.”
“He used the word ‘assassinate,’ didn’t he?” said Nugent.
“He doesn’t want to assassinate you,” said Colmes. “You don’t really believe that? Do you?”
“Yeah. I do,” Nugent said grimly. “My family takes it very seriously and they’re very concerned about it.”
“He didn’t say the word ‘assassinate,’ by the way,” said Colmes. “He used ‘when they manage to push hate so far that there’s blood-letting in this country…'”
“You can try to rationalize it all you want, Alan,” Nugent concluded. “We have our guard up,” [emphasis added]
[* repeated WND ad hominem AND repeated from the first show, on 9 July 2007 with Brent Bozell, as reported by NewsHounds:
In the blog post in question, Hart Williams theorizes that right-wing conservatives want to kill liberals in a civil war (Comment: judging from some of our hate mail, it’s not an unreasonable conclusion). Williams then writes:
I will only reiterate what I’ve said before: WHEN they manage to inevitably push their litany of hatespeak into actual bloodletting, and full-blown civil war (for there is no other place that this hatred of American against American can go), well …I’ve got dibs on Rush, as soon as it’s legal and lawful to shoot him. Whoever wants Ted Nugent is welcome to him, but I would prefer that you would call it now, so as to conserve on ammunition.
Not the kind of language I would endorse but I’ve read plenty worse from the other side right here on our own blog (I immediately delete any talk of violence from anyone) so I’m sure it can be found elsewhere, too.
As usual, it’s more important to keep one’s precious halo untarnished by any association with imperfect progressives, and this Thrice Crowing Cock approach characterized the “left’s” notion of having my back. But MOST importantly, note that reference to Civil War that Faux also gets to. It is the center of this post and the subject of the post to follow, as we track what’s happened in the ten years since. ]
Little Theodore was looking at the chyron from the 7-9-07 broadcast:
Fox News characterizes me as an “assassin”
Never mind that I DIDN’T call for Nugent’s assassination*
[* But listen to Hannity’s sniffing of the rectum of the “alpha dog”:
HANNITY: I take it seriously, too. And I’ve had people that, you know, based on specific threats, that have been arrested because of what they have said and the specific threats that they have made over the years.
NUGENT: They’re loony.
HANNITY: The only thing — the only thing in your case, you’re the last person they should threaten. You’re too good a shot. And you could do more with a bow and arrow, probably.
But you’ve got your family to worry about. I mean, that’s where this gets — why can’t they just disagree with us and fight in the arena of ideas?
NUGENT: The arena of ideas, I like that. That’s where we like to have our dialogue.
You know, I’m an American. I love all Americans. And I would help any American pursue their dreams and their pursuit of happiness.
But you find that the left, there’s a lunatic fringe on the left that literally are trying to force us to comply to their outline of life. And I find it just reprehensible that they would recommend violence, not to mention murder and shooting people and assassinating people. This is bizarre.
HANNITY: All right, last question. Should they all be arrested?
[Seig heil, Sean. Jeebus. ]
Faux Nooz legal experts research Hannity’s claims
Here’s an excerpt from “Waiting for John Brown” August 23, 2009 (President Obama’s first year in office; currently offline):
And so, we’ve come to the dangerous point where the cranky zillionaire has a mild conniption, calls his phony “foundation” in Washington D.C. or, more likely, Arlington, Virginia, and they mobilize the idiots they’ve isolated (or even paid) to show up at healthcare rallies with guns.
Yes. We’re just waiting for a John Brown.
Little Theodore Nugent – actual mug shot
Now, let me reiterate the statement I made that caused Sean Hannity to wet the bed, and Ted Nugent to go ON Hannity, his lower lip tremulously quivering in fear that “his family” is in danger from “assassins” like me. And no, I didn’t sue the bastards for libel, because they’d have settled, and I wouldn’t have been able to talk about it, as part of the deal.
I’m mercenary, but I won’t sell my integrity. The price is too high for any of ’em to bear.
Here is the IN CONTEXT version of what caused the Freepers to bounce off the walls like chimpanzees on crystal meth:
… Don’t you get it? These people wouldn’t mind if we all showed up dead tomorrow (as long, in most cases, as THEY didn’t have to do the dirty work). They have expressed their contempt in terms as clear as John Hancock’s signature. Will we appreciate the magnitude of the insult? (They probably just think it’s all in good ‘ol boy fun, like the cheap sophistries that that whore of the Right, David Brooks*, is spinning over the Scooter Libby case in the pages of the formerly reputable New York Times.)
[* Brooks was a former editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal before moving to the William A. Safire memorial conservative seat on the Times‘ editorial page. Still me:]
How we can remain “civil” in the face of this is beyond my ken.
I will only reiterate what I’ve said before: WHEN they manage to inevitably push their litany of hatespeak into actual bloodletting, and full-blown civil war (for there is no other place that this hatred of American against American can go), well …
I’ve got dibs on Rush, as soon as it’s legal and lawful to shoot him.
Whoever wants Ted Nugent is welcome to him, but I would prefer that you would call it now, so as to conserve on ammunition. We will need to manage it prudently.
But when the day comes that they have finally set brother against brother, and sister against sister in the name of their pocketbooks, I won’t approach exterminating them with anything approaching remorse. They’ve already told me what they think of me, of my friends and of my peers.
Now, I’m returning the favor.
Put that in your pipe and have the WSJ editorial staff show you how to smoke it, Nugent.
Courage.
And, when Lyin’ Joe Farah decided to smear me, in the first headline and subheader — fifteen words —he managed to get two straight up facts wrong:
Democrat blogger wants to shoot Rush Limbaugh
Also calls for volunteer to assassinate Ted Nugent
I was very publicly registered as an Independent or NAV, and NOT as a Democrat. Whoops. And, I didn’t call for a volunteer. I just suggested, as in baseball, that someone call it, rather than the festival of gunfire that undoubtedly would accrue, should it become legal to shoot little Theodore Nugent, the draft dodger patriot of the NRA.
That’s some kind of ‘journalism,’ Joe. Boy howdy.
And they then accused ME of trying to start a civil war.
Let me warn you, would-be John Browns: if we DO get into a civil war, I’ll be anything BUT civil.
So, consider the price of civility to barbarians, and then consider whether you like the relative peace and plenty of where you live. Or whether you’d like to trade it in for refugee status, random slaughter, disease, and all the plagues that come with war. Ask any Afghan. Ask any Iraqi.
I’ll bet they’ll tell you it sucks.
Courage.
* OK: That asterisk? here’s what I cut out of that DREADFUL sentence in Raw Story: “On July 4, Hart Williams, a former writer for Larry Flynt’s Hustler magazine, had blogged about an op-ed by Nugent in that day’s Wall Street Journal, in which he wrote …”
First, as I note, it’s an awful sentence mechanically. But the “Hustler reference is an ad hominem, pure and simple, originated and repeated throughout Faux Nooz’s TWO days of coverage of my “assassin’s screed.” Sure, I edited and wrote four sections of the magazine … thirty-eight years ago. And, while I’m not ashamed of it, I refuse to be reduced to it.
How about “former contributing editor for Oui Magazine“? Or former writer for the Washington Post? The Kansas City Star? The Los Angeles Times? The Orange County Register? Or, what about staking me to weirdo territory with “former writer for the Los Angeles Free Press“? Or “ACA Oregon“? “The Other Paper“? “The Santa Fe Sun”? “West Caffeine Street“? How about former writer for New West magazine? Los Angeles magazine? Mankind magazine? Or even “Mister Williams’ mad ravings have even appeared in The Tutuveni, the newspaper of the Hopi Tribe”?
Naw. Doesn’t serve the media bias of Faux Nooz™.
(Ever notice that, while their clear bias is JUSTIFIED by the “liberal media’s” alleged bias, their bias is OK, even though bias must be, by this formulation, necessarily bad and evil and awful and deplorable? Their ox is always gored, somehow. Longest continuous case of liability victimhood in the history of torts, t’would seem.)
So, note the stupid sleaziness to start. Clearly, all that liberal pornography has turned this boy into a homicidal assassin!
No: I made my point clearly enough. The normal projection of the Right caused Ted Nugent and Brent Bozell to collaboratively wet their panties with famed Faux drama queen and porcund human manatee, Sean Hannity: This lunatic LEFTISTLIBERALPORNOGRAPHER was causing HATE SPEECH and threatening VIOLENCE and all the crap we just witnessed about the congressional baseball shooter, who was not, ironically, what all OTHER crazy white men with guns are traditionally called — a “lone wolf” — but, rather an EXPONENT OF THE HATE-FILLED SECRET VIOLENCE OF THE LEFT THAT WE ALWAYS KNEW WAS THERE (Buy more guns).
Now, to be fair, I did kind of invite it, because I used a story from my HUSTLER days to illustrate an important point. (And never leave a gutter reference for a gutter mind, I guess:
THURSDAY, JULY 5, 2007
Another Dip in the Nugent SlimeThere is an important point about the Ted Nugent editorial I discussed yesterday that I didn’t touch on, but which seems, in retrospect, important.
I’ve been a professional writer for over thirty years.
The best prior experience here, I believe, was when I was an editor with HUSTLER, and part of my duties were to read the foot-high stack of “readers letters” that passed over my desk every morning.
You see, it’s not that difficult to tell the difference between a real writer, a ghost writer, and a rewritten piece.
Writing is, you might have noticed, not as easy as it looks. I was “lucky” enough to be shown that in spades: Half of that stack of “reader letters” I read every morning — about “real” sexual experiences — might as well have been written in crayon. And, there were the wannabe writers who were obviously writing (awful) fiction. And there were the actual interesting experiences so hobbled by amateurish prose that the best one could do was extract the seed of a letter from them. The number of letters I ever read that were ready to go out of the box?
Zero. I never read one that didn’t have glaring flaws — AS writing. AS storytelling, which, ultimately, is what was being asked, no matter the ‘legitimacy’ of the story subject. [and so forth] …
But listen to the important bit of the Raw Story report:
Sean Hannity then joined in to engage Nugent in a surreal dialogue that sounded bizarrely like something lifted from a Tom Tomorrow cartoon strip.
“That’s a threat against you and your family and it’s a pretty sick mindset,” said Hannity. “I’ve been through this. Every outspoken conservative I know gets the same type of hate speech on a fairly regular basis.”
“These are lunatic fringers, Sean, that really are dangerous,” replied Nugent solemnly.
“Why can’t they just disagree with us and fight in the arena of ideas?” asked Hannity plaintively.
“The arena of ideas, I like that,” said Nugent thoughtfully.
“There’s a lunatic fringe on the left,” Nugent continued. “I find it just reprehensible that they would recommend violence, not to mention murder and shooting people.”
“Next question,” offered Hannity. “Should they all be arrested?”
“I think they should,” Nugent agreed.
I’ a murderer! A mad assassin! I should be arrested!
Thornhill: Didn’t you hear? I want to be taken to police headquarters.
I’m a dangerous assassin. I’m a mad killer on the loose!Chicago Cop #2 You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
— North by Northwest (MGM 1959)
Ten years of terrifying craven coward Ted Nugent? Quite an accomplishment, and one of which this blog is justifiably proud. And Nugent managed to threaten assassination multiple times in the succeeding decade himself as a Google search will quickly show.
In the immoral words of Energy Secretary and person in charge of America’s nuclear materials Rick Perry, Oops.
Oh, and Faux published this little love letter:
Ted Nugent Targeted for Assassination?
Published July 13, 2007 Fox NewsThis is a partial transcript from “Hannity & Colmes,” July 12, 2007, that has been edited for clarity….
And I haven’t even told you about the FIRST day, with Brent “Trump hair beard” Bozell (the late William F. Buckley’s son-in-law) and Sean Hannity creating a false equivalence between my statement (carefully limited, you will note) and statements made by Ann Coulter:
Williams’ blog has such low readership* that it barely shows up on a graph comparing it to News Hounds and News Hounds is pretty small potatoes compared to blogs like The Daily Kos. But Hannity and Bozell quickly compared Williams’ post to Ann Coulter’s recent statement about John Edwards on Good Morning America. Disregarding the disparity in audience reach, the two conservatives whined that Coulter had received a disproportionate amount of criticism. Bozell further claimed that Coulter’s comment had been distorted by the media.
[* With friends like these, who needs enemies? F**k you, NewsHounds. I’d have fared better without your “help.”]
Nor have I mentioned the fustercluck of Chris Matthews’ MSNBC trying to get ahold of me THROUGH the Democratic Daily, rather than my own blog, which had clear contact instructions. Didn’t matter: by the time I heard the request and decided NOT to go on Mister Interruption’s broadcast, the window had already closed. So moot point.
Chris Matthews a/k/a ‘Tweety”
That’s not the point. The point is that the brave bustards at Faux Nooz were scared to death of this talk of a civil war, and attempted to put it on me, when I was clearly stating that IF WE CONTINUE DOWN THIS PATH, civil war becomes inevitable. This should be no surprise. I’ve been warning about this dangerous polarization AT LEAST since 1994, when I wrote “The Rush-ians are Coming! The Rush-ians are Coming!” for the January 1995 issue of The Santa Fe Sun.
So, tomorrow, I’m going to tell you where that Civil War is, at present, and why I was NOT being wildly hyperbolic when I claimed dibs on Rush.
And no, I NEVER solicited anyone to “assassinate” Ted Nugent, but I must confess, if some suicide bomber wanted to do it, I would not go out of my way to dissuade him or her,
Nugent has, of late, pretended to moderate his endless pseudo-macho hate screeds and his phallic obsession with guns, but that’s of no import. No serious human being takes Mr. Nugent’s ravings for anything other than what they are: “LOOK AT ME!” yawps to sell his increasingly flaccid and derivative “rock” CDs.
Tomorrow: the new civil war.
Courage.
This is part i. Part ii is here.
This has been cross posted from his vorpal sword
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.