Monday, July 28, 2014

"Unclean Vermin" - The Ted Nugent Cancellation Tour

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Previous Related Posts:
Ted Nugent is Revolting
Ted Nugent Blows Civil War Dog Whistle
Nugent Threatens Mayhem Again
Motor Mouth Ted Threatens Barack Obama

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For some unfathomable reason, rocker gun-nut Ted Nugent has been booked into several public places this summer as "entertainment," even though he is an epic racist. After a letter to the editor in Oshkosh, Wisconsin raised questions about whether Nugent should be performing ANYWHERE, some of  the  Indian Nations stepped up to cancel his performances at casinos, perhaps due to his insulting act of wearing a headdress and singing about a "White Buffalo" - symbolizing himself - that seeks to white-splain things to the injuns.

To me this story is all about the type of people who frequent Casinos on the Reservations - white gambling hypocrites and Tea Party males with Peter Pan fixations who are also NRA members. Maybe even they might like a different singer hwo hasn't threatened to shoot the President of the United States.

It started in Oshkosh, Wisconsin:

From Gannett Northwestern:
Ted Nugent headlines Waterfest in Oshkosh during a July 26 premium show - but not everyone is happy about it.
In fact, Nugent's scheduled appearance has led one Oshkosh resident, Kevin Kratsch to call for the cancellation of the show, while others question the rationale for booking the outspoken, controversial rocker.
. . .Kratsch said he was initially moved to take action after finding out the East Texas town of Longview paid Nugent about $16,000 earlier this year to not play a Fourth of July event he was booked for. He felt if it could be done in Texas, it could be done here too.
The online petition calling on Waterfest to cancel the show, on the MoveOn.org website., had 242 signatures as of Friday afternoon. However, fewer than 100 of those signatures were listed as Oshkosh residents. Mark Bye of Schofield, a friend of Kratsch's, created the petition.           

The Petition has now been taken down. And it appears that Nugent is still going to play at the Waterfest in OshKosh.

BUT our friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center took a look at Nugent's schedule and requested comment from the Coeur d'Alene tribe in Idaho, leading to cancellation of his concert there:

From Hatewatch Blog, SPLC
Less than seven hours after being asked about the racist legacy of rock entertainer Ted Nugent, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe of American Indians this evening cancelled a scheduled performance next month by the controversial performer.
Tribal officials sounded completely caught off-guard earlier in the day when Hatewatch called and asked why the tribe – with a sterling record of combating hate and standing up for equal rights – had booked Nugent.
Heather Keen, the public relations director for the tribe, announced the decision that Nugent’s scheduled for Aug.4 was being abruptly cancelled.
“Nugent’s history of racist and hate-filled remarks was brought to Tribal Council’s attention earlier today” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Keen said in a statement e-mailed to media outlets.

Of course Motormouth Nugent couldn't resist firing back:

I take it as a badge of honor that such unclean vermin are upset by me and my positive energy. Put your heart and soul into everything you do and nobody can stop you. Sometimes you give the world the best you got and you get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you got anyway."
By all indicators, I don't think they actually qualify as people, but there has always been a lunatic fringe of hateful, rotten, dishonest people that hate happy, successful people.
~ Ted Nugent, via the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal

Calling his critics "unclean vermin" surprisingly didn't help. 

Via Ultimate Classic Rock
Following last week’s decision by an Idaho casino to cancel a Ted Nugent concert, another venue has done the same. The Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma, WA has removed his Aug. 2-3 shows from their calendar.
“The first amendment gives people the right to free speech,” Lawrence W. LaPointe of the Puyallup Tribe, which runs the casino, said. “But I think racism is intolerable and not acceptable here. We’ve been getting lots of complaints from the community and other organizations. I don’t want to take away his right to say what he wants to say, but we don’t need it here.”
While neither of the two casinos that have severed their relationships with Nugent have offered proof of his racism, some have pointed to his reference to President Obama in January as a “subhuman mongrel” — a term loaded with racial implications — as evidence. Nugent apologized a month after making that remark.

Then he doubled down:

I call them unclean varmints, I’ve actually gone by them and I mean it, they’re hygiene-challenged, they actually stink, they’re dirty people, they’re unclean, they’re bused in to Connecticut and New Jersey and different places to protest a Ted Nugent concert but, Lars, they are so stoned or just brain dead, they actually wear their American Communist Party regalia, they’re not smart enough to take off their identification that they’re not really protesters, they’ve been paid and bussed in.
~ Ted Nugent, via Addicting Info

No one should be surprised by any of this," said Gary Bongiovanni, editor-in-chief of Pollstar USA, which tracks concert touring receipts. "It's a free country and Nugent has always had a big mouth. But if he keeps making incendiary statements his future tours may be limited to NRA conventions and Fox News events.
. . . While Nugent will perform at The Toledo Blade's Northwest Ohio Rib-Off festival next month, the paper's sales director told Media Matters he had received numerous complaints and strongly suggested Nugent would never be booked again
~ via Media Matters

But Nugent does have a few supporters left:

I also want to say that calling President Obama a “subhuman mongrel” does not make Ted Nugent a racist, as this kind of personal name-calling against a president of the United States is part of a long tradition of political slander that goes back to the founding of the Republic. Abraham Lincoln was called a baboon.
~ Alan Block, owner of the Toledo Blade Newspaper in Ohio, which is sponsoring a cook-out featuring Nugent

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