The story goes that at one of George W. Bush’s private inauguration parties in 2001, the president gave Ted Nugent a big hug and told him: “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
You see, it was important to our chief executive that Nugent continue elevating the nation’s collective spirit with anthems such as “Yank Me, Crank Me” and “My Love Is Like a Tire Iron.” Bush recognized that the graybeard rocker, a self-described defender of “wholesome” American family values, performs a public service when he praises the “teenage queen” of “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” for her acts of kindness: “She’s so sweet when she yanks on my meat/ down on the street you know she can’t be beat.”
Nugent recently took some flack for telling a concert audience (which consisted of four hooded Klansmen and nearly a dozen 50-year-old men in loincloths and moccasins) that Barack Obama is a “piece of shit” who needs to “suck on my machine gun,” and Hillary Clinton is “a worthless bitch.”
He gracefully answered critics, however, by stating that the outburst was simply “over the top, intense, hysterically funny rock ’n’ roll.” I know what he means. When Squeaky Fromme invited Gerald Ford to suck on her loaded pistol in 1975, I understood that it was simply over-the-top, intense, hysterically funny performance art.
If you can’t get enough of such rib ticklers, seek out Uncle Ted’s new album, Love Grenade. In one highlight, he mocks elitist college students (possibly forgetting that he avoided Vietnam by taking a student deferment) and calls himself a graduate of “Funk U.” A fine institution, and soon to be the site of Dubya’s presidential library.
