FOX NATION, NEW YORK TIMES NEWS PARTNER AGREE: THE NUGE RAWKS!

Hi, folks, I'm back -- thanks to the whole gang for filling in while I was gone.

I see thar Ted Nugent was all over the media in the past 48 hours or so. I'm not surprised that his CBS outburst, in which he literally went from boating about charitable work with sick children to an aggressive offer to have sex with a male CBS reporter or his female producer, was deemed "inspiring" by the readership of Fox Nation. You probably don't need to see the clip (I tagged it onto the end of this post), but I just want to fill in the transcript with what I'm 99% certain he said, just so the psychopathology of it is obvious. I'll highlight my interpretation of the bleeped words:

Nugent bristled at the suggestion that he isn't the kind of moderate Romney will likely need support from to win the general election.

"If you examine how I conduct myself," Nugent said, "I don't think a day goes by in my life for many, many years now that we don't do charity work for children. ... Call me when you sit down across from someone who has more families with dying little boys and girls who get a call to take them on their last fishing trip in life.

"Call me," Nugent continued in a raised, irritated voice, "when you meet someone who does that more than I do. Because that's really moderate. In fact, you know what that is? That's extreme. ... I'm an extremely loving, passionate man, and people who investigate me honestly, without the baggage of political correctness, ascertain the conclusion that I'm a damned nice guy. ... And if you can find a screening process more powerful than that, I'll suck your dick. Or fuck you. How's that sound?"

We have no idea where that unexpected outburst came from. The second part of it directed to a female CBS News producer who was off-camera.

Yeah, that's just how I assume Jesus would have talked about helping sick kids.

But it isn't just Nugent himself who thinks Nugent rocks, and it isn't just his obvious fan base at Fox. It's also reporter Jay Root and producer Justin Dehn, who just interviewed Nugent for The Texas Tribune and got the interview reprinted by The New York Times (in a somewhat bowdlerized form), and managed to present Nugent in exactly the way Nugent wants to be presented.

...Nugent, who has lived for years on a ranch near Waco, remains characteristically unbowed.

"On stage, I will say what I damn well please," he said in an interview this week. "I will not be silenced."

... Before sharing the stage with REO Speedwagon and Styx in South Texas this week, the 63-year-old musician portrayed himself as a wanted man in every sense -- by fans who still long to hear him play "Stranglehold" and "Cat Scratch Fever," by liberal critics who want him in jail and by Republicans who still crave his endorsement.

... in Uncle Ted's world there is zero nuance when it comes to Uncle Sam. He says the feds are out to get him and the reason is simple: He is so good it is scary....

Stop right there. If you're calling Nugent "Uncle Ted," you're not an interviewer -- you're a press agent. If you let him hold forth on his theory that he's going to be a target of the feds in a second Obama term, either assassinated or imprisoned, and you don't challenge that, you're catapulting the propaganda. And if you post a video version of your interviewed in which you introduce the subject as follows, he should write you a big fat check:

He's outspoken ... he's irreverent ... he's dedicated ... he's confident ... he's rock guitar legend and Second Amendment advocate Ted Nugent, and he's no stranger to being provocative....





The Times, at least, doesn't re-post that video press release. But why is the Times using this material at all? Here's a key endorser of a major-party presidential candidate, a guy who really might help turn out Reagan Democrat voters in swing states in the Rust Belt, and he gets interviewed this way and the Times thinks the interview is worth repurposing -- as news? Does people in the media nerdocracy also find Nugent "inspiring"?

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Here's that CBS clip, if you haven't seen it: