ENTERTAINERS WHO LOVE AMERICA WHILE HATING A PLURALITY OF AMERICANS

Country star Larry Gatlin went on Fox News yesterday to talk the recent Pew survey, which showed that just 40% of "solid liberals" would say that they're "often proud to be an American." Gatlin responded with a rant that played like a greatest-hits medley of every liberal-bashing catchphrase of the past forty years (and he also seems to think that one of the Clintons actually runs the country right now, or maybe that's just one of the oldies but goodies in his medley):

Without pointing out that the question had included the word "often," Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt invited Gatlin explain why liberals "are not proud to be an American."

According to Gatlin, "limousine Lear jet liberals" formed a coalition with "low-information voters" to elect a "doofus" named Barack Obama.

"He told us that he hated America," the country music star insisted....

"Here's what we have, we have old hippies from the '60s, Bill and Hillary [Clinton], ruling our country, not governing our country," Gatlin continued, arguing that liberals were upset when the country took military action because "they don't believe there is a right or wrong."

"They blame America, they blame Bush, they wrap their robes of self-righteousness around them, get in their Lear jets, and take off, and they’re still mad at me," he quipped. "Love it or get out of my face!"

"The liberals, they'll sing 'Kumbaya' but they won't stand up and sing the Marine Corps Hymn!" Gatlin exclaimed....

Hmmm -- the Marine Corps Hymn? The military must mean a lot to Gatlin. He also says this:

... we're also being ruled by children of the children of the '60s, who not only don't think -- the difference between right or wrong, they don't even think there is a right or wrong. So when America stands up, patriots stand up, when they believe that it is right to storm beaches in the name of what's right and wrong, and to jump out of airplanes behind enemy lines, and to troop through triple-canopy jungles or the December snows of Chosin Reservoir -- they believe it's right to go do that, that torques these people off, because they don't believe there's a right or wrong!

Let's see ... Gatlin was born in 1948. That means he was of draft age in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War. So where did he serve?

Well, I'm looking at his Wikipedia page, and I'm looking at his bio on the site of the country channel CMT, and it looks to me as if he had a student deferment when he was 19.

Gatlin was a quarterback at Odessa High School. After graduation in 1966, he attended the University of Houston. As a wide receiver on the football team, he caught a touchdown pass in a 1968 game in which the Cougars scored 100 points.

Looks as if his war was fought on the football field. After that, he just went straight into the music business.

Semper fi!

This doesn't prevent him from acting as the co-chair of a campaign to collect signatures on an online thank-you card for Vietnam veterans. (I assume email addresses are hoovered up as well, along with the occasional donation.) The campaign is run by a group called Veterans in Defense of Liberty, which exists primarily to ... um, I'm not really sure. It opposes naming Navy ships after filthy commies like Cesar Chavez and gets upset when the VFW endorses a Democrat. It's virulently anti-gay. Apart from that, it mostly posts a lot of kitschy eagle pictures on Facebook, accompanied by the usual dog's breakfast of right-wing talking points:



But to get back to Gatlin:

“Who elected this doofus anyway?” he asked. “The liberals and the low-information voters.”

So Gatlin hates the majority of people who turned out to vote in America in 2008 and 2012 -- but he loves America! Yup, that makes a lot of sense.

*****

Meanwhile, here was Ted Nugent on Twitter over the weekend:

MD MA IL CA NY NJ CO CT DE RI aren't real America anymore

— Ted Nugent (@TedNugent) June 28, 2014

what a tragedy that only TX SD & AZ are the only states with real freedoms

— Ted Nugent (@TedNugent) June 28, 2014

So (based on (current population counts) only 33,919,694 Americans live in what Ted Nugent considers America (out of a total of 312,913,872), while 103,228,467 expressly live in parts of America that aren't actually America. The rest of you seem to be somewhere in the middle -- but you still don't have "real freedoms," hippie! Get with the program!

And, of course:

with all the clueless ignorant sheep no wonder obama runs amok

— Ted Nugent (@TedNugent) June 28, 2014

"Runs amok" here is presumably a euphemism for "actually holds an office to which he was duly elected twice." So: another guy who loves the bejeezus out of America while hating a huge swath of Americans.