Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2001/02/26/lock_and_lowbrow.php
Monday, February 26, 2001
'My choice of adjectives and descriptive words are quite lame...'
—Ted Nugent
Ted Nugent's ambiguously intentioned book, God, Guns, and Rock and Roll, has one underlying theme: 'I am extreme, look at me, pay attention to me, my career is not over—really, I promise it's not.' Envisioning himself as a patriotic, gun-toting, libertarian superhero, Nugent's book argues by anecdote—tawdry tales of Nugent's personal life that are somehow supposed to be irrefutable evidence for whatever arguments he poses.
Take Nugent's infamous stance on gun rights. Instead of making a case for strong Second Amendment rights—not a hard case to make—Nugent resorts to playground name-calling: 'How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic. Only a coward would want fewer good guys with guns on the street in today's world. Only a fool would support—much less design—such a policy of helplessness.' So gun control advocates are cowardly, cheap, unnatural, pathetic, and foolish.
That may be true, but all Nugent offers in the way of evidence are some fustian ramblings and conjecture. It's pure Nugent, but manifestly superficial—and that weakens the case for gun rights. The pattern repeats itself throughout Guns, and the closest Nugent gets to actually getting a point across is telling kids to be cool and not do drugs.
He spends many a chapter relaying bravado-filled tales of himself saving the day through the use of his gun, but the situations Nugent describes appear highly dramatized and cartoon-like. One report has him rescuing a flailing off-duty cop from the clutches of trouble-making vagrants, two apparent denizens of 'the planet of the apes.' Witnessing the spectacle on the side of the road, the always empowered Nuge bails out and saves the day with the help of his handy Barretta.
In another story, he describes the drug-induced tirade of a former fan who disapproved of Nugent's gun zeal. Citing him as the prototypical pot-head hippie liberal, Nugent writes that the fan was the sort of spaced-out individual who fights against Americans' right to bear arms. Again, this isn't an argument for gun rights, or anything else for that matter.
Some of his anecdotes actually hurt his case. He tells the tale of his first shot: stealing his father's gun and discharging the weapon in his basement, then looking into the barrel of the loaded semi-automatic weapon without its safety on. The story is intended to elicit support for juvenile gun training, but actually prompts the opposite reaction. In teaching children to handle guns, you acclimate them to the danger, giving them a false sense of confidence with a deadly device of destruction. And little Ted should never have access to his father's gun without supervision.
But even if you support childhood firearms training, the image of young Nugent looking into the barrel is so tritely comical as to discredit everything he says throughout the book anyway.
The most enraging element of Guns is the time Nugent spends describing his hunting trips. Over 85 percent of the book is spent recounting his assorted hunting adventures. The God element of the book's title is mentioned only when Nugent expresses awe at the majesty of nature and the abundance of God's creatures, which Nugent enjoys killing. Here's just a sample of the hunting excitement to be found within Guns: 'All true stories end in death, a wise man hath said... Paco the wonder dog was a magic hunter. The proud, regal English settler retrieved more dead stuff than any hundred hounds. He was a big part of my growing up. He was very forgiving and understanding of my errors.' As you can imagine, a sad and desperate tale of childhood hunting and a pathetic dead dog ensues.
Nugent's double-spaced, bold-printed hunting brag sheet really is the paragon of amateurism. One can imagine Nugent's Barbie Doll wife, Shemane, attentively crouching on a deerskin couch while her husband paces about the room with a 'smile stretched ear to ear,' spitting out 'bad-ass' truisms for her to transcribe. Nugent's self-assured piety is of the worst kind; one of those individuals so dead sure he has the all right answers that he has the audacity to piss and moan for pages upon pages about everything from his drugged-out colleagues to the biased media.
The deficiency of a society where parents are not engaged enough seems to upset Nugent the most; he spent more time on that than on any subject besides guitar playing and hunting.
Taking the position that parents need to assume an active role in the leadership of their communities, Nugent 'cannot believe that any American does not have a face-to-face, hands-on relationship with law enforcement leaders in his or her community or home regions.' He further grumbles that he 'cannot believe any American could...not have a consistent ongoing conversation with his or her elected representatives.'
He accurately identifies the virtues of civic republicanism—albeit in a cursory fashion—yet Nugent's predominant flaws taint his overall message. Yes, people can make a difference (nothing that we haven't heard before), but he conveys his message in such an inflammatory and witless fashion as to render it wholly ineffectual.
Nugent's status as a quasi-celebrity allows him extensive contact with public notaries, public officials, and sundry activist groups. That, in and of itself, is commendable, but—like many quasi-celebrities—he has become so detached from the real world as to expect others to behave in a similar fashion. He goes on for pages and pages about all the people he knows, who he has met, and how devoted he is to civic causes—but, of course, that's all because he has the essential elements of time and access at his disposal. Most people actually have jobs that enable them to pay their mortgages, feed their kids, and go to Nugent's concerts.
Not only does he list ad nauseam every congressman known, every MADD meeting attended, and every dying kid he helped through the Make-a-Wish foundation on three pages of self-congratulation, but he weakly attempts to pass off this hubris as motivational fodder for the uncommitted parent.
His final advice on the matter: 'Take the kids. Simply let them know who you are, that you are a proud American and eager to help protect your community. Give them a copy of this book. Sign 'em up as a member of Ted Nugent United Sportsmen of America—and sign up yourself. Get involved. Give them a subscription to Ted Nugent Adventure Outdoors magazine.' The unfathomable preposterousness of such a statement will be left to speak for itself. It was merely the beginning of Nugent's egotistical and largely pointless 288-page diatribe.
Nugent's diction goes a long way to discredit his arguments. Hell bent on proving his extremism, Nugent's parlance differs little from that of Mark Borchardt in American Movie, displaying verbosity when brevity is required and crude vernacular when a semblance of formality is appropriate. One wonders if he realizes that his attempts to affect realistic dialogue appear so foolish. Besides the asinine aphorisms that predominate his text, such as 'good clean fun is a beautiful thang' and 'I am Dr. Fun,' Nugent has this annoying habit of closing every argument with 'next.' It is a patronizing stylistic element that displays both a complete confidence in the validity of his position and a total indifference to any potential contradiction.
In his note on style, Nugent criticizes George Bernard Shaw for being a 'sandal-wearing social-vegetarian' who 'tried to reform the spelling of the English language.' Yet he goes on to explain that his book will, 'by the hard-lovin', full-throbin', high-octane, deerslayin', allthings-scarin', ballistic guitarboy—Nugetize [the English language].' The moral distinction between the two revamped styles, however, remains unclear.
Nugent's writing, which attempts to transcend normal social acceptability, appears uneducated and ignorant. And Nugent remains inconsistent throughout the book: He argues for authority in one situation, then emphasizes his personal philosophy of unleashing 'the middle finger' on unwitting status-quo dopes.
The arrogance of God, Guns, and Rock and Roll defies logic. Nugent writes in one chapter:
But the real joy is that my writings have always been truthful and in the face of my outlando [sic] adventure and exciting life's experiences. I understand the need for small minds to criticize and accuse. Some of my advice and claims will be scoffed at. The very premise that I know people have the right and duty to defend themselves will leave those with communist ideologies agasp. So be it.
Couple that with his obsessive cataloging and descriptive detail of the majority of his 200+ guns and, even if he produced compelling arguments, audiences might be so put off as to dismiss them anyway. His insistence on putting on an extreme front—to cling to his halcyon glory days of quasi-stardom—becomes his downfall. His lack of credibility notwithstanding, people could reasonably reject his arguments not because of his 'extreme anti-status quo' position, but because they—quite fairly—find him unintelligent, his arguments unsupported, and his demeanor annoying.
Finally, Nugent's book exists for no other discernable purpose than to enrage a specific audience with his fervor. For the record, I am pro-guns. I plan on owning several, but Ted Nugent paints the average gun owner as an illiterate numbskull freak. In terms that even Nugent could understand: Guns good, Ted Nugent Bad. Ted Nugent wrote this book with one aim: to bore people to death with its painstakingly unnecessary detail and sick delusional fancy. Next.