The other is the realization that in defending the abhorrent behaviour of one of their own, the hard core rightwingers here are not interested in doing what is right but only interested in defending their own no matter how vile their own may be.
I have zero intention of defending Nugent's comments, but I have to ask again, who takes Ted Nugent seriously anyway? He's just proven himself to have have nothing of value or substance to say. I'm not saying you have to laugh at him, but I guess Nugent's comments seem to me to rate dismissal rather than outrage.
If Ted Nugent was not an entertainer, or a celebrity, what would people think of his gleefully killing little mammels?
There is the bonafide psychological fact that serial killers often have a history of killing little, innocent mammels.
Nugent is beyond "hunter." His bloody rhetoric shoves it down everybody's throat. There are millions of hunters in America, how many of them talk in the same emotionally charged rhetoric?
His culpability cog slips a notch because of his celebrity, not his talent or his relevance pr irrelevance.
Celebrity . . . has replaced our hero image, or more accurately, has become our hero replacement. This explains most of the prolific exonerations we bestow on those celebrities who are truly guilty. We betray our responsibility to a meaningful modeling of law concerning human behavior. And it must be remembered that surrounding all these celebrities and their outrages and resulting deferences are huge media bucks.
I think a very interesting comparison could be made about the similarities of behavior of Ted Bundy and Ted Nugent. Nugent seems to talk out loud quite strikingly like Ted talked to his victims--relishing in the fact that he could terrorize them with bloody threats. They both get a buzz out of being, above all, cruel.
There is no serious psychologist or astute laymen observer who cannot be alarmed by Nugent's giddiness and laughter--laughter of defiance and cruel threat, not "just joking" laughter. I see Nugent on one side of the line, and Bundy crossed over that line. A line's difference.
Imagine the effect on Ted Bundy watching Ted Nugent echoing his thoughts and feelings. Would Ted feel psychological fed, acknowledged, legitimized and vindicated? Properly functioning societies tend to edit out this behavior as too potentially harmful. I think America crossed a line when we were introduced to "slasher" films. Unlike all the Hitchcockian and other psychological thrillers, slasher films appealed to a whole new and different set of emotional response keys.
The fact that Bundy focused on the same type of female like the one who rejected him does not define his malady--it is simply a focus on a trigger. It is more a fetish object than "the" cause. Much like addiction, wherein the 'fetish' is the drug of choice, but the disease underlying is the same for all kinds of addicts, no matter their focus of substance.
There is a tendency in the public mind that sees people wearing different guises and treating them differently. We think that avid hunters are American to the blood. We think people who otherwise have no public clout are creepy prekillers. The press tends to sensationalize predators, making it difficult for rational explanations; the 'media play' ($) supersedes professional accuracy. Look at the bucks generated by Hansen on NBC, which is now cloning into expansion. We look at the monster in the cage, while, like the first owner of Elephant Man, the media is reaping huge profits.
They tend to want to make him Lecter, when the reality is not one of rare twist, but of something quite common and defined by self-control, sanctioned and defined by legal structure of a responsible society.
One realizes the potential in any war--many soldiers snap into feral, and do things beyond the call of duty. War brings it out of us--not the heroic fighting back, but the cruelty every army degenerates into.
One thing I do see brewing in all this: people like Coulter, black rappers (sorry, don't know names, but the lyrics are not misreported or exaggerated), Nugent, et al, are all getting attention and receiving air time. I think as a nation we are beginning to worry about the feral rhetoric and everyday safety.
It is freedom of speech coming to full circle to the theater metaphor.
Division is not always good, but sometimes it can be. It is like a good sherrif calming a jeering crowd by reminding them that their noiseful, vengeful revelry will be held accountable by a stable and sane society.
Nugent is a litmus of the society you are a part of, and that makes him relevant. Like you, I do not think it should be, but let's face it--like the slasher films, which must get more extreme or die, big bucks are being made of all this. Hansen has made bucks for the NBC corporation for outing pedophiles, and the important concurring phenomenon is that America is beginning to see that pedophiles are not that rare deformity
being displayed, for a ticket, in the cage.
