trying to grok

NUGENT

My friend Erin was outraged when she saw the way Ted Nugent was treated on the Donny Deutsch show. (She's at that point in blogging when the media is really ticking her off.) She told me all about it, so when I clicked over to the rerun of the episode last night, I was intrigued.

I ended up so impressed with the way Nugent defended his positions, and so perturbed at the way Deutsch twisted his words around. As one blogger summarized the show:

Donny Deutsch' interview yesterday with "conservative-libertarian" rockstar Ted Nugent and wife was absolutely priceless. There's no transcript of it online but if I find it I will link it. The bottom line: the Nugents enjoyed being thrown the kind of questions one can expect from a mainstream Manhattan media star who doesn't like gun ownership and "supports the war effor in Iraq, but ...". The Nugents, with a smile on their face, cruised comfortably through the interview while Deutsch was getting visibly irritated as he lost ground as the chat went on.

What absolutely killed me about the interview was Deutsch's condescending smirk the whole time. After every commercial break, he re-introduced the segment as an interview with "ultra-conservative" Ted Nugent. (As if he'd ever introduce someone like Ted Kennedy as ultra-liberal.) And since I agreed with nearly every thing that Ted Nugent said, I found myself wondering if I too am an ultra-conservative. Of course, Donny Deutsch thinks he's completely moderate and middle-of-the-road, even though he was droning on and on about animal rights, gun control, and evil Fox news, the Rocky Marciano for every bias-blind liberal. You could just hear Deutsch's voice dripping with sarcasm, since he obviously thought that the Nugents live in a Fantasy World of human-centric personal responsibility. He snidely asked Mrs. Nugent if "the family who stays on the Right stays together?", to which she cheerfully and good-sportedly replied yes. He also went into a long spiel about how rockers are typically into sex, drugs, and liberal agendas and then asked Ted Nugent how he managed to end up on the "to put it nicely, far right side?" Nugent responded immediately with the most wonderful comeback: "Dicipline."

Nugent had some wonderful quotes. When Deutsch was droning about the poor baby Bambis that Nugent hunts, he asked Nugent if he thinks that animals have any rights at all. Nugent said that "rights are uniquely human", that we should treat animals humanely and with respect, but that they certainly don't have rights. When Deutsch started babbling about mink coats, Nugent laughed and said, "A leather jacket is a fur coat with a haircut."

Naturally, Donny Deutsch thinks Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time. Nugent disagreed, citing the flypaper strategy of Iraq -- which he called "baiting the monster" -- and said that the Bush administration should've better articulated this strategy for the public. Deutsch just waved him off with a hand, completely dismissing what he'd said as if he'd not even listened. No fakey-fake "hmm, interesting theory" that talk show hosts normally give, just eye rolling and sighs.

On the topic of personal responsibility, the Nugents started talking about health. The Nugents said that our country has real problems with obesity and smoking, so "how can you demand health care when you don't care for your health?" When Ted Nugent said that lifelong smokers and Krispy Kreme eaters can't just expect the American government to foot their medical bills, Donny Deutsch looked at him like he had a foot growing out of his head. On the topic of gun control, Deutsch kept twisting Nugent's words, as if Nugent wants every fender bender to end in a hail of bullets. Another blogger lays out the ridiculous statistics that Deutsch threw at Nugent, and when Nugent rejected them, Deutsch looked at him with those Fantasy Land Eyes again. When Deutsch asked if the Nugents believe guns should have trigger locks to protect children, Nugent responded by saying that he taught his son that "the trigger lock is in your spirit and mind." That's the most important thing you can teach your child about gun safety, but Deutsch just looked at the Nugents like they were the worst parents in the world.

Incidentally, when the subject of parenting did come up, and when Nugent said that the Osbornes are terrible parents and that Sharon Osborne should be "slapped silly" for the way she lets her children walk all over her, Deutsch had a field day. He started lecturing Nugent on beating women, even though he clearly was using "slapped silly" in its figurative and colloquial sense. And that's when the most important part of the segment happened, in my opinion. Donny Deutsch said something -- and I wish I had been fast enough to write it down verbatim -- about how Ted Nugent has some kooky ideas about gun control, so he wouldn't put it past him to be a wife beater too. That's the scary part. Liberal Donny Deutsch was so out of his element talking to a conservative that he didn't even know what it means to be conservative. He equates Nugent's lifestyle of hunting and self-reliance with some backwards, backwoods notions of male dominance and aggression. Conservative apparently means caveman to Deutsch. By saying that he wouldn't be surprised if Nugent walked up and slapped Sharon Osborne, he laid out a perfect example of how liberal Hollywood types really don't know anything about middle America.

I'm glad I watched the show. Ted Nugent was articulate and entertaining, and Donny Deutsch came off as a huge pansy. I know why Erin got mad at the show, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

UPDATE:

Cali, you can watch it here, though the buffering is acting funny for me.

Posted by Sarah at November 8, 2005 12:43 PM | TrackBack