Blog post

August 15, 2006 [LINK]

Ted Nugent on the French

This quote is almost too good to be true, except that it is true, according to snopes.com: Ted Nugent, the clean-shaven hard rock guitarist and hunting enthusiast from Detroit, was asked by an interviewer what a deer would be thinking just before he released the bow to kill it. Nugent replied,

They aren't capable of that kind of thinking. All they care about is, What am I going to eat next? Who am I going to screw next? and, Can I run fast enough to get away? They are very much like the French in that.

Touché! Hat tip to Chris Green.

This just goes to show that not all rock stars are PC lefties. Another right-wing rocker is Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, who played guitar for Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers. He started a second career as a defense analyst, and wrote a briefing paper on ballistic missiles for the Pentagon. See the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

George Allen's puzzling slur (?)

What in the world was George Allen trying to say to that campaign worker for Jim Webb? Does "macaca" mean "macaque" (a genus of Old World monkeys)? The incident took place in the Appalachian town of Breaks, near the Kentucky border. It is strange because Allen is known to have aspirations for Higher Office, and has been polishing his image and building his gravitas in the last year or so. The guy working for Webb, S.R. Sidarth, has been stalking Allen at campaign stops with his video camera, which is common practice these days. Allen must have found the guy's presence annoying, however, or else he wouldn't have made the remark. Ironically, Allen used the expression just after declaring he was "going to run this campaign on positive, constructive ideas." See Washington Post.

Personally, I don't think this incident itself is such a big deal, but it does suggest a certain lack of judgment on Allen's part. I'm not one of those PC folks who bends over backwards to avoid offending anyone who is not a white male etc., but I do believe in common courtesy. For a party that is pushing hard to reform immigration, the slightest hint of derogatory words directed at people of foreign ancestry is liable to raise suspicions of racism. The fact that Allen used to display Confederate flags only adds to such suspicions. For me, reforming our immigration laws and practices is a high priority issue, and I take pains to disassociate myself from anything that smacks of nativism or xenophobia. That magnifies the impact of Allen's unfortunate, cryptical quip, making me less motivated to engage in partisan politics.

Jim "Born Fighting" Webb's Webb site called attention to this incident by including a link to the above Post story, without comment. Elsewhere on that site, Webb used cheap-shot demagogic rhetoric to criticize Allen for giving tax breaks to "price-gauging oil companies," as if all of them were colluding to fix prices. For me, that negates any advantage Webb may have gained from Allen's gaffe.