NY Times article:

Vegans, Keep Out!

****

Vegans, Keep Out: It's Hunting Season

By DANNY HAKIM

Published: September 27, 2005

CONCORD, Mich. - Ted Nugent is not an evolution guy.

This became apparent recently when Mr. Nugent, the 57-year-old rocker, huntsman and N.R.A. board member, brandished a blood-drenched liver he had just pulled from a freshly slain deer. He used the moment, during filming of his forthcoming reality show on the Outdoor Life Network, "Wanted: Ted or Alive," to explain the meaning of life to five contestants who were in various states of awe and nausea.

"Big bangs don't make this," Mr. Nugent said, musing on the steaming organ he held before him. "That's not a big bang. God made that. That's a liver. That's mystical. You and I can't make livers. Things banging don't make livers. This is mystical stuff. This is magic. This is perfection."

He was beside himself, and he was not finished. Ted is never finished.

"To kill a deer is perfect, and I typically will sit in the woods and I just look up and absorb the spirit and barometer, I'll listen to the birds and just sit here and be in stunned silence for a long time," he said, leaning against a tree, his arms to his side, the liver in one hand and a serrated blade in another. "The prayer of silence alongside the beast is powerful medicine so that you can be the best that you can be."

The fact that Mr. Nugent is on his second reality show - the first, 2004's "Surviving Nugent," lasted a season on VH1 - suggests the genre's lifespan is entering a mature phase. Not that the word applies to Mr. Nugent. For those too old or young to be familiar with the man known as "the Nuge," he became famous in the 1970's as a wild-eyed guitar hero, first in a band called the Amboy Dukes and then on his own, with a couple of hits - "Cat Scratch Fever" and "Stranglehold" - propelling his career. He was a rock idiosyncrasy, abstaining from drinking and smoking but plenty wild nonetheless. He could, and still can, conjure a withering sonic hailstorm in his guitar solos.

More recently, though, he has become better known as a reliably outlandish right-wing firebrand who came close to throwing his hat into Michigan's 2006 gubernatorial race. He says the odds are 50/50 for a run in 2010.

"Even though Michigan needs me desperately - the pimps and the whores and the welfare brats need to be introduced to my crowbar - I think I would be better fortified and my family would be better fortified for the campaign, if I decided to do so, five years from now," he explained. "I was 99 percent ready to do it. In fact, I called Engler, I called Pataki, Huckabee, Perry," he said, listing the names of several current or former Republican governors. "I had the support of everybody."

Mr. Nugent was speaking while sitting on a tree stump at his 330-acre Michigan hunting ground that he has stocked with boar, buffalo, deer and ram. He was eating a tuna sandwich, the back of his forearm still bloody from gutting and skinning the deer he had shot earlier in the day. He wore camouflage from his cowboy hat on down, and though he is known for his love of bow hunting, he sported a .243 Browning rifle.

He extols hunting as a way for people to get back in touch with what they're eating, and themselves.

"Hunters, fishermen and trappers were the first and remain the ultimate environmentally responsible stewards and managers of life, quality, air, soil and water," he said. "Biodiversity is mine, environmentalism is mine. It doesn't belong to Pam Anderson."

He does not, however, believe in modern environmental issues like global warming. Asked for his view of the world, he expounded at length, at times belching, cursing, yelling, guffawing. He endorsed President Bush's foreign policy and railed against liberalism and the notion that the world's problems could be solved by negotiation.

"I'll show you some security and I'll show you some peace: Nagasaki and Hiroshima," he said, sandwiching an expletive between syllables. "You [expletive] with us and we'll [expletive] melt you."

He is also not a fan of the Roman Catholic Church. "They got how many trillions of dollars in gold and silver and jewelry and art and real estate and stained glass and they're passing the basket on Sunday so they can get the tomato farmers' donation?"

"You see that gut pile?" he added, pointing to a large hole that served as a maggot-infested dumping ground for animal innards. "That's my [expletive] church."

Ted's brother, Jeff Nugent, is the former chief executive of Revlon. He said he tried to get Ted to rein himself in, to no avail. "I gave up doing that a long time ago," said Jeff, 58. "That is who he is and you can't change the stripes on a tiger. There's been a lot of energy having him run for governor of Michigan. I've been very frank with him: 'Ted, if you could possibly get through' " an election, " 'you'd have to be governor. What would you do then?' "

"I don't know that it wouldn't be a Pyrrhic victory," Jeff added. "I think it would be impossible for him to be elected with the views he's articulated. If he was capable of drawing back in 20 or 30 degrees from where he is, he could still be true to his beliefs but not be so outrageous."

The Nugent brothers grew up, along with two other siblings, outside Detroit with a strict disciplinarian for a father.

"The reason my life is so full and so joyful is that my dad forced me to practice the guitar," Ted Nugent said. "Because I said I wanted to get a guitar and play like the Ventures, Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson, Lonnie Mack, Duane Eddie, Dick Dale and the Deltones, the original guys, Chuck Berry, and my dad said, 'Yeah, you can get a guitar, make some money, cut lawns, wash cars, shovel snow, sell nightcrawlers,' and he would help me buy it as long as I paid him back. But once I got it, he said, 'O.K., you got a guitar, now you're going to go in your room' " and practice every day.

In contrast to his father, Mr. Nugent said, "I am blatheringly affectionate." He continued: "The most oft heard words from my children are 'Dad, Dad, stop,' because I hug them and kiss them so much. I'm an extremist in that too."

In his new show, which makes its debut in November, city slickers are unwittingly thrown into the hunting life with Mr. Nugent.

Conversations with the Nuge are "really not a discussion," said Stevie Guttman, a 28-year-old club promoter from Miami who answered an ad saying he could win money just by hanging out with a rock star. He was not expecting to be killing his dinner - one of Ted's first requirements was that contestants kill a live chicken. "It's more of me asking a question and getting his force-fed response whether I like it or not," Mr. Guttman added. "I don't think he's really too interested in how I could respond to that or change his mind.

As it happens, Mr. Guttman first attended a rock concert at age 12 at Nassau Coliseum. The headliner was Kiss. His date was his mother, he said, "of all people." And the opening act? "This lunatic gets out onstage and just looks at the crowd and says -- " Mr. Guttman yelled an expletive, recalling the moment. "My poor mother," he said. "That was my first introduction to Ted."

You have really got to love Ted.


I respect anyone that upsets or pisses off people more than I do.

I would vote for Ted.

"You [expletive] with us and we'll [expletive] melt you."

That is AWESOME.

Rock on TED!!!    

"I'll show you some security and I'll show you some peace: Nagasaki and Hiroshima,"

That's awesome.

Ted "Nuke 'Em" Nugent

Ted for President, fuck that governor crap!

Serioulsy - if he did get elected as the GOV, do y'all think he would get poisoned by the political system the way Ventura did?

Ventura had somegood ideas going in but he sure did lose his spine once he sat in that fluffy chair.

Thoughts?

CMOS


PS - The Nuge is awesome.

Ted for Govenor!

Quoted: Serioulsy - if he did get elected as the GOV, do y'all think he would get poisoned by the political system the way Ventura did? Ventura had somegood ideas going in but he sure did lose his spine once he sat in that fluffy chair. Thoughts? CMOS PS - The Nuge is awesome.

It is hard to say......alot of people become drunk with the power of office. (being rich and famous is not the same as having real political power)

I don't believe Ted is that kind of guy, but ONLY time would tell.

"Even though Michigan needs me desperately - the pimps and the whores and the welfare brats need to be introduced to my crowbar ... "

Nugent/Frist '08!

I'd absolutely love to spend the day huntin and shootin with Ted.

Damnit, I wanna enter this reality tv contest.... Where do I sign up?

Quoted: You have really got to love Ted. I respect anyone that upsets or pisses off people more than I do.

So true.

Ted ROCKS

 When does the new show start?

Man, I'd love to spend the day in the woods shooting stuff with a the Nuge.

Ted for Pres in '08!

Quoted: I'd absolutely love to spend the day huntin and shootin with Ted. Damnit, I wanna enter this reality tv contest.... Where do I sign up?

lol Me to.  I wanna go work on his campaign.  

Quoted: Serioulsy - if he did get elected as the GOV, do y'all think he would get poisoned by the political system the way Ventura did? Ventura had somegood ideas going in but he sure did lose his spine once he sat in that fluffy chair. Thoughts? CMOS PS - The Nuge is awesome.

I believe Nugent is relatively untouched by "the system".

Jesse had some issues and he was a little naiive about schools (Unions) and money in politics (it's the blood of politics).  You could do away with a lot of the money in politics in places like Cuba and just replace them with a guns and BS.

"Indeed, on some issues, Ventura is as liberal -- or more so -- than Wellstone, the Senate's most left-wing member, as an interview two weeks ago in the lobby of a Radisson Hotel outside Minneapolis revealed. Ventura wants more funding for public schools to reduce class sizes, one of his top two issues. A vocal critic of government subsidies to corporations, he blames the corrupting influence of campaign contributions. His solution: "I want socialism to come into campaign finance. If you've achieved major-party status, I think you should be given a block of money from the government and that is all you can spend to get elected. That way you'll have a fair system and it won't come down to who sells their soul to rock 'n' roll, if you get what I mean." He backs the medical use of marijuana and has an open mind about decriminalizing drugs. "Addiction should be treated medically, not criminally," he says. A Vietnam veteran, he opposed the draft "because it protected the wealthy" and says flag-burning should be allowed under the First Amendment. He opposes vouchers for private schools, a favorite of the Christian right, and he even backs same-sex marriage, an issue that proved too hot for even Wellstone to touch.      

But make no mistake. On taxation and most social spending issues,  Ventura is no progressive. His No. 1 issue is "taxes, taxes, taxes," and he's scoring with voters who agree with his call for the state to return all of its current $4 billion budget surplus back to the taxpayers. He's also pledged to veto any tax increases in the future, convinced that the budget is full of wasteful spending protected by incumbents who are more interested in getting reelected than serving the public. "I believe people should come from the private sector, go into government to serve and then get out and go back to the private sector rather than become professional politicians," he says. The only gun control he supports is good marksmanship: "You put two rounds into the same hole at 25 feet," he says.