I know I’m a latecomer to this party, but it bears repeating. Nugent is quoted in a recent New Yorker article as proclaiming:

To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead…I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want ‘em dead. Get a gun, and when they attack you shoot ‘em.

at the 2005 NRA convention in Houston while he hosted the seminar ‘God, Guns and Rock ‘n’ Roll.’

I know he purposefully baits sensitve egalitarians such as myself with these inciting ejaculations that spew from his squirrel cheeks while he’s not performing hits from his 1984 album Penetrator (”Thunder Thighs” is my favorite). When hungrily eyeing the governorship of Michigan like the small, meaty animals that populate his extravegant compound, he had this to say about the current governor, Jennifer Granholm: “[She] is not doing an ugly job, but as the perfect woman, she is scrotumless.”

The first time I saw a live Nuge — that is to say, not on an album cover, which themselves are difficult to describe as ‘not live’ — was when he was on MTV cribs. He seemed like a nice enough guy — he was endlessly entertaining, and I’d probably get a kick out of drinking cream fizzes (he’s straight edge) with him and having him (almost?) kill me while showing me how to shoot a bow. And I’m sure he makes people really excited and stuff when they blast his music out of their trucks or see him at a show.

The problem isn’t that Nugent wants to fight things — I’m all for that wacky son of a bitch man-handling a grizzly or starting a well-armed vigilante war in whatever community he’s inflicted himself upon — the problem is that not all of us are fighters and the weak and/or passive will be the ones footing the bill on this one.

The mentality of the first quote goes against the main arguement of gun owners, that people should be left alone and allowed to be free. If Ted Nugent is feeling fiesty and starts shooting up tax evaders around town, then everyone has to get guns so that they can return fire when they’re trying to get their keys out of their own car with a coathanger. He, and people who agree with him, are provoking a fight in which everyone would have to participate, like it or not.

Due process and a legal system are in place to normalize and enforce a public’s judgement so that everyone has a reasonable idea of what to expect from one another. I have other things I’d like to worry about than if today is going to be the day I catch it from the bus driver because she thinks I’m going for my glock instead of my wallet.

In this respect, the Bush Administration is a Nugent to the world. Perhaps less than 50 people were complicit in falsely executing a war that will probably take tens of thousands of more lives before it can be said to be ‘resolved,’ while excluding the owners of those lives from the negotiating table.

After watching Good Night, and Good Luck, the parallels between now and the McCarthy era are obvious. But today the censorship comes from within the newsroom for the sake of good business. The walls between editorial and sales are eroding, if not disappearing completely, the media companies are consolidating and watering down information for the sake of efficiency. The corporate agenda that sets the backdrop in George Clooney’s film has become completely unmitigated in its influence on news content. At least Murrow had a somewhat sympathetic boss in William Paley.

Today, a vague news sense for stories that are alarming but distant keeps everyone watching but inactive. Protests are framed as silly and irrational so that viewers don’t have to feel like maybe they should do something. Meanwhile this Administration is steamrolling over weak constitutional language that we’ll only be able to seal up after they’ve gone too far. Another New Yorker article points out how upset Dick Cheney was by the pull out from Vietnam. He still thought we could win if Congress hadn’t cut funding. We’re going to be in Iraq for at least as long as Bush is president.

We’ve put a vigilante in office, and like the friend who parties all night, it was fun for a little bit, but now he won’t let us go to sleep and we have to go to work tomorrow and our boss already hates us and we’ve already called in sick three times this month and now he’s dragging us out to San Mateo to meet some friends he knows from Scotland and now everyone’s hungry so we have to go to IHOP, but first let’s get more beer and some cough syrup and there’s the sun poking over the hills…

It’s significant that the war between Murrow and McCarthy occured over the airwaves, and that people were actually watching the McCarthy hearings on television. Bush has, according to David Remnick the New Yorker, “held fewer solo news conferences than any of his modern predecessors.” His administration has perfected the video-packaged-propaganda-delivered-as-news format. Former chief of staff Andrew Card, when referring to the media, told Ken Auletta of the New Yorker,

They don’t represent the public any more than other people do. In our democracy, the people who represent the public stood for election…I don’t believe you have a check-and-balance function.

The hypocrisy is mind-boggling when you consider all the ways the Administration has punched all the checks-and-balances of their power in the face. On top of that, they clearly view the media as their lapdog; a way to put one face to the public while they do something completely different. And they’re right.

Back in ‘92, somebody recorded direct satellite feeds and made a documentary called Spin. There are some revealing moments of both elected officials and news anchors when they thought the camera was off.

Television is now used to give teeth to otherwise embarrassing and easily ignored ideas such as Nugent’s. It’s the mouthpiece for several minority agendas posing as the majority, so convincingly that their effects are the same as if they were actually the majority. I don’t know what television should be, but a vastly greater number of ideas and people need to be represented for it to behave as anything other than soma. In the words of Murrow:

I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us.

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

Stonewall Jackson, who knew something about the use of weapons, is reported to have said, “When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.” The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival.