Where were you Salon when Ted said this?:

"Look at Africa. After they banned the hunting of elephant and lions, the Africans started using their habitat to grow mangos and peaches and dates. It happens everywhere: Once you ban hunting, a species loses its value. People would just as soon use the land to grow cotton, because cotton has more value than the wildlife."

The reason Africa banned the hunting of those creatures was because their numbers could not recover from the human impact on their species quickly enough to thrive as they always have. Elephants were being slaughtered for centuries by folks who didn't have carbine rifles. By the time modern killing technology came around those species were already in trouble. To say that a creature loses its value when it's earmarked for salvation is as dumb as George Bush Sr. not knowing what a grocery store scanner was. There's no getting into the political history involving this because doubtless Ted Nugent really knows nothing about it, otherwise he wouldn't have said what he did. He is dangerous to have the forums he does given his abject narcissism.

The Siren Lure of Guns

After reading several graphs about how Ted's kids love hunting I thought, he has no real idea because he doesn't truly give them a choice given his hard line philosophy. I moved on to his next display of imbecility.

"Here's the thing with that: In God, Guns, and Rock n' Roll I devote several chapters to the inescapable truism that everybody is fascinated with guns."

Inescapable truism? Exactly how sophisticated does he think we believe he is?

"There is not a human being in the world who isn't interested from one angle or another in guns. "

He's patently wrong. I'm a mother and I go to a local park with diverse visitors and most cringe when play turns to shoot em up fare. Most do not allow guns in toy form at all. It's an awkward wrongness to think about playing with or simulating using guns. Most kids do not have a fixation. Maybe Ted does and so he puts it on his kids, but most kids nowadays are not pushed into gunplay.

"Every child will want and every child will end up getting their hands on a gun. With that reality in mind, now what? Of course, I'll tell you what: You supervise their handling of fire, and gasoline and power tools and lawnmowers, and baseball bats, and vehicles, and guns. You supervise and train them and -- here we go again -- discipline them with a conscientious, safety approach towards all things that could be dangerous. "

Some boys want guns like crazy. You get them BB guns and entertain them under strict conditions. You don't train them to be responsible and trust them. You withhold these weapons from them. At all costs.

Ted spews platitudes that defy gravity: " . . . today we will do farm chores, we will use knives, we will use wheat-whips, we will use a lawnmower, we will go out and train with our guns -- but I see a gross lack of supervision in many households." Gross lack of supervision is an economic factor, not a philosophical or discipline oriented issue. He is isolated from such hard choices by his wealth which he denies with all his redneck come-on acceptability.

Ted's generalizations never cease to amaze me: "And when you have no discipline, tragedy is waiting to happen. "

Jeffrey MacDonald who slaughtered his pregnant wife and two baby girls was a Green Beret. Jeff Dahmer was in the army. Dale Pierre was in the Army. Robert Hanssen was in the CIA. G. Gordon Liddy worked for the highest office in the nation. So did Richard Nixon. The Menendez brothers were living a life of strict discipline before they blew their parents' heads off with shotguns. There are a great many child molesting Mormons out there. The Roman Catholic diocese promotes discipline on a level you couldn't choke on Ted but what have they done with that power? You're wrong. You're wrong about family, about the nation, about gun rights, about hunting, about family values, about rock and roll, about the ecology. But you'd never give it up.

Does the wild boy have no shame? Could he be that ignorant and homophobic?!

"You're in San Francisco, so you owe those people out there to enlighten them to these things that they have tried to distance themselves from. And they are paying for it: in the crime rate, in the AIDS rate, in the molestation rate, in the allowing-dog-to-kill-people rate." So Magic Johnson lived in San Francisco and so did Rock Hudson. So San Francisco is 'distancing' themselves from 'issues' that you are so sure are bringing them stupidly down? Do you think dog maulings are specific to San Fran? Do you think neo-Nazi's are? Do you know that every conceivable zip code is dense with registered sex offenders and do you raise the red flag about community notification? Why do parents have to go to a police station, not get a copy of but look at an outdated CD Rom which doesn't actually tell you the addresses of local paedophiles and rapists . . . only their zip codes? Because their rights have to be protected. Where's your outrage now, Ted? Oh, they're all in San Fran so it doesn't concern you?

Ted says no one who loves guns and hunting would ever use an Uzi. He never met my brother. My brother ploughed down a doe and her babies with a sub-machine gun, circa World War II Nazi Germany. He got away with it. He was raised with and on gun culture. My dad didn't approve. But they did look at him in awe because he bagged a deer every trip no matter what. He was more willing to sit still in the dark for hours than anyone else. He was also willing to shoot and mutilate and kill anything in the process.

Ted Nugent is a dangerous asshole because so many people think he's cool. He should've been met with harder questions. While his answers outline his persona, a challenge was called for.

The views expressed above represent the writer and not necessarily those of The Disinformation Company Ltd.