Nugent has had sex with teens, writes songs about raping tweens and somehow still campaigns with ‘family values’ candidates.
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Another campaign appearance, another Ted Nugent controversy. Mainstream Republicans and everyone to their left are appalled. But no one is surprised. Nugent’s incendiary rhetoric (read: infamous idiocy) is, at this point, expected and tiresome. It has become difficult to muster the outrage.
More unfortunate is that these incidents have had the unintended side effect of protecting Nugent from a far bigger character issue. In fact, in the case of Nugent, we have even come to see alleged child sexual abuse as some sort of eccentricity or harmless vice. Can you imagine anyone else who had been accused of having sex with a 12-year-old, written a song about raping a 13-year-old and adopted a 17-year-old so that he could have sex with her going on to campaign alongside all the most conservative “family values” candidates?
When Ted Nugent was 32 years old, he released the song “Jailbait.” Here’s a taste of the lyrics (written by him):
“Well, I don’t care if you’re just thirteen
You look too good to be true
I just know that you’re probably clean
…
Jailbait you look fine, fine, fine
…
It’s quite alright, I asked your mama
Wait a minute officer
Don’t put those handcuffs on me
Put them on her and I’ll share her with youDon’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free
The albums’ next track is titled “I Am a Predator.” I’m not kidding.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not above a really sick joke. In fact, I love them. I even think that pedophile joke in Eternal Sunshine is kinda funny and it’s supposed to be bad.
But this one isn’t funny–especially coming from Nugent.
Two years before recording “Jailbait,” Ted Nugent had the novel idea of becoming legal guardian to a 17-year-old girl, so that they could have sex without, you know, her parents having legal recourse. They acquiesced. “I guess they figured better Ted Nugent than some drug-infested punk in high school,” he told VH1, years later. In the same documentary, he claimed to have had several relationships with young girls, and seems to brag about gaining their parents’ approval, too. (Though he didn’t go so far as to adopt any of them.)
That sounds… an awful lot like that line in “Jailbait.” You know, the one just before he urges the cop to handcuff the girl so they can both rape her. Wrap your mind around that for a moment: the man wrote, recorded and released a semi-autobiographical pedophile joke. And then campaigned with Rick Perry.
Okay, okay. 17 is not 13. I’m not going to pretend that it is, or that an adult relationship with a 17-year-old is proof that someone is a hebephile who will have sex with a 13-year-old. It isn’t a good sign, and is often illegal, but interest in post-pubescent girls is hardly an indicator that someone likes to have sex with pre-pubescent girls. Let’s face it: all of your favorite rock stars from days gone by were having sex with underage groupies. And almost every man who isn’t a rock star has at least unwittingly fantasized about doing it. (The most common word in porn titles is “teen,” and if you think that all of those teens are really of legal age, you are incredibly naïve.)
Nugent, for his part, described himself to VH1 as “girl addicted.” “Recently,” his wife writes on her website, “we have discovered four more adult children Ted had from previous relationships.”
“Previous relationships.” Not, “his long-time hobby of siring groupie bastards.” That wouldn’t be very “family values.”
How can anyone be seen on a campaign stage with a man with this sort of personal history? What is wrong with these people?
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But we have pretty good reason, even beyond the autobiographical details, to believe that the choice of 13 in “Jailbait” is not entirely comedic exaggeration. For example, Courtney Love claims to have performed oral sex on Nugent when she was twelve and a half. When pressed, an uncharacteristically somber Love elaborated, “I didn’t have breasts yet… it’s sick.” This would have been around the time of Nugent’s twenty-ninth birthday.
I encourage anyone to listen to that (NSFW) interview. It isn’t leveled as some sort of angry allegation. Love comes across as fairly reluctant to reveal her age at the time of the incident. In fact, she seems to feel shame about it. (Which, of course, she should not.)
To be clear: Nugent says that he does not remember the incident with Love. He is not guilty just because he is accused. That is an incredibly serious allegation and, given that recollections are clouded by a haze of three decades and god knows how many drugs, it is to be taken with a grain of salt.
Still, he doesn’t say, “Because I wouldn’t have had sex with a twelve-year-old.” He just denies recalling it. That’s very disturbing. I’ve met 30-year-olds who could pass for 15 and 15-year-olds who could pass for 30, but I have never met a 12-year-old girl who could pass for 18. Puberty is pretty key in that regard. Rather than deny that he would have done it, Ted Nugent wrote a semi-autobiographical novelty song about how they’d have liked to.
Imagine for a moment that Ted Nugent is not widely known as king of the inbred. Imagine, instead, that he is an attorney in Manhattan. Or Bono. Or that, instead of Courtney Love, he was accused of receiving oral sex from a 12-year-old boy. And then recording a song about how he’s really into that. After adopting a 17-year-old so he could have sex with her. Would governors and congressmen hit the campaign trail with that guy? Would they send their children to his “Kamp for Kids”–and professional snipers? What would they say about almost any other man? They wouldn’t call him a creep or a redneck. They’d call him a pedophile.
Instead, Nugent is embraced as some sort of down-home firebrand. He’s a redneck rock star; sex with kids is just part of the package! Sarah Palin says that if a candidate “is good enough for Ted Nugent, he is good enough for me!” Congressmen invite him to the State of the Union. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is attacked (in a fairly convoluted way) for associating with Ronan Farrow. How can anyone be seen on a campaign stage with a man with this sort of personal history? What is wrong with these people?
So the next time Ted Nugent says something horrible (and there will be a next time,) I encourage you to stay focused on the big picture. You know, that one of the little girl in handcuffs.
I did not know any of this. I could have done well in the music industry but the people grossed me out. Glad I left.
Ted’s long history of disrespect for animals and people is not something that Maine hunting should be associated with. Tell Ted that the cruel practices he supports (baiting, hounding, and trapping bears) have no place in Maine. http://fairbearhunt.com/tell-ted
Lets cut to the quick- the reason this story is coming up is because of the Governors race in Texas. Wendy is still going to lose. It won’t even be close. You can try to chalk it up to whatever reason makes you feel good (sexism! misogyny!) but the core reasons are simple: her background is sketchy, her positions (where she has managed to articulate something) change like the wind, and her “fame” is based on a incredibly divisive issue where her position resonates with the bluest parts of the blue cities in the bluest of the blue states but… Read more »
As another, related issue, read the lyrics to “Stranglehold. ” Way to glorify domestic violence, Teddy. I won’t even mention how he dodged the draft…
The other issue at play here is that of celebrity endorsements. To me, any political candidate from any party that stands beside any rock star/Hollywood A-B-or C lister as a way of trying to win votes, is just as vile as voters who vote for that candidate for the same reason.
I agree with you. The fact that celebrity endorsements mean ANYTHING is ridiculous in most cases. Sometimes you run into celebrities who have truly put their money where their mouth is (Bono is one good example) but otherwise I cannot fathom caring about celebrity endorsements.
Mr. Womack, I appreciate your mostly well-written article exposing the character of Ted Nugent, and I find myself in agreement and solidarity with your outrage concerning his “darlingship” among right wing nut cases. However, I really wish you hadn’t marred an otherwise highly useful piece by seriously flawed generalizations of “all… rock stars”, and “almost every man”. Such generalizations, unfortunately, render the piece less effective by venturing into the very same extremist realms of the nut cases you address in the piece. I certainly don’t have any proof that “all rock stars” haven’t had sex with underage groupies, but, you… Read more »
Not meant to shock at all. I would ask you to read the reply to Erin’s comment above.
Nugent and the NRA are the biggest domestic terrorist group in the United States, maybe the world. They love their guns more than people. With politicians in their pockets all we can do is brace ourselves for the next NRA sponsored slaughter. The policies and laws created by The NRA killed the kids in Newtown and allowed the vigilante George Zimmerman to murder Trayvon Martin. Back ground checks, that the NRA strongly oppose, would help keep guns out of the hands of unstable people preventing many deaths. STAND YOUR GROUND is nothing more than a license to legally hunt and… Read more »
Are you serious? Or was this a tongue in cheek?
Tom, I was thinking it must be a full moon
How Ted? The same way that John Holdren is now science czar under President Obama, when he advocated forced abortion for forced all out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Stop right now acting shocked at Nugent, who has no power, until the top presidential science advisor recieves equal treatment in ernest.
By the way, Nugent is also strongly pro-abortion, and how in the world is that pro-family?
I am totally baffled by the idiocy of all involved. I can’t even get my head around why anyone would associate with him to begin with. And it’s horrifying that he’s hasn’t been arrested yet. I really don’t get it. And yes, if this had been about 12/13 year old boys…or other underaged boys, I don’t think it would be accepted at all. But I am most bothered by this comment: “all of your favorite rock stars from days gone by were having sex with underage groupies. And almost every man who isn’t a rock star has at least unwittingly… Read more »
Perhaps you are putting too much effort into the word fantasized”. I don’t think the author meant that every man has planned out the van based abduction of middle school girls so much as the idea that a pretty young girl in a pretty outfit walking through the crosswalk may be more of a distraction than we would like to admit.
To be clear: I am not saying that most men are predatory toward young girls. What I am saying is this: We live in a culture in which nearly all men consume pornography. The porn industry, like our culture in general, is obsessed with youth. (If you follow the link to that study, you’ll see that the average age of a “MILF” in porn is just 31.) It also has a terrible reputation when it comes to sneaking in underage models, sometimes very popular ones. Remember that Traci Lords appeared in the same issue of Penthouse as the Vanessa Williams… Read more »
It has been perfectly normal for people to be attracted to people that are sexually mature or blossoming sexually long before the invention of pornography, or any technology for that matter.
Absolutely. But I feel like this is an easy way to point that out–to say, “You’re doing it all the time and don’t even know it.”
And, for the record, women do it, too. I recall a few years back some controversy over websites counting down the days until Justin Bieber became “legal.”
And that twilight moms meme, Greers Beautiful Boy book, Eve Enslers “good rape”, frequent media stories about female teacher and underage boys … the only reason Nugent is getting a hard time here are his political affiliations, his maleness and the femaleness of the subjects.
nat, If, say, a female country star were endorsing Rick Perry and going around with him on tour, and she had written a song about raping a 13 year-old (statutory, but still rape) and then was admittedly having a sexual relationship with a 17 year-old when she was an adult, AND was accused by a major celebrity of engaging in sexual acts with a 12 year-old boy I GUARANTEE you there would be hell to pay. To say there wouldn’t be is ridiculous. Just completely absurd. Yes, there is a double standard about male victims of female perpetrators and it… Read more »
Yeah, no, female teachers go to jail for sex acts with boys older than 12 all the time. The Ensler comparison is incredibly off-base. Ensler, herself a victim of horrific sexual abuse, has (as far as I know) no history of sex with minors. The monologue was based on interviews and is largely concerned with the enduring trauma of childhood sexual abuse. It’s just… insanely off-base to make that comparison. As for Greer, I’ve never actually looked through Boy, but it’s been my understanding that (while she likes to court controversy,) it was focused on beauty, not sexual exploitation. I… Read more »
“But when you start saying things about how almost every man has fantasized being with an underage girl, what does that say about men? What does that say about how men view and treat girls and women? And honestly, statements like that, coming from a man himself, make me angry toward men. There is a literal sick feeling in my heart. And I have to wonder what in the world is wrong with them too.” You’ll probably find a lot of women also have had fantasizes of underaged males. What is the age we’re using here though? Where I am,… Read more »
Holy shit! This was a little triggering, but I have to thank you for the well-researched article. Not that I was a fan, or even paying much attention, but it’s nice to get a little background on someone who’s been a recent topic of conversation. Having sex with teenagers is bad for their development. It can be tempting, especially when they seem mature, but ultimately it’s better for everyone to just leave them alone. Pre-pubescent is even more damaging. I was raped at that age and it took me a long time to understand the way that shaped my expectations… Read more »