March 25, 2014 8:40 AM

Karma: When you deservedly become a pariah in your own backyard

Rocker Ted Nugent just made big bucks to not show up somewhere. The town of Longview, Texas paid Nugent $16,000 to not appear at the town’s Fourth of July Festival. According to KLTV, a city spokesman said Nugent was “not the right feel for this kind of community event.”…. The city had reached a verbal agreement with Nugent, scheduling the rocker as the headliner who would play inside the Maude Cobb Convention and Activity Center during the town’s Independence Day celebration. To break that agreement, the town paid Nugent half of his guaranteed performance fee of $32,000 from Maude Cobb’s annual budget.

It would be tempting to gloat about how Ted Nugent’s managed to become a pariah in east Texas, the epicenter of his constituency: angry White Conservatives who hate Liberals, gays, women, and/or anyone not like them. That he’s become so radioactive that even those who ostensibly support him feel it wise to keep their distance would seem to be a very good thing. Perhaps even racism, misogyny, and aggressive ignorance has its limits, eh? Except that even when someone as objectionable as Nugent suffers the consequences of his actions and beliefs, he’s laughing all the way to the bank. Getting paid for doing nothing; isn’t that straight out of the Book of Ted’s Seven Deadly Sins?

Longview may be telling Ted Nugent that they don’t want or need the controversy that trails in his wake, but taking that stand means having to pay Nugent to NOT show up. Nice work if you (can’t) get it, no? Being paid for doing no work would seem to be the very sort of “socialism” Nugent so despises. As we’ve seen so often, though, definitions like that are fungible and only apply to others, because when others get money for nothing, it’s the worst sort of government molly-coddling imaginable. When it happens to Nugent, it’s simply playing the games by the rules…and when you get to make your own rules, it’s always “the other guy” who deserves to be blamed for sloth and indolence.

Sometimes being a pariah pays pretty well. If you don’t care what others think of you- never a concern of Nugent’s- you can do pretty well for yourself (see Palin, Sarah). As a very wise man once told me: Love me, hate me…just don’t ignore me. In America, being ignored is the worst career move imaginable. so as long as people are paying attention to Nugent, however odious his views and actions may be, the money will continue rolling in (Which means I should stop contributing to the process).

So it’s ever been in America…and so it shall ever be.

blog comments powered by Disqus

Technorati

Technorati search

» Blogs that link here

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on March 25, 2014 8:40 AM.

Sure, men may be pigs...but how do you explain the women?? was the previous entry in this blog.

Today on "Great Moments in Unfortunate Ad Placement" is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Contact Me

Powered by Movable Type 5.2.6