People often come up to me on the street and say “Hey Sam, nice to meet ya, read ya every fortnight, the wife loves ya, but tell me one thing – do Lance Turnpike of southern-fried boogie meisters Foghat or Handsome Dick Manitoba of Noo Yawk gangbusters The Dictators or even the self-styled axeman who ate Detroit, Ted “The Fuckin’ Nuge” Nugent…do these guys really exist, or are they just figments of your insanely fertile mind, Sam, sir, please?”.

Least that’s what I imagine they’d say if they ever got the chance. But they never do. Because at the first sign of a member of the great unwashed attempting to enter my personal space, one of my burly minders steps forward and crushes the offender’s head like a watermelon, making sure of course that none of the squishy brain bits spurt onto my carefully tailored suit.

Nevertheless, it’s a good question, the precise answers to which are perhaps, certainly and absolutely. For proof of the latter, I bring readers’ attention this week to an American pop culture and current affairs publication called Razor and, specifically, the January 2002 edition of the magazine. Here among features on cars, fashion, sport and Bob Geldof you will find an article entitled ‘Pray For Peace’ written by my old buddy Ted Nugent.

Never before has Sam Snort yielded up his column space to another but I think that any reader of hotpress who ever doubted Ted’s integrity – never mind his actual existence – would do well to reflect on these thoughtful words which were penned in the aftermath of September 11th. And remember kids, none of the extended highlights which follow is fictitious.

Commie Junglepunks

“OK, I’m really good and pissed off now,” Edward begins, before going on to explain how much more pissed off he is now compared to times when he was pretty pissed off in the past. “I was plenty pissed off when America acted like some spineless little dink and lost the Vietnam War…How on God’s good green earth the United States of America could conceivably allow a bunch of voodoo inspired commie junglepunks to kick ass on this great nation is a source of eternal embarrassment for this guitar player.”

The guitar player wasn’t much impressed with the anti-war movement either, it appears.

“The protestors were all stoned, mindless zombies with some LSD peace & love bullshit hippie musical inspiration by some hysterically hypocritical Rolls Royce collecting guru asshole claiming that all ya need is love! Yeah, right. Then why all the artillery, kids? Why all the slavery and voodoo Buddha religious bullshit? Why the shitty rice and bug diet?”

Ted doesn’t rate past US presidents to highly either. Jimmy Carter “sat around with his thumb up his ass for 2 fuckin’ years while US citizens were tortured in Iran at the hands of unclean Third World stupid college pricks”.

And Bill Clinton (hilariously renamed by The Nuge, ‘Billydog Clintonista’) “pretends to get tough on terrorism by haphazardly shelling Afghanistan mountains and blowing up a corner drugstore in Somalia, all to distract everyone from his pathetic lifestyle of abusing elected office power to abuse women and his little Oval Office blowjob games. Good work, asswipe bastard. Who d’ya think ya are, a rock star or something.”

Not wishing to take away from the Nuge’s righteous anger here or anything, but might he be confusing Somalia with Sudan? No matter, he has bigger fish to fry.

“Because of our miserable, failed, bend-over-and-take-it foreign policy, I am more angry at America than I am at the Muslim zealots who attacked and slaughtered inocent Americans. We know they’re assholes. We know they live to kill Americans. We are too spoiled to face discomforting reality. We’re too busy working on giving animal rights in between the BBQs… We are fat, crybaby, spoiled brats who take our freedoms and American lifestyle for granted. We actually give credence to imbeciles like Jesse Jackson that pimps, whores and welfare brats have the right to support cheques while the majority of ass-busting working Americans continue to have our paycheques raped and pillaged because some pathetic members of society refuse to be productive. We have got to tell the animal’s rights fools to shut the fuck up!”

Way to go, fuckin’ Nuge!

Recidivist Monsters

Lest we forget, of course, this piece is entitled ‘Pray For Peace’ and to be fair to my old friend, he does finish off by petitioning the lord in ways that I think the reader will find moving and profound.

For example: “I pray that judges will not allow good cops to lose their lives because the Malice Greens, Rodney Kings and other recidivist monsters of society have more rights than others”.

(En passant, I wonder if this Rodney King is by any chance related to the similarly named Rodney King who had 57 shades of shit beaten out of him by the LAPD?).

For another example: “I pray that the leadership words of President George W. Bush will turn into leadership action by killing all terrorists and destroying all their lands.”

For yet another example: I pray that all cops and military personnel and law-abiding citizens will be allowed and encouraged to carry guns nationwide”.

And, finally, surely the definitive example of meaningful supplication on the part of a man – hell, a guitar player – moved by true horror at human suffering: “I pray the Internal Revenue Service is stopped from its unjust ways and eliminated”.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you – The Fuckin’ Nuge. Bono, please copy.