An animal rights activist who allegedly bumped and threatened Ted Nugent had all charges dropped due to insufficient evidence. Nugent claimed the activist bumped him outside of a Neiman Marcus before proceeding to threaten the rock star’s life. Unfortunately for Nugent, surveillance video from the store satisfied prosecutors that there was no physical contact between Nugent and the activist. Without the battery charge, prosecutors clearly thought any attempt to go after the activist on a veiled verbal threat would be very unlikely to succeed.
Now that this episode is apparently over, I just want to offer a brief commentary on Nugent himself. I was disappointed to see people on e-mail lists, web sites and elsewhere embracing Nugent as an important person in the fight against animal rights. This is a recipe for disaster.
To put it bluntly, Nugent is a nut case. Animal rights activists were already online distributing a long list of wonderful racist and sexist quotes Nugent has made over the years, and Nugent just cannot help but open his mouth and say something stupid. Just recently he had to pull out of a Kiss concert scheduled in Houston because while performing in Houston and San Antonio earlier in the year he went on rants about how people who come to America but don’t speak English should go back to the countries they came from. Lovely.
I would hope that if someone like John Rocker came out denouncing animal rights, that there would not be any stampede by anti-animal rights groups to embrace him, and Nugent is certainly cut from the same cloth as Rocker.