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Ted Nugent: Threat to Obama, or harmless loudmouth?

Ted Nugent can expect a call from the Secret Service after saying at the NRA convention over the weekend that he'd be either 'dead or in jail' a year from now if Obama is reelected.

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Jon C. Hancock/AP
Musician Ted Nugent, shown here with Republican Senate candidate John Raese and Sarah Palin in 2010, said that he'd either be 'dead or in jail' a year hence if Obama is reelected.
  • By Peter Grier Staff writer

Rocker Ted Nugent is in trouble for remarks he made over the weekend about President Obama at the National Rifle Association’s convention in St. Louis. The Secret Service intends to contact him to ask what he meant when he said in an interview that “if Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

It’s not legal to threaten the nation’s chief executive, which is why the Secret Service is getting involved. Although Nugent’s remarks could also be interpreted as a threat to kill himself, if you ask us.

In the same interview the aging Motor City Madman Nugent called the liberal block of the Supreme Court “evil, anti-American people” and said the administration in general is “vile, evil, [and] America-hating.”

Is this a problem for presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney? After all, Mr. Nugent endorsed Mr. Romney in early March, shortly after the Michigan primary. At the time this earned a thumbs-up from Romney’s son Tagg, who said on his Twitter account that “Ted Nugent endorsed my Dad today. Ted Nugent? How cool is that?! He joins Kid Rock as great Detroit musicians on team Mitt!”

Today Tagg may be wishing his Dad had landed the coveted Bob Seger nod instead. Democrats were all over this today, calling on Romney to disown the comments of a rocker the Democratic National Committee referred to as a “Romney surrogate.”

Romney did so, issuing a statement through a spokeswoman that “divisive language is offensive no matter what side of the political aisle it comes from.”

What will be the upshot of all this? Perhaps, just perhaps it will mark a moment when Washington’s umbrage-generation machine finally jumped the shark. If you get our drift.

Ted Nugent, political surrogate? We’re not even sure Ted Nugent is a Ted Nugent surrogate. Twitter is swarming with comments on this uproar at the moment. Generally, they can be broken down into three categories:

1. Ted Nugent is still alive?

2. Ted Nugent is more of a threat to music than politics.

3. This doesn’t even make the list of Top Ten Crazy Ted Nugent Moments.

In regards to point 3, Nugent in 2003 hosted a VH1 reality show titled “Surviving Nugent,” in which urban celebrities visited him at his Michigan ranch near Jackson, 70 miles west of Detroit, and competed in typical Great Lakes State outdoors activities such as skinning a Russian boar.

This was successful enough to lead to a 2004 miniseries titled “Surviving Nugent: The Ted Commandments,” during which Nugent injured himself with a chainsaw during filming in Texas.

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