You can’t pick your neighbors

There are times, more than I can to admit, where I feel sorry for President George W. Bush. I might not have voted for him (twice), I have a personal reason for my distaste of the man (it involves my son at 10) and I disagree with almost everything in the political arena that he preaches.
But … I have plenty of empathy for him in different areas.
I can understand if there are times when he just sits and shakes his head uncontrollably about the actions of his twin daughters, one of who is extremely … “precocious.” As the father of two teenage girls myself, I find the stories I hear about what they’ve done, what they want to do and what they think is reality in the world today forces my head to spin like little Linda Blair in the original “The Exorcist.”
Green pea soup and all.
I can also sympathize with President Bush on the home front … literally the HOME front. When he was running for President, and with a small inkling that he would need a little more space to talk walks hand-in-hand with billionaire Saudi princes, the Bush family bought a ranch near the central Texas town of Crawford, just outside of Waco.
Lyndon B. Johnson held conferences and important meetings at his Stonewall ranch (where Lady Bird still resides to this day) and W.’s dad, faked a residence in the Houstonian complex in Houston while the real “second” home was in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Bush II wants to retire to Texas, where his lukewarm financial fortune and his astonishing political fortune was made. The Crawford ranch will be where the President writes his memoirs, schedules his lectures and worries about those twins on a daily basis.
Alas, not all is sweet fortune. In life, you cannot pick the family to which you are born into and you really can’t choose your neighbors. Such is the case in Crawford, Texas for President George W. Bush.
Two years ago, after the Bush purchase, along comes one Theodore “Ted” Nugent, a refugee from southeastern Michigan and aficionado of rock and roll. To say that Mr. Nugent is less than the normal neighbor would be akin to saying Michael Jackson’s definition of “sleepover” is slightly askew. He is, in his own words, a “madman.”
“The Nuge” has been playing high voltage rock and roll guitar since the mid-1960s with a legendary Detroit group, the Amboy Dukes, whose lone hit was the drug-addled “Journey to the Center of Your Mind.” As a young boy growing up in the Motor City, that was one of the defining tunes of summertime in southern Michigan.
Subsequent hits have included “Cat Scratch Fever” (which was NOT about felines), “Stranglehold” (which was NOT about pro wrestling) and “Wango Tango” (which was NOT about Spanish dancing). They were about Nugent’s favorite subject – sex. He claims not to have done drugs or alcohol, but he made and lost a fortune to one thing – women. Lots of them. As in addicted to them. Any of them.
Not sure these hits are programmed into Bush’s workout Ipod.
Nugent made a mild comeback in the 1990s with the group, “Damn Yankees,” which included Tommy Shaw (ex-Styx) and Jack Blades (ex-Night Ranger). Their big hit was “Can You Take Me Higher,” and in concert, Nugent had this funny habit of shooting a flaming arrow from the stage to the back of the participating arenas. Luckily, he was good enough with the apparatus so that no one was hurt during his William Tell moments.
A total rebel who looked like a old hippie, hunted form game that he ate on his southeastern Michigan ranch and espoused right-wing political viewpoints, Nugent has kept his name in front of the public hawking cookbooks and spewing anything that crossed his mind to buddies like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Why THIS entertainer was SO enlightened compared to other, more educated, people is obvious. It was the message, not the messenger.
So it must have been curious last month when Nugent, of all people, appeared in Houston, at the National Rifle Association convention, walking onto the stage with assault rifles in each hand, with these nuggets of wisdom for the audience:
“No one is allowed at our barbecues unless they are an NRA member.”
“The whole world suck, but America sucks less, and we can eliminate that sucking sound altogether if we would actually be hardcore, radical extremists, hardcore radical extremists, demanding the right to self-defense.”
“Remember the Alamo! Shoot ‘em! To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want ‘em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot ‘em.”
I’m sure that might strikes a friendly chord out there until you ask yourselves, “Who elected THIS confessed sex fiend to be our universal sheriff, judge and jury?”
Answer? Not you, not I and not the President. Because you just can’t choose your neighbors these days.
Chuck Bloom can also be reached at chuckbloom2003@yahoo.com.