Conservative closet cases

Cat scratch cleaver: The secret to always being right, Bites learned long ago, is never admitting you’re wrong. That’s been rock guitarist Ted Nugent’s MO for more than 40 years, and the Michigan madman was in rare form last week as his “Love Grenade 2007 Shrapnel Tour” passed through the Jackson Rancheria.

It seems the Nuge, now more renown for his hunting and culinary capabilities (see Kill It & Grill It, co-penned with wife Shemane) and conservative ideology (see Gods, Guns and Rock & Roll) than his alleged musical prowess, has taken to stalking the stage with an automatic weapon, inviting various Democratic politicians (Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama) to “suck on my machine gun.”

Bites presumes that Uncle Ted is shooting blanks, and that taken in the context of a rock ’n’ roll performance, his oral invitations merely symbolize unhappiness with those who refuse to bow to his superior intellect, rather than constitute genuine death threats against front-running presidential candidates, as suggested by members of the left-wing blogosphere. Nugent insists that he’s just misunderstood by his detractors.

“I am almost Ward Cleaver-ish, but with more guns and enthusiasm,” the frequent killer of small animals claimed in a recent interview.

Nugent, pussy cat? Pussy is more like it. Bites has not forgotten how Deadly Tedly, a fervent booster of the war in Iraq, avoided the draft during the Vietnam era by refusing to bathe for weeks and then rubbing himself with his own feces before reporting for his induction physical. Give the other animal a gun, and Mr. Double Live Gonzo shivers in the corner with the rest of his cowardly conservative cronies, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, et al.

No doubt the draft-dodging gun nut’s failure to serve when called upon will become an issue if he ever decides to carry out his oft-repeated threat to seek Michigan’s gubernatorial nomination. Bites predicts this will never come to pass. Nugent once gripped the world in a stranglehold. Now he’s just choking his chicken.

Pass the potato: Speaking of two-faced conservative poultry pullers, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig receives this week’s “Do as I say, not as I do” award for taking hypocrisy to new heights, in his case the glory hole in the men’s room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport last June.

Craig, according to the undercover police officer occupying the stall next to the senator, attempted to engage in conduct decidedly counter to his support for the Defense of Marriage Act, his opposition to declaring gay bashing a hate crime and his endorsements from homophobic wingnuts such as American Family Association, Concerned Women for American and the Family Research Council.

When will they ever learn? Craig, a former rancher and a married father of three grown children, has been dogged by allegations that he’s gay since the early 1980s. Now he has the disorderly conduct conviction to prove it. He’s already resigned as senatorial liaison for presidential aspirant Mitt Romney’s campaign, and calls for his resignation from Congress are coming from conservative quarters.

Too bad Craig didn’t follow the lead of conservative icon Barry Goldwater, who realized that keeping government out of the bedroom—whether you’re straight, gay or whatever—is a conservative value. Instead, phony conservatives like Craig and the loathsome Ronald Reagan hitched their wagons to the Religious Right, betraying the very cause that brought them to power. You reap what you sew, as Republicans from Rep. Mark Foley to Craig can attest. Goldwater, who passed away in 1998, is no doubt rolling in his grave, which probably beats trolling the men’s room in Minneapolis. At least if you get caught, anyway.