Ted Nugent Resigns From NRA Board Over “Scheduling Conflicts”
After 26 years and one theme song (“I Am the NRA”), Ted Nugent has resigned from the board of the National Rifle Association.
According to Bloomberg, a July 29 memo from NRA General Counsel John Frazer cites “ongoing scheduling conflicts” as the cause of The Nuge’s resignation.
Which is, in my opinion, total bullshit.
For one thing, Ted Nugent loves guns more than fish love water. Blabbermouth notes that he called the NRA “the most important civil rights organization in the world” less than a year ago. Ted Nugent resigning from the NRA board under any circumstances would be like Slash renouncing top hats. It just doesn’t make much sense.
For another thing… “ongoing scheduling conflicts”? What fucking conflicts are those? Ted Nugent has enough free time on his hand to constantly livestream horseshit right wing propaganda online but not to keep doing whatever the fuck it is he does as a member of the NRA board? This is a dude who recently headlined a grocery store. A town in Texas — TEXAS!!! — paid him $16K not to play. I just don’t buy that this guy is wanting for free time… and, again, I don’t buy that in under a year, he went from seeing the NRA as “the most important civil rights organization in the world” to something for which he simply has no time.
For another another thing, Nugent was recently named the national spokesperson for a group called Hunter Nation, “the fastest growing grassroots organization in the country dedicated to protecting the rights of hunters” [massive eye roll]. Which, again, suggests he has time for the NRA… but it also makes me wonder if there wasn’t some money issue involved here. Like, maybe Hunter Nation outbid the NRA for exclusive rights to Nugent’s anus-mouth. Maybe not. But maybe.
Speaking of money — the last reason I don’t buy the “scheduling conflicts” chestnut is because, as Bloomberg notes, the NRA is currently in the midst of a pickle:
“[Nugent’s] departure comes at a time when the NRA is facing declining revenues and rising legal costs related to several court battles, including a failed bid earlier this year to use a federal bankruptcy filing to move from New York to Texas. It’s now defending a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has accused the nonprofit and top executives of misappropriating assets and called for its dissolution.”
Meanwhile, just yesterday, The New Yorker ran a piece about how in 2013, then-NRA head Wayne LaPierre and his wife, Susan, illegally shipped parts of elephants they shot in Botswana back to the U.S. to be turned into furniture.
So that’s another PR nightmare the NRA can’t shoot their way out of.
My general point is that Ted Nugent is a coward and it’s possible he has enthusiastically leapt from what he perceives to be a sinking ship.
And while it’s hard for me to imagine the NRA just going away, it’s easy for me to imagine Teddy not wanting to be around when subpoenas start getting handed out. Not that resigning from the board will save him from being investigated and deposed. But it will much easier to flip on his former friends if they’re technically not his friends anymore.
The Nuge made headlines earlier this week when he announced that he won’t be getting the COVID-19 vaccine despite having previously contracted COVID-19 and admitting that it made him so sick “I thought I was dying.” His decision seems to be based largely on idiocy, as all of his decisions are.
