As former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) considers another national campaign, he’s releasing a new book, “Gods, Guns, Grits and Gravy,” with some provocative content. The former Fox News host writes, in reference to airport security, “After years of this indignity, much of the flying public thinks little of it, and they usually don’t complain. They just dutifully stand there, bend over, and take it like a prisoner.”
In light of Huckabee’s rape joke, it seemed rather ironic that the same book complains about Beyonce and Jay-Z for promoting sexually suggestive entertainment.
Indeed, it turns out Huckabee has a certain preoccupation with the superstars.
Potential 2016 candidate Mike Huckabee seems to be dedicating a disproportionate amount energy to criticizing pop star Beyonce.In a recent interview with People magazine, Huckabee skewers President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama’s parenting skills because they allow their teenage daughters Malia and Sasha to listen to the “Drunk In Love” singer.
Huckabee concedes in the interview that the Obamas “are excellent and exemplary parents in many ways,” but added, “I don’t understand how on one hand they can be such doting parents and so careful about the intake of everything — how much broccoli they eat and where they go to school and making sure they’re kind of sheltered and shielded from so many things — and yet they don’t see anything that might not be suitable for either a preteen or a teen in some of the lyrical content and choreography of Beyonce, who has sort of a regular key to the door [of the White House].”
I continue to think it’s a shame when the right tries to bring the president’s children into the political debate. For that matter, given Huckabee’s apparent ambitions, it’s probably not a great idea for a politician to keep going after one of the most popular and accomplished entertainers in the world.
But even putting that aside, seeing Huckabee complain about the propriety of Beyonce’s work quickly led me to a very different question: isn’t this the guy who pals around with Ted Nugent?
Andrew Kaczynski was thinking along the same lines:
[T]he former Arkansas Governor has performed a sexually charged song on his Fox News show. Huckabee played the bass for singer Ted Nugent on the song Cat Scratch Fever.Here are some of the lyrics to the song: “Well, I make the pussy purr with the stroke of my hand; they know they gettin’ it from me. They know just where to go when they need their lovin’ man; they know I’m doin’ it for free.”
And that’s just, to borrow Huckabee’s phrasing, “some of the lyrical content” that conservative families watching Fox News might find questionable — it doesn’t even get to Nugent’s political rhetoric.
To be sure, Ted Nugent has the right to say (or sing) whatever he wants, whether I find it offensive or not. For that matter, Mike Huckabee has the right to associate with extremist figures if he wants to.
But when Huckabee decides he’s in a position to give lectures on the propriety of entertainment after performing “Cat Scratch Fever” with Ted “the president is a subhuman mongrel” Nugent, he should probably understand why it’s difficult to take him seriously.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."