Ted Nugent is mad as hell, and he's not going to take any more...Disney sympathisers.  He makes this loud and clear in one of his infamously blunt articles - this one taken from Entertainment Weekly.  Nugent bleeds profusely about how The Mouse has led to the degradation of human rights.

Ted Nugent is completely at home with nature and the out-of-doors.  Fond of outdoor sport and game, he advocates responsible hunting, the First and Second Amendments, and gun safety.  So it is inevitable that Walt Disney's Bambi would infuriate Mister Nugent - not so much the movie itself, but how it has come to brainwash the American public.
 
 

"As soon as fluffy little Thumper opens his cute mouth, all thinking people should come to the bold realisation, THIS IS ONLY A FUCKING MOVIE!" he says.
 
 

Nugent attempts to make it perfectly apparent that Disney's animated films and reality are as congruent as epoxy and Vaseline.  Bleeding-heart PETA advocates who base their anti-hunting stands upon a non-existent character frustrate him.

"I've heard Bambi's name raised at state wildlife hearings, and I've wanted to hang my head and weep.  Only an idiot would attempt to establish policy based on a cartoon character.  It totally reduces the value of our true natural resources.  It's like using Elmer Fudd as a role model."

I agree with Uncle Ted one-hundred percent.  Put forth so frankly, the notion certainly does seem ridiculous.  Where does one stop when basing real-life issues upon fiction?  In 1992, Dan Quayle lambasted Murphy Brown for moral degeneracy because she decided to become a single mother.  Quayle's argument may have been more grounded and rhetorically sound had Murphy Brown been a real person.  And Quayle, once again, became the laughingstock of the nation.  What next, the banning of the anvil?

What if a proposal bill came up before the Senate to ban pornography - not based upon an actual incident, but rather because Lenny in the movie Strange Days was almost killed by bad guys for witnessing a sexual atrocity that resulted in murder?  Nugent's argument is rooted in this query, and rightly so.  The hypothetical anti-porn bill certainly wouldn't be passed solely on those grounds, so why in the world would people expect to get anywhere by dropping Bambi's name?  Fictional characters reflect ourselves and our actions, not vice-versa.  Ted Nugent does not express this so delicately, but the fundamentals are the same.  He is angry because people confuse images with reality, and use them to determine and formulate public policy. Powerful though these images may be, they are ultimately fictional.

Bambi, by Felix Salten is an entirely different tale than the sugarcoated Disney version (no surprise there).  Like Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, or Jack London's Call of the Wild, the author anthropomorphises the animal protagonists in order to gain an alternate perspective of what the life of an animal must be like.  A creative endeavour, indeed.  Salten's Bambi examines the realities of nature and life through the eyes of a deer. Man's role is criticised, but still accepted as another natural threat, such as starvation or mountain lions.  In truth, we humans have no clue as to what a deer thinks or feels.  Nugent argues that is is absurd for people to go about trying to make others socially consious of something that never even happened in real life.  In short, Nugent is appalled and nauseated by watching society allow itself to be dictated by a cartoon.

Let me re-iterate this.  My father is a museum curator, and he frequently travels to grammar schools to talk to kids about history.  Most of the kids in a particular second-grade class he visited had just seen the movie Titanic.  Most of their questions dealt with "Rose" and "Jack."  Being young tots, they had absolutely no conception of reality versus romance.  Because the Titanic was a real vessel. these children naturally assumed that Rose and Jack must have been real, too.  This innocence becomes ignorance when people carry these misconceptions into adulthood.  And THAT is why Ted Nugent is so disgusted.  How can people be that STUPID?

Nugent knows reality like the viewfinder on his semi.  He knows that nature is not about wide-eyed bunnies and deer frolicking  by the pond with butterflies fluttering about gaily and a catchy treacle-sweet soundtrack.  No - old Ted is all about the starkness and harsh reality of nature.  He LIVES amongst these woodland creatures in a sylvan arsenal somewhere in upper Michigan.  Ted Nugent is profoundly frustrated by the naïveté of those who know nothing about Darwinism, or even living in the forest.

Animals overpopulate, they starve, and they subsequently appear in places where they should not be.  Deer that cause five-car pileups are fleeing the woods in search of food for the adorable fawns back home in the cosy thicket.  Well - at least in Disney's world.  Disney ALSO neglects to inform us that Bambi is a genetic abnormality, as deer generally give birth to twins.  This is Nugent's point: this subverted perversion numbs a society so much that reality slips from its fingers and the public mindlessly accepts the absurd.  'Hunters equal bad; cute bunny with long eyelashes equals good.'  Life is more complicated than this; at all levels.  Darwinism, or survival of the fittest, is evident in all of them.  I strongly uphold the sacredness of imagination and creativity. As humans, it is necessary to explore and express ourselves as a species.  It is when the twain meet between fiiction and reality, however, where people become confused.  Nugent's article focuses upon these false conceptions.

Morally speaking, it is even more inhumane to allow an animal to live under such atrocious conditions, such as starvation.  Nugent is aware of these truths, which is why he is so adament about lifting the Disney veil that has clouded the public's perceptions.  Put those poor animals out of their misery!  But god forbid the bunny gets shot.
"If you want nature, turn on the Discovery Channel," sayeth The Motor City Madman..

This social commentary is cleverly disguised as a critical analysis for a popular culture magazine.  This is not a snipe at Disney itself, but rather an insight on the absurdity of popular culture today.  Ted Nugent utterly fulfills his intentions by pleading with the reader to wake up and smell the coffee, and to stop being led astray by this rubbish.  Indeed, Mister Sweet Pootang succeeds.