The Bigot Doug TenNapel and his friend Mike Nelson

Like most of humanity, I’m spending more time indoors these days, watching more movies, playing more games, reading more, and so on. Yay pandemic.

Recently, I started checking out some Rifftrax commentaries that are available on Amazon. For those who aren’t aware, Rifftrax is a show of sorts that offers humorous commentary tracks for bad movies, done by Kevin Murphy, Scott Corbett, and Mike Nelson, all of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame.

I started to watch the Birdemic one. It opened with a slightly racist joke about Korean drivers, but I shrugged it off. But it got me wondering about Mike Nelson. Mike is a conservative Christian who votes republican exclusively. While he’s a private guy who doesn’t give interviews about his politics very often, he has mentioned this in the past. I was curious to see if he had any takes on the recent events (COVID, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter…choose one, it’s been a hell of a year). I scoped out Twitter, but he doesn’t seem to have a Twitter.

He does have a podcast though.

*heaviest breath of my life*

He has a podcast with the bigot Doug TenNapel.

I’ve written about the bigot Doug TenNapel before. Most notably, I wrote about how the bigot Doug TenNapel hates LGBT people. But trust me, the bigot Doug TenNapel also hates women. The bigot Doug TenNapel also seems to hate the environment, but that’s not a bigoted viewpoint, just a suicidal one. I don’t want to summarize all the horrible things that the bigot Doug TeNapel has said about LGBT people. You can read that post (and this one) to get up to speed.

I knew that Mike Nelson had a professional relationship with Doug TenNapel. He’s done voiceover work for at least one of Doug’s games. At the time, I wasn’t a fan of that, but that’s not the kind of thing I’m going to hang over a person’s head. We’ve all done work with people who may have had viewpoints we disagreed with, even racist, sexist, or homophobic viewpoints. We can’t be plugged in 24/7 to what they say, do, or think. And besides, I don’t know Mike Nelson’s financial situation. I would hate to shit on someone for taking work if it turned out they really needed it. To see Mike working with Doug was a bummer for me, but whatever, not a deal breaker.

But then there’s this podcast…

It’s called Audio Mullet, and has been around since March of last year. The podcast features Mike Nelson, the bigot Doug TenNapel and someone named Ethan Nicolle, who wrote a comic called Axe Cop and currently writes for unfunny satire site Babylon Bee. A lot of the episodes are centered around faith, since all three of them are extremely Christian. They talk about things like saving yourself for marriage, balancing your faith and your art, morality, counter-arguments to Atheism, stuff like that. But, given that they are three straight, white, old, Christian men, they also complain about stuff those kids today talk about, like how no one can use plastic straws anymore, their problems with the phrase “toxic masculinity,” and how feminism is really bad. There’s also an episode where the bigot Doug TenNapel addresses accusations that he’s a homophobe. (Mike’s not on that one). I skipped that one. I don’t care to hear the bigot Doug TenNapel defend himself. I got that podcast in angry email form seven years ago.

Recent episodes have gotten much more topical and political though. Because, well, duh.

I’ve skimmed these.

On an episode entitled “Tom Hanks Is The White Denzel,” Doug and Ethan (Mike is absent) discuss the riots. They’re quick to denounce racism and say that America still has a long way to go, but they also make the ridiculously erroneous claim that America was one of the first countries to abolish slavery (yo, it wasn’t) and that “if America is so bad, why are so many people dying to come here! We’re better than Nigeria!”

On episode #51, “The New Normal,” all three of them proudly proclaim they are against wearing masks in public (or, as the bigot Doug TenNapel says, “anti-MSNBC”). This was a stupid thing to say when the episode first aired on May 9th, it’s an even stupider thing to say now, as more and more evidence comes out everyday saying that masks work when a majority of the population wears them.

Mike, Doug, and Ethan really want the lockdowns gone for good. Because lockdowns are a police state action. Of course. Mike Nelson really hates lockdowns. He hates how people can’t feed their families because their jobs aren’t essential, while abortion clinics remain open. He didn’t call them abortion clinics, he used a much more vulgar phrase. Vulgarity is bad if your Christian, but not bad if your a Christian and are talking about something you don’t like.

Of the three, it would appear that Doug is the most vulgar. There’s even a warning for his language in one episode. He apparently said the f-word. Oh, naughty!

In the most recent episode, “Bad Words and Honest Work” (in which Mike does not appear) an entire segment is dedicated to the bigot Doug TenNapel’s usage of the other f-word. Because he apparently says it on the podcast quite a bit. Enough for a fan to write in and complain about it.

And I’m not going to tip-toe around it, I’m going to use the word. Sorry.

Doug likes to say “faggot.” Doug likes to say “fag.” Doug also likes to say “faggy.” Maybe the bigot Doug TenNapel likes to use other variations of faggot. I don’t know. They didn’t breakdown every single variation of the word.

The fan said that it doesn’t make sense that Doug uses that word so much, because, according to Doug TenNapel (a bigot who hates gay people), he does not hate gays (even though Doug TenNapel is a bigot who hates gay people). So why does the bigot Doug TenNapel, a man who says he doesn’t hate gays even though he’s made it abundantly clear that he hates gays (and transpeople), use a word that is considered a slur against gay people?

Well, in his own words:

“The point of using the word fag is not to address homosexuals at all. Or the n-word, or pussy doesn’t mean anything about women at all. What I am making fun of is a Christian who votes liberal.”

That’s basically the 2000 Eminem defense but somehow worse. Doug doesn’t hate gays. He loves gays! He just uses a word that he associates with gays to reference people he hates. Got it.

Again, Mike’s not on that episode. Maybe Mike would condemn this kind of thing if he was. But remember, the bigot Doug TenNapel says fag (and variations of fag) a lot. He says it so much that a fan of the podcast wrote in to complain it. I have a podcast (Alexander’s Ragtime Band, check out our Patreon!) and I’ve been on several episodes of Retronauts (check out their Patreon!). I swear a lot on those podcasts because I am lazy and know that “fuck” is a powerful word that can convey a multitude of emotions. And even my own mother hasn’t complained about how often I swear on the podcast. How often do you have to say “faggot” on a Christian podcast for a Christian listener to get mad at you?

Mike has to be on at least some of those episodes where the bigot Doug TenNapel says “fag.” And Mike is cool with it.  In addition to being vehemently anti-abortion, anti-mask wearing, and kinda racist, Mike Nelson of MST3K fame is down with homophobia in 2020.

In 2013 I said that if you support the bigot Doug TenNapel’s Kickstarter, then you’re also supporting his beliefs. I argued that you can’t separate the man and his views. Maybe that was a bit harsh. I certainly don’t think that everyone who did support that game was homophobic (a lot of them seemed to be though, judging from the comments that article got). I’m not going to make that argument again. You can like MST3K and Rifftax and disagree with Mike Nelson’s politics. You can like his work and hate his support for his bigoted friends. You can like his work and ignore everything else about him. Go ahead. I won’t think less of you for it. MST3K is a funny show. Rifftrax is a funny program. You can like it all you want. Seriously. Times suck and cling to what you need to cling to if need be.

But I can’t hang with MST3K anymore, definitely not the ones with Mike hosting and maybe not any he wrote either (the new ones are 100% Mike free though so that’s good). And it’s hard for me to say that. Growing up, MST3K was the world to me. I taped it off Comedy Central, scheduled my weekends around it. Had sleepovers dedicated to it. In college, my friends and I would binge-watch it and have entire conversations made up of MST3K references. MST3K is an intrinsic part of who I am and my sense of humor. It’s right up there with The Simpsons. It literally made me who I am.

But who I am is also a gay man. And I’m done with this shit.

At least Joel is cool. (He’s also very vocal about wearing masks.)

 

Addendum/Quick personal message to the bigot Doug TenNapel
Hi Doug (you’re a bigot)! I know you’re reading this because you have alerts set up for your name!

How are you? Just kidding. I don’t care.

I also don’t care about anything you have to say. Any comments you leave will be deleted. Any emails you send me will be unread. You’re a piece of shit with nothing of value to say. You’re a bigot who hates gay people (Yes. Yes you are.) You’ve made bigoted jokes about gay people before and never apologized for them and you continue to use bigoted language against gays to discuss people with whom you dislike. I hate you. And I hate you because your a bigot, not because of your religion. I have many friends who call themselves Christian.

You’d call them faggots.

Go fuck yourself.

And Mike, if you’re reading this. You broke my heart. But what the fuck do you care?