Fact Check

Motor City Black Man

Published June 12, 2015

Claim:

FACT CHECK: Was musician Ted Nugent placed on suicide watch after he found out that he was part black?

Claim:   Musician Ted Nugent threatened suicide after he found out that he was part black.

Origins:   In June 2015, a rumor about musician Ted Nugent began recirculating via social media, one holding that the politically conservative rocker was on suicide watch after having learned that he was part black:

Although it's unclear exactly why this rumor was resurrected in mid-2015 (when it appeared on at least one online forum), it originated with an item first published by the entertainment web site Free Wood Post on 25 March 2014:

Police have surrounded Ted Nugent’s Detroit home and attempting to talk him out. Nugent’s girlfriend called 911 when the distraught one-time rock star barricaded himself in the couples bathroom with a hunting bow and threatened to kill himself.

Apparently, the self-avowed racist and GOP poster boy was having yet another paternity test, (5 out of 8 of his known children were born out of wedlock) when further genetic tests revealed that he was 30% descended from sub-Saharan Africa.

But there is no truth to the above-quoted article. The Free Wood Post is just one of many "satire" web sites operating on the Internet today, as their disclaimer notes:

Free Wood Post is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within FreeWoodPost.com are fiction, and presumably fake news.

Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental, except for all references to politicians and/or celebrities, in which case they are based on real people, but still based almost entirely in fiction.

There are numerous ways to identify fake news, but in the case of the Free Wood Post one need only look for the "Satire Disclaimer" label on the site's front page:

Last updated:     11 June 2015

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.

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