Mike Huckabee defended his criticism of pop singer Beyoncé on Monday night, but
"Daily Show" host Jon Stewart remained skeptical and showed tape of Huckabee playing bass with rocker Ted Nugent on his old Fox News show.
"That ain't about bacteria," Stewart said, adding that Huckabee excuses the crudeness of Nugent because he agrees with him on gun rights.
Huckabee said Nugent's song came out in 1978 and was never nominated for a Grammy.
"He didn't perform it on national television," Huckabee said. "In fact, you know the song of the year that year was? It was a tie between 'Evergreen' and 'You Light Up My Life.'"
"Cat Scratch Fever" is intended for adults, but today, "we have a very different kind of depiction and things that are considered perfectly OK for kids," he said.
Huckabee first came under fire for saying in his new book
"God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy," that President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama should not let their daughters listen to Beyoncé because of her sexualized lyrics and videos.
Huckabee told Stewart that young girls see Beyoncé as a role model and want to be like her.
"Do you know any parent that has a daughter that says 'Honey, if you make really good grades, some day when you are 12 or 13 we will get you your own stripper pole?'" he said, a reference to Beyoncé's pole dancing at concerts.
"I think that is diminishing Beyoncé. That is truly outrageous," Stewart protested.
In a similar, less contentious interview earlier on
Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor," host Bill O'Reilly said that Beyoncé seems to be above criticism. O'Reilly last year was critical of a sexualized Beyoncé music video, featuring her husband, the rapper Jay-Z.
"Why do they [liberal media] see themselves as the defenders of all things Beyoncé?" O'Reilly asked.
"I don't know if it's specifically about Beyoncé," Huckabee said, "although they clearly have circled the wagons around her. It's also this sense that she is an empowered woman.
"But I think most of us would say it's not empowering when you become an object, a sex object."
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