You know how sometimes you forget a person’s name even though you can see his or her face in your mind’s eye? How you can remember everything about the person, except his or her name? That’s the exact state of mental purgatory in which I find myself as I write this. I’m sure it’ll come to me before this article is finished, though.
I know you remember that white dude who made that song “Bawitdaba.” It was the anthem for douchebag white boys who wore puka-shell necklaces in the late ’90s? It was made by a tall, skinny, douchebag white boy around 1998? Come on, you know who I’m talking about. Help me figure this one out!
The guy who married Pamela Anderson. The guy who became famous for making rap-rock music because he was kind of a shitty musician and an even shittier rapper. The guy who would’ve been shat on by rappers if he was black and spat on by rockers if he hadn’t appropriated a culture. Yeah ... that guy.
Well, that guy recently played the Iowa State Fair (because even when you’re a has-been fuckboy, your music still sounds pretty decent to someone who’s dizzy from a Ferris wheel and has the bubble guts from shitting out his or her weight in cotton candy inside a putrid-smelling port-a-potty).
Anyway, according to the Des Moines Register, that guy addressed the candy-apple-eating crowd during his set near the merry-go-round and said, “Football’s about ready to start. You know what? Fuck Colin Kaepernick!”
If you remember this guy I can’t remember, you will recall he has used the Confederate flag as a backdrop for his concerts for a long time. To be fair, he didn’t do it early in his career, when D-Nice of Boogie Down Productions got him a record deal. He didn’t do it when he was trying to make a name for himself as a rapper making music with people like Chuck D of Public Enemy. Probably because he knew one of the Nation of Islam-influenced S1Ws, who toured with Chuck D, would’ve slapped the taste out of his mouth. He probably didn’t do it when he was coming up in Detroit either, because ... well ... you know how niggas from Detroit can be.
But as soon as people realized that dude was just a stringy-haired white boy with no discernible talent other than screaming fourth-grade lyrics into a microphone, he switched to “country rock” and started making music for hillbillies with more teeth than IQ points. Then he started hanging out with Ted Nugent and flying the rebel flag.
You know how they do. It’s a musical plan that has existed since the early days of music:
Step 1: Steal your style and soul from black people without acknowledging them.
Step 2: Make millions of dollars.
Step 3: Slowly ease out the back door with your satchel of cash.
Step 4: When asked about it, say, “Cultural appropriation? What cultural appropriation? Sure, the Negroes influenced me, but I made this shit up myself.”
Elvis did it. The Rolling Stones did it. The Beatles did it. Miley Cyrus did it. This white boy I can’t name for the life of me did it.
They love blackness when it can garner them a paycheck, but their whiteness is always their overriding influence. They are thieves.
It is as American as apple pie. It is as American as the flag they eventually wrap themselves in. It is as American as the freedom of speech and the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness for which Colin Kaepernick is fighting.
But “fuck him,” says the white boy who made his fortune off the same black belligerence that birthed the protest he now feels so comfortable castigating. I’d call his ass out if I could only remember the name of this discarded shit bag of a human being.
Kid Rock?
Nah, I don’t think that’s it. I think his name is “Caucasian Culture Vulture Thief Who Stuffed His Privilege in His Pocket to Disguise His Larceny, Only to Pull It Back Out Again When the Coast Was Clear to Piss on the People Who Made His Whole Existence Possible.”
Or maybe it is Kid Rock. I get the two confused sometimes. Oh yeah, he also has a black son.