The phrase, “local boy makes good” has been part of American parlance for almost a hundred years, and many folks like to apply it when they hear the uplifting news about a neighbor who has done well in life. But if we follow the lead of a leftist Michigan organization, one local guy can never “make good,” evidently because he is a white male -- and a conservative one to boot.
Kid Rock grew up in Detroit, and has held the city as his home turf all his life, becoming intimately involved with charitable organizations and helping thousands of people who live in the area. So it made sense that bookers for the debut concerts at the city's newly refurbished, 20,000-seat “Little Caesar’s Arena” would approach him to perform multiple shows next week.
But this local hero isn’t welcomed by the mucky-mucks at the “Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights” at Wayne State University (a tax-funded entity). Center Director Peter Hammer called the choice of entertainer “incredibly tone deaf.”
See, Kid Rock is a white guy who supports Trump. He's railed against NFL star Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the National Anthem, and has not backed down from his respect for the Confederate Flag as a symbol of independence, and not one of racism.
Now that Kid Rock has hinted at a U.S. Senate run, it's now a pressing political agenda for the left to smear him as racist, sexist, or otherwise “deplorable."
In fact, the Detroit chapter of the National Action Network (which, by the by, is a collectivist organization bent on increasing the size and scope of the federal government), plans to protest Kid Rock’s shows next week at the arena.
Except that the arena, although called “Little Caesar’s Arena,” is really owned by the city of Detroit’s Downtown Development Authority.
As I wrote a few months ago, the Detroit City Council recently voted to shift $34 million from their already failing public schools to retrofit the arena for NBA basketball, because, ya know, if the government doesn’t do it, how in the world could the actual corporation that runs the world’s most popular basketball league spend its own money?
So this plops the “issue” of Kid Rock performing right in the lap of the Tragedy of the Commons, whereby, even if Kid Rock is a great guy, those who don’t like his music, or his attire, or whatever aspect of his performance might come to mind, have a valid point in saying, “Hey, my tax money is being used to pay for that arena, and I object.”
So it appears that the collectivists have been hoist by their own petard, as the saying goes. They called for greater spending by government, for greater taxation, and government “involvement” in the lives of their neighbors. Their entire philosophy embraces this mode of thinking. Yet now, when that machine is being used to fund a stadium in which a guy they don’t like might perform? Now, they are upset.
Let’s get a few things straight. If more people embraced the concepts of small government that Kid Rock generally embraces, there would be fewer problems like this, fewer arguments over who appears in tax-funded stadiums, and more privately funded concert venues that would rise or fall based on how they cater to consumers. No one would be forced to pay for the venues as they were forced to pay for the Detroit arena refurbishment this year.
So perhaps the folks who are upset by Kid Rock should step back and see that it is their own collectivist mentality that pits people with different tastes against each other. It is the very force they want the government to employ on their neighbors that causes these problems.
It’s not a flag that takes peoples’ cash and showers it on things they might not prefer. It’s government. And Kid Rock wants less of it.
They don’t like that, so they will use all ways and means to suppress him, even as they promote the very government largess that got them into this debate in the first place.
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