Kid Rock attacks Taylor Swift, sparks Twitter culture war

10 Aug, 2019 00:25 / Updated 5 years ago

After firing off a tweet suggesting pop idol Taylor Swift would perform sexual favors on Hollywood in exchange for a movie role, faux-redneck rocker Kid Rock is facing a barrage of criticism online.

“Taylor Swift wants to be a democrat because she wants to be in movies….period,” the rocker, real name Robert Richie, tweeted on Friday. “And it looks like she will suck the door knob off Hollyweird to get there. Oldest move in the book. Good luck girl.”

The inspiration for Richie’s tweet is unclear. Pop megastar Taylor Swift has not officially joined the Democratic Party. She did, however, give an interview to Vogue magazine explaining her LGBT advocacy and support for Democrats in last year’s midterm elections. 

Richie, on the other hand, was an early supporter of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, and a year later teased a run for the US Senate as a Republican – that turned out to be marketing for a new album. He also visited the White House in October, and golfed with Trump in Florida as recently as March.

Was the 48-year-old rocker’s tweet the beginning of another proxy battle in America’s endless left-right culture war? A lot of Twitter seemed to think so, and took up the arms with glee.

“Nah—the oldest move in the book is for racist, irrelevant hack musicians to take social media pot shots at actual talented superstars with moral compasses who are leveraging their fame to help people instead of bowing to a white supremacist President,” read a mouthful  of a tweet from author John Pavlovitz.

Amid the torrent of abuse, Richie scored some positive comments from the MAGA diehards.

Aside from offending nearly everybody, Richie’s tweet did achieve one thing: It fired the ‘American Badass’ rocker back into relevancy. Within hours of posting, ‘Kid Rock’ was the second most popular Twitter trend in the US.

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