Last Friday morning, Kid Rock sat down on Fox & Friends and did what Kid Rock does best: talk for an extended period without producing a single thought that required adult supervision. He was ranting about ideologies incompatible with Western civilization, which is fascinating coming from a man whose intellectual contributions to Western civilization include “▶Bawitdaba,” when he started bragging that “even friends like my friend, Bill Maher, agree with me on this.” Then, with all the discretion of a drunk uncle announcing somebody’s pregnancy at Thanksgiving dinner, he let this slip: “Last night I’m having dinner at the White House with the president, Bill Maher and Stephen A. Smith.” The hosts nearly climbed over the couch asking how it went. “It was epic,” he told them. Of course it was. Four professional bullshit artists spent four hours exchanging opinions. I’m surprised the White House smoke detectors didn’t go off.
Now, those of us in the culture know exactly what Bobby Ritchie just did. But for those unfamiliar, allow me to introduce you to dry snitching. That’s when somebody volunteers information nobody asked them to disclose, effectively telling on everybody without being interrogated. No detectives. No subpoenas. No plea bargain. Nobody offered Kid Rock immunity or threatened him with 25 to life. This man walked into a television studio and started singing like a Temptation audition had broken out at the county jail. He gave up the location, the participants, the timeline, and a glowing review. All that was missing was a seating chart and somebody asking him to identify the suspects in a lineup. Kid Rock went on television to discuss Western civilization and somehow delivered the White House dinner’s after-action report. Somewhere, a criminal defense attorney watching that interview probably turned off the television and poured himself a drink.
And something tells me Stephen A. Smith wasn’t particularly thrilled about his dinner companions becoming public knowledge. Maher had already told his Club Random audience he’d be dining with Trump again, but Smith hadn’t said a damn thing until Kid Rock started running his mouth. When Stephen A. finally addressed it, he opened his show with, “I felt compelled to come on the show today… because by now I’m assuming most of you have heard the news.” Heard the news? Kid Rock practically held a press conference on your behalf. Stephen A. then transformed the revelation into another performance about his own importance. It was “a very substantive evening,” Trump “wouldn’t let us leave,” and he’d “immediately accepted that invitation.” Of course he did. If Trump invited Stephen A. to watch him alphabetize his collection of red neckties, we’d probably get a three-part podcast series about the historical significance of the experience.
According to Smith, Trump told Maher he could “bring anybody he wanted, even one of his lunatic leftist friends.” Maher settled on Stephen A., who accepted before anybody could reconsider. Now, are you suggesting Stephen A. was invited as the token Black friend, Professor? Well, when somebody looks through his contacts and selects Stephen A. Smith to provide intellectual diversity, what else am I supposed to call it? The man got invited like somebody suddenly realized the dinner table resembled a country club board meeting and decided to make a phone call.
But Stephen A. Smith? Really, motherfucker? Maher knows Michael Eric Dyson, Laura Coates, Farai Chideya, and Cornel West. He knows actual scholars, attorneys, and journalists who can distinguish a political argument from an episode of First Take. Yet he selected the man whose principal contribution to American discourse is yelling “HOWEVER!” loud enough to interrupt air traffic over LaGuardia. And I suspect that’s precisely why. Laura Coates probably would have laughed Maher off the phone. Cornel West might have turned dinner into a seminar on moral philosophy, and Dyson could have had Trump searching for an emergency exit before the appetizers arrived. Maher needed somebody he could plausibly introduce as a liberal without offending Trump, and somebody impressed enough by the invitation to show up. Enter Stephen A. Smith. And where did he go afterward to discuss his historic diplomatic mission? Laura Coates Live. The woman who probably would have laughed at the invitation ended up interviewing the man who couldn’t accept it fast enough. You cannot make this shit up.
So far, this sounds like the setup to a joke. Kid Rock, Donald Trump, Bill Maher, and Stephen A. Smith walk into a bar, and… actually, the guest list is already doing most of the work. This meeting of the absent minds lasted more than four hours, and I’m still wondering who was supposed to be the adult. Maybe the waiter. At least somebody in the room had a job requiring listening.
I promised myself I was finished writing about Smith and Maher. But Kid Rock adds something special to this traveling circus of intellectual mediocrity. Maher and Smith are remarkably ordinary thinkers convinced they’re intellectual descendants of Socrates and Aristotle. Maher sits nestled in some wealthy Los Angeles enclave, surrounded by celebrity friends who either don’t recognize when he’s talking out of his ass or are too sycophantic to tell him. Some probably know better but aren’t willing to sacrifice their next dinner invitation. So Bill plays resident philosopher over cocktails, confusing being the smartest person at a table full of entertainers with being an actual intellectual. Stephen A. has spent so many years shouting over retired athletes that he apparently believes volume substitutes for knowledge. Both imagine themselves floating above the political fray without noticing they’ve been swimming in the shallow end for years. Kid Rock is different. He’s spent his adult life auditioning for an identity and accepting whichever role pays best.
Kid Rock emerged from Detroit’s music scene as a white rapper with Black friends, Black girlfriends, and deep connections to Black culture. That history is real. Rolling Stone reported that he gravitated toward Black classmates in middle school and dated Kelley South Russell in eighth grade. An old friend remembered him DJing Black parties in Mount Clemens. Black Detroit DJ Blackman Harris helped develop his career, declaring, “Basically, I raised him.” D-Nice helped him land his first Jive Records deal after he opened for Boogie Down Productions in 1988. Black culture wasn’t an accessory to Kid Rock’s success. It helped build the foundation. Funny how some people remember who helped them through the door only until they discover which audience pays more to watch them slam it shut.
But Bobby’s upbringing was hardly modest. He grew up on Apple Crest Farm in Bruce Township, a 5.5-acre orchard with a 5,628-square-foot house, guest house, barn, swimming pool, and tennis courts. His father owned car dealerships. Bobby picked apples and fed horses. Fed horses! I knew kids worried about whether their families could afford groceries, and Bobby was making sure Secretariat had breakfast. When his father sold his Lincoln-Mercury dealership in 1999, he tried getting Bobby to take it over. Most kids running the streets don’t have an automobile dealership waiting as their backup career. Kid Rock wasn’t one bad decision from poverty. He was one bad record from becoming a Lincoln-Mercury general manager.
According to Rolling Stone, he barely graduated from Romeo High School. That’s the academic résumé, ladies and gentlemen. Now, I’ve met brilliant people without college degrees and college graduates who couldn’t find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight. But there’s something amusing about a man who barely escaped high school graduation lecturing America about which ideologies belong in Western civilization. I’m not convinced Bobby could explain Western civilization without asking whether it was opening for him on tour.
I knew guys like Kid Rock in high school. They hung around the punk crowd or Black kids, rebelling against society while enjoying the security of wealthy families. Once rebelling became inconvenient, the establishment they supposedly despised was waiting to welcome them home. Kid Rock ran away several times as a teenager, sometimes spending weeks in the Mount Clemens projects. But Apple Crest Farm remained there, complete with horses and tennis courts. Watching him settle into conservatism doesn’t particularly surprise me. He immersed himself in Black communities, developed his cultural credibility, built a lucrative career, and eventually returned to the establishment he’d pretended to reject. Bobby didn’t so much sell out as remember where his family kept the deed.
