Rap-rocker Kid Rock has hit out at critics of his ongoing use of the Confederate flag.
The Detroit native has been under fire, with a protest taking place outside the city museum’s Kid Rock exhibition. Members of the National Action Network have urged the musician to cease using the flag, which he has adopted as a backdrop at live shows in the past.
The flag was used by the Confederate States of America during the US Civil War and has long been seen as a patriotic sign for the south of the country, but it also has racist connotations due to the Confederate States’ history of slavery.
The long-running debate over the Confederate flag came to the fore recently when it appeared in many photos uploaded online by Charleston Church shooter Dylann Roof, who killed nine African-Americans in a racially-motivated attack during June.
Protestors expressed their belief to Fox News that the flag “represents genocide to most of Detroit”. Kid Rock issued a statement to the news channel in response, saying: “Please tell the people protesting to kiss my ass,” which the hosts altered to “kiss my… ask me some questions”.
Watch the Fox News segment below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NzfI7Ath7s
Kid Rock caused controversy earlier this year by apparently killing a mountain lion.
The musician – real name Robert James Ritchie – allegedly killed the animal while hunting with rocker and National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent.
Nugent then posted a picture of Ritchie with the kill on his Facebook page alongside the caption: “I can hear the braindead squawkers already with their obscene denial that killing lions is wrong. It’s legal, it’s necessary, it’s good, it’s beneficial, it’s a damn riot!”
The picture led to a host of commenters laying into Ritchie for the ‘trophy kill’.