Kid Rock's Outlaw Blues

by Blender Magazine in The Blender Burner

So you're Kid Rock. Your job: Rocking! Which of course involves the occasional bending or breaking of various laws, some involving controlled substances, some involving gratuitous use of old Lynyrd Skynyrd riffs, and some just a violation of the natural order of things, or at least ladies underwear. But the question is: When you've bent or broken the law, and you're Kid Rock, what should the punishment be?

At least that's the question Kid Rock raised this week on his website, when he beefed about a Dekalb County, GA, judge who wouldn't let him do his community service by playing for the troops in Iraq.

Here's the background: Last year Kid Rock got into a 5 AM dust-up in a Waffle House in Atlanta. Nothing that would have been too out of place in your high-school lunch room--assuming they served chicken and waffles at your high school at 5 in the morning. Just some guys exchanging words, then punches, and breaking a window. But the police were called, a brief interlude behind bars ensued, and in the end Kid Rock got 80 hours of community service.

Kid Rock knew he was in for it even before he went before Judge Alvin T. Wong, so much so that scheduled a fund-raiser for a Dekalb County homeless shelter in advance of his court date. (He played a waffle house--of course!--and raised 20 grand.) He plays the part of the nihilistic rock rooster to the hilt, but the guy really does care, as that charity date and his life-changing trip to the Middle East to play for the troops two years back both attest.

But wait a minute! A few years back, Snoop Dogg tried to count coaching youth football as community service and ended up scrubbing toilets. Even Naomi Campbell had to haul trash when she clocked her maid with a cell phone. Judge Wong sniffed at Rock's request to credit his upcoming Iraq trip as his community service ("completely defeats the punitive purpose of performing community service"). Sorry, dude: You don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

Original here