‘I guess you can be anything’

Kid Rock won’t rest until everyone knows his views on the COVID-19 pandemic.

The conservative country rock singer appeared on Friday’s episode of the Fox News program Jesse Watters Primetime, where he asked the host a simple, seemingly politically neutral question: “What are you going to be for Halloween?” Watters explained that he and his family would be donning group costumes as the Scooby-Doo Mystery Gang. The smile that cracked across Rock’s face when he prompted Watters to reciprocate the question suggested it was never neutral, and never intended solely as a question for the host.

“What? [Anthony Fauci]?” Watters asked, invoking the former head of the Centers for Disease Control, whose handling of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to draw ire from Rock. No, the musician born Robert James Ritchie wouldn’t be dressing as the public health official, but as “a r-word,” he announced, while holding a face mask over his mouth.

Watters burst into laughter when Rock dropped the word, which has long been condemned by differently abled individuals and advocate groups as derogatory and discriminatory.

“Okay, I guess you can be anything,” Watters joked. All smiles, Rock declared, “Greatest costume ever!”

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Rock has become a tirelessly vocal critic of many aspects of the pandemic, especially vaccine and mask mandates. In 2022, the “Only God Knows Why” singer vowed to skip all venues that impose the mandates on their performers and audiences.

That same year, he immortalized those views with the song “We the People,” which included lyrics like, “Wear your mask, take your pills / Now a whole generation’s mentally ill” and “But COVID’s near, it’s coming to town / We gotta act quick, shut our borders down.”

But Rock wasn’t always opposed to such measures to keep Americans safe from the potentially deadly respiratory virus. Shortly after the global breakout of COVID-19 in 2020, Rock posted a selfie to his Instagram wearing a handmade mask with the caption, “Protect yourself and others by making a homemade cloth mask. Join the #MiMaskChallenge.”

Still, the musician has held conservative views for many years that cross over the boundary of controversial into downright offensive not infrequently.

Rock paused a 2017 concert in Grand Rapids, Mich., to deliver a tirade that, in part, criticized NFL star Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the “Star-Spangled Banner” to protest anti-Black police brutality. “If you wanna take a knee or sit during our ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’ call me a racist ’cause I’m not [politically correct], and think you have to remind me that Black lives matter. Nazis, f—in’ bigots, and now again the KKK — I say screw all you a–holes. Stay the f— away!”

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly