Kid Rock: Confederate flag was dropped years before protest

In May 2011, Kid Rock stepped up to a Cobo Center podium to accept a Great Expectations Award from Detroit's NAACP, describing himself as humbled and overwhelmed by the moment.

And that was the night, says a spokesman for the Detroit star, that Kid Rock quietly decided he would stop using the Confederate flag onstage.

Amid ongoing protests about Rock's association with the controversial symbol, his team spoke with the Free Press on Wednesday to address the situation. It was the first detailed response from the musician's camp since a group of Detroit civil rights protesters launched a campaign against Rock and tour sponsor Chevrolet on July 6.

"It's been more than five years since he's had that flag on tour," said publicist Nick Stern. "They're protesting something he's not even doing."

Related: Civil rights group to GM: Pull support from Kid Rock

Stern's assertion aligns with observations from Kid Rock concertgoers interviewed by the Free Press.

Prior to the 2011 NAACP event — where flag protesters rallied outside — it had already been more than a year since Rock featured a Confederate flag in concert, Stern said.

Kid Rock had introduced the flag into his shows during the early 2000s, and in a 2002 Free Press interview he defended its use, calling it a symbol of Southern rock and rebellion. Outside the NAACP ceremony, about 40 protesters blasted Rock and the NAACP while burning a Confederate flag. Inside, Rock told the crowd he "never flew the flag with hate in my heart," saying, "I love America, I love Detroit, and I love black people."

While his publicist offered few details Wednesday about Rock's thinking the night of the NAACP event, the ceremony clearly was a turning point for the musician.

"That was the impetus," Stern said. "Since then, he's never flown it again."

Still, that reality wasn't necessarily understood last week as protesters with the Detroit chapter of Al Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN) began demonstrating against Kid Rock at the Detroit Historical Museum, which houses a Rock-funded music exhibit. A press release announcing the demonstration described Kid Rock as someone "who proudly displays the flag in his concerts" and called on him to "stop using (the) Confederate flag in his shows."

The NAN protests prompted a frenzy of national media attention on Rock and the flag, in the wake of the June 17 shooting of nine black people at a Charleston, S.C., church. The accused gunman, Dylann Roof, had posted online photos of himself with the Confederate battle flag, reigniting a larger debate about the flag's meaning and prompting its removal from the South Carolina state capitol.

"My biggest frustration is that (the protesters) are using Kid Rock's name and Chevy's name to get attention for themselves based on something he wasn't even doing — and that they didn't even know that," said Stern.

Digital age controversy

So how did an artist who hasn't flown the flag in half a decade become one of the top national talking points in the post-Charleston conversation, complete with media confusion, fake viral stories and a brash Fox News Channel moment courtesy of Rock himself?

The Confederate flag has sparked understandable intensity in the aftermath of the Charleston shootings, with opponents decrying it as a lingering symbol of hatred and defenders calling it an enduring emblem of Southern heritage. Other public figures have become part of the bigger story, including rocker Tom Petty, who on Tuesday disowned his association with the flag in the 1980s, calling it "downright stupid."

But the Kid Rock focus may also reflect the distinctive nature of media and information in the evolving digital age.

The current spotlight on Rock likely sprung from a June 29 op-ed guest column in the Oakland Press by Ken Hreha, a Dryden resident and flag opponent who has long pressed media outlets to provide more balanced coverage of the musician's relationship with the flag. Hreha, who declined to comment for this Free Press story, wrote that the musician is Michigan's "most visible proponent" of the flag and questioned Chevrolet's sponsorship of Rock's tour.

Hreha's column quickly made it into the Internet's viral social-media stream, shared by anti-flag activists and irate Kid Rock fans alike, and the star's Confederate flag history was abruptly back on the radar.

Within a week, NAN had launched its demonstration at the Detroit museum with about a dozen protesters, and from there the headlines flowed, washing across the digital landscape, reworked by content aggregators and hashed out on social media.

"It was our understanding that Kid Rock had used the flag, is using the flag and has tried to defend that flag," said the group's Rev. Charles Williams II on Wednesday.

Following the Charleston shootings, said Williams, "we realized that there is a culture that's been promoting the flag, and we saw Kid Rock being one of those people who was promoting it."

But clarity wasn't always at the forefront as the story developed: "Kid Rock Refuses to Stop Displaying Confederate Flag at Concerts," read a Friday headline at the website Ultimate Classic Rock. An Associated Press story this week said protesters seek "to persuade Kid Rock to stop displaying the Confederate flag at concerts." A fake news story flashed across the web over the weekend, claiming that Rock and fellow Michigan rock firebrand Ted Nugent were collaborating on a song titled "Kiss My Rebel Ass."

"Outrage can now happen quicker than ever," said Matt Friedman, founding partner at the Farmington Hills public relations firm Tanner Friedman and a specialist in crisis image management. "It seems like social media overall is outraged over new things every day."

In an ever-shrinking, consolidated news industry, nuance and detail are often neglected, Friedman said, as journalists chase "controversial and easy-to-report" stories that then emerge quickly and with little context. News media then feeds social media, which then feeds back to news media, in a fast-churning cycle that can leave celebrities caught wrong-footed.

Friedman, who thinks Rock should have responded more quickly to the budding storm, said that whether or not the rocker has been unfairly portrayed, the controversy has a larger upside.

"The Confederate flag issue was brought to the surface," he said. "So it's not all bad. It just is."

A different flag

Protesters have not focused exclusively on Rock's onstage use of the flag. Led by Williams, NAN protesters demanded that Rock also remove any Confederate imagery from the Internet and publicly renounce the flag.

As Hreha had done in his Oakland Press column, Williams also cited a recent photograph that appeared on Rock's website, with the musician flashing a thumbs-up at a table of items that included a Confederate-branded liquor flask.

Rock's representative said the flask was part of a collection of gifts presented to Kid Rock by fans on this year's sixth-annual Chillin' the Most fan cruise. Rock issues a photo of himself with gifts every year as a thank-you to fans, Stern said.

Protesters also took the fight to Chevrolet, lining up a meeting with General Motors executives at noon today and demanding that the automaker pull its tour support.

Related: GM to meet with activists over Kid Rock sponsorship

A GM spokesman said Wednesday the company stands behind its statement last week that it is committed to sponsoring Rock's tour, which will include 10 sold-out shows at DTE Energy Music Theatre in August.

Much like the ongoing Chevy truck ad campaign featuring Kid Rock's "Born Free," this summer's tour puts a red-white-and-blue spin on the brand: The Chevrolet name and logo sit prominently over the stage, where an American flag backdrop appears late in the show during "Born Free." A promotional video also plays midway through the show, linking Kid Rock, Chevy, baseball and apple pie.

While the Rock camp largely maintained silence during the first week of the controversy, Rock himself jumped into the narrative on July 8 with an emailed remark to Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who relayed his words on air: "Please tell the people protesting that they can kiss my ..."

On Wednesday, Rock's publicist told the the Free Press it was a message directed specifically at the group of Detroit activists, not a defiant statement about the Confederate flag itself.

"He was saying these protesters 'can kiss my ass,' " said the spokesman. "Not 'kiss my ass, I'm going to use the flag.' "

Williams, who said he took the remark not as a personal insult but as a denouncement of flag protesters nationwide, said he was undeterred.

"We're not going to let off of this," he said.