Kid Rock booted from leading parade after profane TV remarks Federal workers warned against on-the-job talk of ‘Resistance’ and impeachment
Nashville, Tenn. — Kid Rock’s profane comments on live TV have gotten him booted from leading the Nashville Christmas Parade.
Instead, parade organizers have invited James Shaw Jr., the man hailed as a community hero for wrestling a gun away from the shooter during a Nashville Waffle House shooting in April that killed four people and injured four others.
On Friday morning, Kid Rock used an expletive to describe Joy Behar during an interview Friday on “Fox & Friends.” He did the interview from his bar in Nashville, where he swigged bourbon while tending bar on camera and said he had been drinking coffee and Irish cream liqueur.
“God forbid you say something a little wrong; you’re racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, this that and the other. People need to calm down, get a little less politically correct,” Kid Rock said. “And I would say, you know, love everybody. Except, I’d say screw that Joy Behar (expletive).”
Multiple “Fox & Friends” personalities apologized on air afterward. Kid Rock apologized for the language, but “not the sentiment.”
Several parade organizers announced Friday evening that the parade will no longer feature Kid Rock, who had volunteered to be the grand marshal. Shaw, who has become a national figure after his heroics in the spring, has accepted the invitation, according to a spokesman for the group of organizers.
“Parade organizers feel that the grand marshal should personify the spirit of the Nashville community,” read the statement from organizers Piedmont Natural Gas, Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, and Tennessee Holiday Productions.
The main sponsors include Piedmont Natural Gas and five bars on Nashville’s main nightlife strip, including Kid Rock’s establishment. The proceeds from the parade are going to the Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt.
The bars were noticeably absent from the statement announcing that Kid Rock would no longer be in the parade.
In a move that some ethics advocates say could be an opening to limit dissent, the federal government has issued new guidance for the political activity of federal government workers, warning that weighing in on impeachment or talking about “the Resistance” may constitute prohibited activity.
The Office of Special Counsel is charged with enforcing the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activity in the course of their work. The office, not to be confused with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, is run by Henry Kerner, whom President Donald Trump nominated to the post.
The unsigned “Guidance Regarding Political Activity,” which was issued Tuesday, uses a question-and-answer format as it seeks to clarify the types of actions and rhetoric considered political activity and therefore prohibited at work.
In a nod to the current climate, it stipulated that advocating for or against impeachment of a candidate for federal office would be considered political because of its implications for future elections, and that any use of terms such as “resistance” and “#resist” would be construed as political activity.
But union officials and some government watchdogs said they feared the guidelines could have wide-ranging effects on the nearly 3 million federal employees in the United States, as well as state and local government employees who work with federally funded programs. The ethics nonprofit American Oversight said the guidance raised “significant concerns” in a letter it sent to the office Thursday, urging it to withdraw the memo.
“OSC’s position on impeachment advocacy or opinions goes too far,” the group’s executive director, Austin Evers, wrote in the letter, adding that “certainly there is a difference between advocating that an official should (or should not) be elected and advocating that an official did (or did not) commit treason or high crimes and misdemeanors under the Constitution.”
In particular, Evers expressed concern that the guidelines could constrain whistleblowers.
“As OSC knows well, it is critically important to ensure public employees are comfortable raising concerns about waste, fraud, or abuse in the government,” he wrote. “Impeachment is primarily a remedy for severe misconduct. If public employees are aware of conduct that could be impeachable but fear civil or criminal liability under the Hatch Act for saying so, they may be reluctant to approach OSA, inspectors general, or Congress.”
In response to a request for comment, U.S. Office of Special Counsel Communications Director Zachary Kurz said in an email Friday, “Our Hatch Act unit is currently working on addressing some of the concerns raised in media reports and we will have a response with some clarification by later this afternoon.”
Federal union officials also challenged the office’s Hatch Act interpretation. In a statement, National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon suggested that the new guidance “could unnecessarily have a chilling effect on employees’ First Amendment free speech.”
Reardon noted that the Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from engaging in activities aimed at bolstering or undermining partisan political candidates or parties.
“That prohibition has always been a fact-specific analysis in which the employee’s intent is relevant,” Reardon said. “This new guidance goes too far because it eliminates that critical factor.”
Nick Schwellenbach, director of investigations at the Project on Government Oversight and an employee of the OSC from 2014 to 2017, said he felt the guidance probably crossed a legal line, saying the Hatch Act was meant to be narrowly focused on political activities around parties and candidates.
“The way OSC has traditionally balanced its enforcement of that statute with the First Amendment is [focused on] supporting a candidate or political party for election. I think once you start talking about more-general political views, you’re starting to infringe upon people’s rights,” he said. “This one, I think, goes too far for them. It runs the risk of turning the OSC into an Orwellian enforcer inside the federal workforce.”
Schwellenbach said he believed that the guidance could be successfully challenged in court on its constitutionality.
Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at Brookings and the former top ethics lawyer in the Obama White House, said he found the guidance “very peculiar.”
“It’s contrary to my understanding of the Hatch Act and its interpretation, which is confined to what’s more commonly understood as political activity — vote for or against a candidate,” he said. “This infringes into policy questions.”
He too said he feared it could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of government employees and said he thought a legal challenge could be successful.
“I do have to take exception to this advice, and I hope they’ll reconsider,” he said.