Names and faces
Kid Rock’s monthslong flirtation with a Republican Senate bid in Michigan came to an end Tuesday in an interview with Howard Stern — but moments later, the rapper-singer, whose real name is Robert Richie, suggested that he could still run if he felt disrespected by the press. “I’m not running for Senate. Are you kidding me?” Kid Rock said during an expletive-laden interview on Stern’s Sirius XM show. “Who couldn’t figure that out? I’m releasing a new album. I’m going on tour, too.” The Detroit-area rocker has been teasing the public for months. At a Sept. 12 concert, Kid Rock, 46, was introduced as Michigan’s “next senator” and talked about running for president. According to the Detroit Free Press, Kid Rock said his staff knew there wouldn’t be a run for office. But with all the attention and a new album in the works, he said he told them: “Let’s roll with it for a while.” In July, Kid Rock’s website started selling campaign merchandise, which became a successful publicity stunt. That was followed by a handful of tweets, blog posts and rhyming “political speeches” in the middle of his concerts — delivered behind an official-looking lectern. But in the Stern interview, Kid Rock was clear: His “campaign” was a stunt that people had taken too seriously.
Lech Walesa, the icon of Poland’s struggle for democracy, has said his role as a national hero was paid for with his family life. Walesa spearheaded Poland’s Solidarity movement in the
1980s and then served as president under democracy from 1990-95. During the presidency, he lived in Warsaw while his wife, Danuta, and their eight children remained home in Gdansk. “When I was leaving for Warsaw, there was [my wife] and plenty of children; when I returned, I saw her sitting alone in an empty house. I was not prepared for this,” Walesa says in a recently released book of interviews titled Ja (I). “I am afraid I’ve become a stranger to them,” the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize winner says. “Nothing’s for free. I paid with my family.” The 74-year-old Walesa now travels around the world to lecture on Poland’s peaceful transition from communism to democracy.