politics – Edward Trimnell Books

What happened to Kid Rock?

Kid Rock has been getting a lot of hate recently—and no small amount of ridicule. He was the headline act at TPUSA’s alternative “all-American” halftime event for Super Bowl LX.

Even Fox News gently suggested that Kid Rock’s schtick—or at least his voice—is getting a little long in the tooth.

First things first. According to the internet, Kid Rock’s net worth, as of early 2026, is around $150 million. Do you have $150 million in cash and assets? I certainly don’t.

Kid Rock is a 55-year-old man who has achieved worldwide fame and fortune (what else do you call $150 million?) doing what he loves. He didn’t have to spend 30 years toiling away within the bowels of a corporate hellhole to make all that money. This alone makes him demonstrably more competent than 99.999% of the population.

On the personal front, Kid Rock married Pamela Anderson back when Pamela Anderson was still a universal object of male fantasy. No—his marriage to Pamela Anderson didn’t last. But so what? That’s the way celebrity marriages typically go.

When Kid Rock had his heyday in the early 2000s, I was in my early thirties. I had recently reached the point where I had decided that I no longer needed to keep up with popular music.

This had been a long time coming. I was a big fan of the pop and metal acts of the 1980s. Then the 1990s gave way to grunge, R&B, and rap—none of which interested me very much.

But Kid Rock caught my attention. Perhaps because—like me—he came from a Midwestern background that is a little rough around the edges. I emphasize edges here. I grew up in relative comfort near Cincinnati, Ohio. Kid Rock, though he presents himself as a streetwise Detroiter, grew up in the suburban enclave of Romeo, Michigan. Kid Rock’s father owned multiple car dealerships.

I remember purchasing Kid Rock’s 2000 compilation album, The History of Rock, at my local Kmart in 2001. At this time, most music was still purchased on CD, and the CD is probably still in a box in my basement.

I found one or two of Kid Rock’s songs to be catchy. I rather liked “American Bad Ass”, and its accompanying music video. This was a song that glorified white working-class culture, back when no one else was doing that.

But Kid Rock was always a one-trick pony. His music never evolved beyond “American Bad Ass”. That same message, while fresh the first time you hear it, gets old after repeated playings.

America has changed since 2001, too. It might have been reasonable to assert that the white working class lacked a voice in the pop culture of 2001. That argument is harder to make today, in the second administration of Donald Trump.

Then Kid Rock went overtly, loudly political. A certain anti-elitism was always an ingredient in his music; but the specific politics were left to the listener’s interpretation in his earlier work. Now Kid Rock has become so closely identified with one political faction, that to declare oneself a Kid Rock fan is to declare one’s politics.

Like most celebrities who use their artistic platform for bait-and-switch politicking, Kid Rock is neither articulate nor original as a political analyst/commentator. Listening to Kid Rock decry the liberals is no more interesting than listening to Robert DeNiro and Cher trash Trump. No more enlightening than listening to Alyssa Milano prattle on about abortion.

It may be possible for an artist to hold public opinions about politics. But when a creative entertainer reaches a point where he becomes obsessed with politics, the politics inevitably take over the art, and the art degenerates into agitprop.

Evidence of just how far Kid Rock has fallen can be found in the video for his 2022 release, “Don’t Tell Me How to Live”. The song consists mostly of a stream of f-bombs, hurled at establishment and media liberals.

The high point of Kid Rock’s alternative Super Bowl performance was his rendition of “Till You Can’t”, a touching song originally performed by country music singer Cody Johnson.

The problem is…Cody Johnson does a much better job of performing the song. Kid Rock was never beloved for the raw quality of his voice. The appeal of Kid Rock was always in his persona, and now that persona seems like a relic from 2001.

There is a lesson here for all politically motivated artists. Speak out on important issues, if you must. But never mistake political expression for artistic expression. No one listens to political diatribes for entertainment, even if those diatribes are set to music.

-ET

J.D. Vance booed in Milan

Well, if you were hoping that the 2026 Winter Olympic games were going to be apolitical…I’ve got news for you: US Vice President J.D. Vance and his pregnant wife were booed at the opening ceremonies in Milan, Italy.

I sort through the kerfuffle in the attached video.

Key points:

J.D. Vance and the Trump administration have criticized our Western European allies on a wide range of issues, from free speech to our shared defense burden. We should not be surprised that not all Europeans have taken the criticism kindly. (And then there’s that Greenland thing, which I still can’t figure out.)
Europeans historically like about half of all US presidents, with a strong preference for Democrats.
Often the European logic changes. In the early 1980s, Reagan was booed in Europe for being too confrontational toward Moscow. Now the European Union is convinced that it’s ready to take on the Russian bear, and Europeans are angry at the US for not rattling enough sabres at Moscow.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Same stuff, different day. Enjoy the Olympics (if they interest you), and ignore the political nonsense.

A few kind words for Canada

I can’t help but notice that the USA and Canada haven’t been getting along well of late. As an American Canadaphile, this distresses me. So I thought I’d mention some of the things about Canada that I like, and have liked for many years.

I’ll begin with my teenage years in the 1980s. Two of my favorite rock bands, Rush and Triumph, were Canadian bands. I still listen to at least one song by Rush at least once per week. I plan to continue listening to Rush, despite the cross-border tensions, and despite the tariffs.

In more recent years, I’ve become a fan of Tim Horton’s coffee. I understand that Canadians like to make fun of Tim Horton’s coffee, but it’s one of my favorites. I can happily report that despite the recent trade disputes, the price of a bag of Tim Horton’s coffee is mostly unchanged at my local grocery store here in Ohio.

When I worked in the automotive industry, I traveled to Canada frequently. I had many Canadian colleagues. I found almost all of them to be agreeable folks. And I often appreciated the Canadian perspective.

For example: In 1992, flag burning became a contentious political issue here in the United States. I discussed the matter with one of my Canadian coworkers. He told me: “In Canada, no one would burn the national flag. And if they did, no one would care.”

I have remembered those words for more than thirty years. I love the USA. But sometimes it seems that we go out of our way to find new things to argue about.

I do have a few criticisms of Canada. You all claim to be bilingual in English and French. But I’ve found that very few Anglophone Canadians can manage more than a few words of French. English, meanwhile, is controversial in Quebec. And yes—I’m aware of the long and complicated history.

I found that my Canadian colleagues were sensitive about their weather. Americans often view Canada as a northern equivalent of Antarctica; and Canadians are quick to point out that Canada isn’t frozen over twelve months per year. The summers in southern Canada are actually pleasant and mild. (I’ve been in Toronto in June.)

Speaking of language: English-speaking Canadians have their own way of speaking English, but the differences are subtle. Canadian English is mostly the same as American English, except for a few diphthongs.

I wouldn’t mind visiting Canada again, and I hope that US-Canadian relations improve. At present, I don’t think that either of our countries is blessed with particularly judicious leadership. I long for simpler times, when someone like Brian Mulroney was in charge in Ottawa; and the US president was Ronald Reagan.

Unlike President Trump, I don’t want Canada to become our 51^st state. This is partly because I know that is not what you want, but it is also because with your population of 41 million, you would forever alter US electoral politics. I love you Canadians, but I was baffled by your long enthusiasm for Justin Trudeau.

Oh, one last thing: your national anthem.

Even Donald Trump had to admit that the Canadian national anthem is “a beautiful thing”. When he brought forth his ill-considered proposal for Canadian statehood, Trump stipulated that the Canadian national anthem should be preserved in any event.

Perhaps that is a point on which we can all agree. Canada has one of the best national anthems on the planet. And Geddy Lee, the lead vocalist of Rush, does the best job of singing it.

-ET

JFK, Marlene Dietrich, and the problem of the aging Lothario

Eleanor Herman’s Sex with Presidents: The Ins and Outs of Love and Lust in the White House, is well worth reading both for its historical content, as well as its human interest angle.

In this book, you’ll learn about the honey trap in which Alexander Hamilton was ensnared in 1797. Women and sex, it turns out, were among Hamilton’s principal weaknesses.

There are the requisite chapters about Warren G. Harding and the Nan Britton affair. Also Eisenhower’s unconsummated sexual liaisons with his wartime driver, Kay Summersby. (Apparently, Ike was impotent by the time he became involved with the much younger, statuesque Summersby.)

Needless to say, the chapter on John F. Kennedy is among the most lurid. There are the expected entries about Marilyn Monroe, and the two White House secretaries nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle. But there are also some surprises.

According to this book, JFK was into partner-swapping mini-orgies involving other men, too (Note: not with any male-male contact, though). And of course, threesomes with two women. (What man isn’t, after all?)

While most of JFK’s conquests were on the younger side, not all of them were. When German actress Marlene Dietrich visited the White House shortly before JFK’s death, Kennedy decided that he had to have her, too.

Dietrich, born in 1901, was sixteen years older than Kennedy. She was then already in her sixties. Dietrich quickly decided, though, that she would not turn down a chance to romp with America’s youthful, charismatic commander-in-chief.

But there was one caveat: “I was an old woman by then,” she later recounted, “and damn if I was going to be on top.”

Dietrich also reported that the encounter did not last long. JFK was fast out of the gate. That assessment conformed to other reports about our 35^th president.

Speaking of age: JFK died at 46, when he was still in his prime. He is frozen in amber as a youngish, good-looking man.

For as long as he lived, JFK was largely attractive to women. But even during his lifetime, he showed signs of what would now be called predatory behavior. He often manipulated women into sex, and occasionally plied them with alcohol and drugs.

And speaking of age again: Some of his partners were far too young for a grown man in a position of power, even by the standards of that era.

What if JFK had not been martyred at the age of 46? What if he had served out a presumable second term and died of old age? A normal lifespan would have placed Kennedy’s death sometime in the 1990s or the early years of the twentieth century. (He would have turned 100 in 2017.)

We can assume that at a certain point—probably not far into the 1970s— the women would no longer have been quite so willing, and JFK would have met with more resistance. For JFK, sex was more than a mere biological drive. He was clearly compulsive about his conquests, and regarded sex as an extension of his power.

It is therefore not difficult to imagine JFK, had he lived, being embroiled in a sordid late-life sexual harassment scandal, not unlike those that befell both Trump and Biden. (Joe Biden was accused of sexual harassment, too, both by Senate staffer Tara Reade, and seven other women. But the mainstream media chose not to dwell on these accusations. Make of that what you will.)

Like many Americans who are too young to remember JFK in office (he died five years before I was born), I grew up thinking of Kennedy as a mythic figure. I attended Catholic schools, and a portrait of JFK hung in at least two of my K-12 classrooms, right beside portraits of the Pope and several of the saints.

But keep in mind: had he not been martyred in 1963, JFK would have been just another former president in his golden years.

I might also note that Donald Trump had no shortage of willing female partners in his 30s and 40s. In those days, Trump was not a controversial septuagenarian politician, but a glamorous tabloid billionaire. Many women wanted to be with him.

Time and age are the enemies of sex appeal. The difference between a celebrated ladies’ man and a reviled lecher is often a matter of a few years and a few wrong presumptions. Just ask Donald Trump.

-ET

View it on Amazon: Sex with Presidents: The Ins and Outs of Love and Lust in the White House

Kristen Clarke, Harvard, and “race science”

Kristen Clarke, Biden’s nominee to head the DOJ Civil Rights Division, penned a 1994 letter to the Harvard Crimson, stating that African Americans have “superior physical and mental abilities”. At the time, Clarke was an undergraduate at Harvard, and the president of the university’s Black Students Association.

Clarke based her letter on…race science.

Here are some excerpts from the letter:

“One: Dr Richard King reveals that the core of the human brain is the ‘locus coeruleus,’ which is a structure that is Black, because it contains large amounts of neuro-melanin, which is essential for its operation.

“Two: Black infants sit, crawl and walk sooner than whites [sic]. Three: Carol Barnes notes that human mental processes are controlled by melanin — that same chemical which gives Blacks their superior physical and mental abilities.

“Four: Some scientists have revealed that most whites [sic] are unable to produce melanin because their pineal glands are often calcified or non-functioning. Pineal calcification rates with Africans are five to 15 percent [sic], Asians 15 to 25 percent [sic] and Europeans 60 to 80 percent [sic]. This is the chemical basis for the cultural differences between blacks and whites [sic].

“Five: Melanin endows Blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities — something which cannot be measured based on Eurocentric standards.”

Obviously, this is complete hooey, dressed up in the sort of pseudo-scientific language that passes for erudition at places like Harvard.

Obviously, the mainstream media would be shrieking, Twitter would be exploding, if a white nominee to any senior federal government post had made similar claims about whites, based on “race science”.

Nevertheless, I’m of two minds on this one.

Clarke’s age is not available online, but her Wikipedia entry states that she graduated Harvard in 1997. Backing into the numbers, this would mean that she was about 19 years old when she wrote the above words.

Most people don’t reach full adulthood until they are about halfway through their twenties. (This is why I would be in favor of raising the voting age, rather than lowering it, but that’s another discussion.)

This doesn’t mean you should get a blank check for everything you do when you’re young, of course. But there is a case to be made that all of us say and think things during our formative years that will make us cringe when we look back on them from a more mature perspective.

This is certainly true for me. I was 19 years old in 1987. I am not the same person now that I was then—both for better and for worse.

Secondly, let’s acknowledge environmental factors. Being a student at Harvard is likely to temporarily handicap any young person’s judgement and intellectual maturity. Even in 1994, Harvard University was a hotbed of pointy-headed progressivism and insular identity politics.

Clarke was also involved in the Black Students Association. There was a Black Students Association at the University of Cincinnati when I was an undergrad there during the late 1980s. Members of UC’s BSA were known to write whacko letters like the one above. Most of them, though, were nice enough people when you actually talked to them in person. They just got a little carried away when sniffing their own farts in the little office that the university had allocated for BSA use.

What I’m saying is: I’m willing to take into account that 1994 was a long time ago. A single letter from a 19-year-old, quoting pseudo-academic race claptrap, shouldn’t be a permanent blight on the record of a 47-year-old. And I would say the same if Kristen Clarke were white, and had taken a very different spin on “race science”.

We all need to stop being so touchy about racial issues, and so preoccupied with them. That goes for whites as well as blacks, and vice versa.

I’m willing to give Clarke a fair hearing, then. But I’m skeptical. Her 1994 Harvard letter isn’t an automatic disqualifier; but it’s a question that needs to be answered.

I’m also skeptical of Biden. Biden may be a feeble old man; he may be a crook. He is not particularly “woke” at a personal level. In fact, some of his former positions on busing and crime suggest that he’s anything but “woke” on matters of race.

Yet Biden is now head of a Democratic Party that is obsessed with race. This means that Biden may try to overcompensate, by filling his government with race radicals. This recent selection supports that concern.

Given the time that has elapsed between the present and 1994, given Kristen Clarke’s age at the time, I want to hear what she has to say in 2021 before I outright condemn her as a hater or a looney. But this recent personnel selection doesn’t make me optimistic about the ideological tilt of the incoming Biden administration.

-ET