Rocker Ted Nugent just made big bucks to not show up somewhere.
The town of Longview, Texas paid Nugent $16,000 to not appear at the town's Fourth of July Festival. According to KLTV, a city spokesman said Nugent was "not the right feel for this kind of community event."
The city had reached a verbal agreement with Nugent, scheduling the rocker as the headliner who would play inside the Maude Cobb Convention and Activity Center during the town's Independence Day celebration. To break that agreement, the town paid Nugent half of his guaranteed performance fee of $32,000 from Maude Cobb's annual budget.
The move comes amid criticism of comments Nugent made about President Barack Obama in January 2014, calling him a "subhuman mongrel." Nugent, who campaigned with Texas Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott amid the controversy, apologized for those comments in February.
Abbott said he was moving on from the controversy over Nugent in late February, but his ties to the rocker remain a prominent talking point of both sides of the governor's race. Abbott's rival, Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis (D), called the Attorney General's embrace of Nugent an "insult," while former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin (R) cited the rocker in her endorsement of Abbott.
"If he is good enough for Ted Nugent, he is good enough for me!" Palin wrote on her Facebook page.
The situation with Longview is not unique. Nugent was removed from a concert lineup at a prominent military base in 2012 after saying he would be "dead or in jail by this time next year" if Obama were re-elected that year.
Read more about the cancellation at KLTV.
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