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.
