Starship Asterisk*

It seems to me that the trick would be to have a large engine attached to the other end of the pipe to create thrust and eliminate drag. Then place proportionally smaller engines at proportionately closer intervals to eliminate bend potential.
Eventually, you will notice rotation in the center. Potentially, you might want to tweak the parameters to double the pole length and use the middle as the point of rotation. Then there is that little problem with inertia

hstarbuck wrote:So, what happens when the outer regions start catching up, and due to tangential velocity growing with radius, start approaching the speed of light. I think this simply puts the outer regions in the category of any massive object approaching c. ..... infinite energy is needed to get a mass to reach c

To approach c you don't need infinite energy, to go at exactly c with an object with mass needs infinite energy.
To go at "very fast but just below c" you just need "a very lot but not infinite" energy.
So approaching c is theoretically possible, going at c is not (for objects with mass).