The latest show on Tenacious D’s Australian tour has been postponed after senator Ralph Babet demanded the pair be deported following an apparent joke about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
American comedy rock duo Jack Black and Kyle Gass were due to perform in Newcastle on Tuesday evening, but the show – part of the band’s Spicy Meatball Tour – was cancelled without notice on Tuesday afternoon.
Concert promoter Frontier Touring said on social media that it regretted “to advise that Tenacious D’s concert tonight at Newcastle Entertainment Centre has been postponed”.
Video from the event showed (Kyle) Gass being presented with a birthday cake and told to “make a wish” as he blew out the candles. Gass then appeared to say “don’t miss Trump next time” – just hours after the shooting at Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania that left the former president injured.
Literally my first thought was “who the fuck cares”
Whether you find a joke funny or not, or in poor taste, or whatever… “WAAAAAH I GONNA KICK YOU OUT OF THE COUNTRY BECAUSE WORDS HURT” is not the appropriate level of response.
And besides, I thought these fucks were all about being tough, growing a thicker skin, getting over it etc
Suddenly it’s not the same when it’s one of theirs in the crosshairs this time? Or I guess iron sights, if I read correctly.
Is this the same angle you took when reacting to Dave Chapelle’s recent controversies? For the record, I agree with you, I just don’t see a lot of consistency on either side when it comes to stuff like this. Jokes are one issue where “both sides are the same” isn’t too far off. People in general pick and choose what they’re offended by and can’t easily follow their own advice to let it go when the subject matter touches one of their pet issues.
I dont know if this is the same. I dont agree with Kyle Gas’ joke that trump should be shot, but i do believe it was a joke and not a genuine wish for harm.
Chapelle, on the other hand, is taking a stance on gender which i disagree with. He’s not telling jokes. He is taking a position. And since i disagree with him and i find his position to be dismissive and one of erasure which i wholeheartedly disagree with, i find it very difficult to continue to watch his comedy.
In short, kyle doesnt want to hurt trump, chapelle does want to pretend trans people dont exist. So i think its fundamentally different.
I think your interpretation of the two situations has more to do with your political leanings than the content itself. At a basic level they are both comments made by people who get paid to make others laugh. You can assign motives to either of them that would make them more or less palatable to specific people, and it seems like you’ve chosen your path in that regard, but I don’t think it makes sense to spin one in a negative way and dismiss the other as a harmless joke. In my opinion they’re either both harmless or both intolerable. Anything less is just projection in one form or another.
If Kyle Gass came out and said, “I meant what I said, I’d have been and would be very pleased if he was killed,” would you consider the reaction justified?
If Chappelle came out and said, “I absolutely don’t wish harm on any trans people. It’s all just part of the act,” would you find his jokes acceptable?
Dave Chappelle was punching way down while Kyle was punching about high up as you possibly can.
You say that like “no punching down” is an unbreakable rule of comedy. Maybe in your opinion it should be but I don’t think that’s ever been true in reality, certainly not for big name comedians as a collective.
Besides, that’s only your interpretation of the situation and it requires that you assume Dave actually believes everything he says in his comedy shows which is demonstrably untrue for other subject matter he covers. You don’t assume he rapes kids even though he made a joke in that same special where that was the premise. Without that assumption there is no controversy so maybe we should stop assuming the worst about people’s intentions. That way we don’t have to concern ourselves with pointless conjecture.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think much of his trans material was very funny, but that doesn’t mean I have to jump to the conclusion that he’s a piece of shit like the internet wants me to. He’s a comedian with an incendiary style which makes it quite literally his job to say stuff like that.
Oh, there’s plenty of inconsistency, and I’m definitely biased, no doubt about it.
(rant ahead, feel free to skip)
Of course, I agree with KG, and it’s not really a “joke” for me.
So any answer I give you will be pretty heavily skewed.
That said, I do kind of think the DC thing was a bit overblown, but I also think he turned into a piece of shit who thinks he’s allowed to punch down on others, but you aren’t allowed to punch down on any group he’s part of. “can dish it, can’t take it” crowd.
But especially given how successful his career has been (and I fully recognize his struggle in getting started), and continued to be, his complaints fall on deaf ears.
But yeah, I don’t claim to be consistent with how I judge people’s “in the moment” things, and since the people I oppose have no concept of “consistency” (as well as them actively trying to make people like me and those I love cease to exist) I don’t really see a problem with that.
There’s no point in fighting fair when you’re facing oblivion.
And krashmo this isn’t directed at you, if anyone wants to try and tell me that “that’s not what they want”, I grew up in a pretty republican heavy area, that also attracted a lot of progressive young families, so I’ve seen more violence directed at other than I care to recount. It’s not a “maybe eventually” scenario in my head. It’s “now”.
Sorry this turned into a bit of a rant.
I get what you’re saying. I’ve got a similar background and it sounds like we have a lot in common in terms of perspective as well.
You’re right, consistency is clearly not important to the more conservative among us. That ship sailed long ago. However, that’s one of the things that I strive to be as much as possible. If one of my beliefs can’t be defended in all circumstances then I do my best to let it go, or at least recognize the fact that it’s situational and therefore not deserving of being presented as unassailable. The subject at hand is pretty inconsequential, all things considered, but I feel pretty confident in making the blanket statement that all jokes should be interpreted as such and not subject to the same scrutiny that the same statement would warrant in a different context.
Of course there are still such things as jokes in poor taste, racist jokes, mean jokes, etc. but at the end of the day a joke is what they are. It’s not a life motto or a campaign slogan it’s just something that’s supposed to make people laugh. Whether or not they accomplish that goal is largely irrelevant as long as that was the primary intent of the person who said it.
So, people can make the whole like, oh, this is a different context, kyle is joking, whatever whatever, right, and that’s both true and a fine argument to make. But I also think when we make this like, freedom as a principle argument, right, free speech as a principle, argument, it isn’t necessarily hypocritical.
We’re just not prioritizing freedom, prioritizing free speech, as the highest possible value that trumps all other values. I think kind of by necessity, it can’t be. The idea of free speech is logically incoherent if you take it to the extreme, because you could just define speech as being anything. Harmful acts, smearing poop on the bathroom walls, whatever. So you have to put a limit on it, and then those external values are going to be what places the limit on it.
Those external values of “I agree with kyle gass” vs “I agree with dave chapelle”. Agreeing with either argument, beyond that, thinking either argument, had in the public sphere, is worthwhile, that’s what has to define the limits of speech and freedom and what has to drive the outlook on it. I might oppose the poop swastika in the rec center bathroom, but I might think the ACAB poop smear in the nazi bar bathroom is maybe okay, even if it’s a little misguided or kind of just stupid or whatever.
There has to be a core value there. It’s not necessarily hypocritical to believe that political violence can be called for, or justified against your foes necessarily, and then think that the same thing shouldn’t be done to you on the nature of your ideology strictly being better. If my foes are basically just evil, straight up, yeah, probably at the very least stop them from like, having undue economic influence, which depending on who you ask, is gonna be some form of economic violence by nature of stripping away their agency or property or whatever. That doesn’t necessarily strike me as hypocritical, or not believing in equal rights or anything, it just strikes me as pragmatic.
The first set of Dave’s trans jokes included him basically saying that while he doesn’t understand trans people, he ultimately accepts them for who they are. In that era I defended the jokes because I felt it was valid to joke about stuff as long as you ultimately aren’t trying to hurt, belittle, or delegitimize ordinary people. The follow-up jokes weren’t nearly as understanding and I no longer felt like Dave cared about much beyond being a dick. He seemed to double down on the punching down without bothering to build them back up again.
Anyway, there is a fundamental difference with Trump, in that he’s downright a fascist, so joking about his death isn’t exactly punching down. It’s more like wishful thinking.
