Jack Black announced on Instagram that he’s cancelled the rest of the Tenacious D world tour and placed future projects on hiatus.
This happened after his bandmate Kyle Gass sparked controversy by commenting on the recent Donald Trump assassination attempt.
At their recent Sydney show, Kyle Gass was given a birthday cake and asked to make a wish for his 64th birthday, to which he said “Don’t miss Trump next time.”
In his later statement, Black said he was “blindsided” by his bandmate’s comment and condemned any calls for political violence.
Thankfully, it’s not the commentary I was afraid he’d offered. JB sounds spineless in this, it was a joke and an honest expression of the very real existential fear people feel towards Trump rule.
I fucking hate this. Trump gets on mic everyday to wish death on some innocent groups of people but we’re fucking forbidden from joking about it towards him?
Edit: I hope everyone who downvotes me gets very peacefully and nonviolently re-educated.
I think it’s complicated a bit by the fact that this was said on stage at one of their shows. I think canceling the tour is a gross overreaction, but with the current political climate (even ignoring the assassination attempt) I can understand some hesitancy to proceed if anyone is going to be associating them with calls for political violence.
All that said… based birthday wish, fully agree with Gass’s joke.
Agree. Absolutely not a joke. Former president has caused, is causing, and will continue to cause active violent harm to the country, but it’s not appropriate to talk about how justified it is to stop him?
He’s literally above the law now; there is no peaceful way to adequately deal with him in a timely manner. He, his conservative judges, and the republicans in power have backed the American people into a corner of violence.
Yeah like he’s not wrong, but maybe don’t say it on stage in front of everybody and God at your job that you and your coworkers are depending on to pay the bills. I’m sure none of them are living paycheck to paycheck but art also doesn’t make as much money as people like to think, especially in this day and age, and I’m not going to fault any one individual for playing it safe these days.
I was with you right up until you used based…
Now I’m blocking you to cut down on the borked brain comments I see.
“I wonder how Paul Pelosi is feeling.” Roaring laughter
Yeah, the time for civil has passed. The attempt of his life happened because no one is willing to do anything about him.
It closely echoes what I thought at the time. “Do not miss, or do not take the shot.” As Yoda said, “There is no try.”
Personally I was hoping for a heart attack. Did anyone think an assassination, successful or not, wouldn’t just lead to a complete shit-show?
I was hoping the “excitement” of almost being killed would have lead to a heart attack, but who am I kidding? This is The Worst Timeline™ everything goes to shit and the absolute worst of us live forever and get everything they want…
To be honest. I think all famous people right now are preparing for the real possibility of a fascist dictatorship in america very soon.
They are trying to stay off of Trump’s assassination list. If they stay in the mode of “we condemn violence towards trump” then trumps ego doesn’t get hurt by them and they end up having a mysterious heart attack, drug overdose, or 3 in the back of the head “suicide”
Yeah, this guy (Trump) vahemently opposed the largest American protest in our history. The idealogy he opposed was simply “black lives matter”. He and his cronies vilified the entire movement by labeling the movement “Antifa”, and making it synonomus with terrorists looking to destroy America.
He gassed his way through the middle of protesters and the very clergy of a church he visited to hold a Bible upside down, and later re-tweet a video about a golfer yelling “white power”. These are fascist actions, and all while theoretically attacking “Antifa”.
And now we’re never supposed to even JOKE about him dying?
Fuck that, and fuck Trump.
He’s a very popular actor/musician that isn’t looking to wade into any controversy that might damage his popular brand.
Trump gets on mic everyday to wish death on some innocent groups of people but we’re fucking forbidden from joking about it towards him
So you want the freedom to be like Trump?
Personally I’d rather no one had the ability to wish violence on others without consequence. But I guess to each their own.
I feel like I’m through the fucking looking glass. Trump has called for violence on many individuals/groups, led a goddamn insurrection in which people died, and will certainly be responsible for more bloodshed elected or not, but we’re supposed to play this stupid as decency game because he was shot? I lost all respect for Jack Black today. Must be nice to afford this decency bullshit. He won’t be put in a camp if these fascists succeed.
Exactly. This wasn’t an attempt on your run of the mill republican shitbag. This man is a real fucking threat and so are all of his supporters/followers.
I feel like it’s just more of that corporate fence sitting. It’s just extra strange and off putting when it’s coming an individual versus your average soulless company.
I wouldn’t say strange, so much as disappointing.
We feel like we have relationships with entertainers, and most of the time we feel they represent - well, something other than corporate fence sitting. Being reminded they’re a product more than a person really sucks the air out of the room.
I imagine personal safety is also a major factor. Concert security is a joke. KG making that comments paints a target on both of their backs.
They are domestic terrorists. Don’t underestimate them.
Still, disappointing that JB has taken such a stance that seems to be neutral on hate and violence.
To play devils advocate, a comment like that has the potential to put you in the crosshairs of one of these nut jobs the FBI/DHS has told everyone to be on the look out for. There was a large uptick in these domestic terrorist groups calling for retaliation (even though the guy was a Republican), but everyone on the Right has intentionally not mentioned his political affiliation and just said things about the “radical left” just pouring gas on the fire.
Basically this. Even if they wanted to continue the tour, Gass just massively increased the chance of another mass shooting by some nut job out to get revenge. If that had really happened, it would’ve completely sunk everyone involved and people would be claiming that they were the ones that invited the catastrophe.
That’s a fair take. I’ve been very frustrated with the respectability politics this week and it might be a bit unfair to him, as he isn’t a political figure, but an entertainer who didn’t initially choose to say anything. I can’t say I’d throw my boy under the bus like that, but I’m not him.
I don’t take calls against political violence as throwing anyone under the bus. He said he was “blindsided”, which I take to mean he didn’t expect him to say what he said. He also:
- did not agree with more violence (a good take when it comes to democracy)
- recognized Kyle put the whole crew at risk if the tour continued - as this would for sure make it to front page of every right wing hate filled cesspool
I think Kyle said it as more of a joke than serious, but when you don’t know who is in the cult and who isn’t when your looking out at a sea of people at a concert it sounds like Jack made the right call. Getting on a soapbox and “backing” Kyle would would just further put them and their crew in danger.
I think the shitty thing is that for someone who was supposedly “blindsided” by what Gass said, he was chuckling at it.
This is either Jack Black throwing his bandmate under the bus because he otherwise would have been pulled from future movie projects, or they’ve received more than enough hateful comments and death threats from Trump supporters that they’ve been spooked into cancelling the tour for safety reasons.
This is a strange take to me. Nervous laughter is, famously, a thing. You can simultaneously be surprised by something that was said, not actually support it, but still laugh. Especially when you’re in the middle of a show, literally on a stage, in front of thousands of people.
Sincerely I am baffled at the take most comments have on this… Does this mean that because trump is a fucking fascist piece of shit that calls for violence against anyone he doesn’t like we have the right to call for violence against him? Just because trump is a disgusting waste of biological matter that rapes kids do we have the right to rape his kids? What the fuck is with all these comments calling coward to jack black for pointing out how out of place is such a thing to say… It’s a joke that I could do, in a group of close friends, that I know how they will take it. I’m pretty sure jack black would have found it funny in private. But in the middle of a show? Do we really need to remind people that calling for violence is not OK? Yeah we could take his comment as a joke… But what if some people in the audience are unhinged enough to take it seriously? The comment was definitely out of place. Freedom of speech has limits, and his comment is very much crossing the limit.
Look, I’m not going to lie, if I hear trump drops dead randomly tomorrow I wouldn’t feel particularly sad (or at all) but I wouldn’t ask for him to be assassinated or call for terrorism against republicans no matter how wrong I think they are and how dangerous they can be. What the fuck… there’s so many people here hoping for a fucking asshole to be assassinated it’s kinda scary even. That’s not the solution against trump or republicans…
I guess we’ll see how you feel when trumps supreme court sanctioned death squads of deputized gravy seals are murdering and raping in your neighborhood.
Don’t use fallacies to defend violence. Killing trump is not the only way to avoid that from happening. Becoming a terrorist and promoting violence against a political group contrary to your political opinion is not OK no matter how dangerous that group is. You are using the same discussion techniques that fucking maga asshats use. Seriously you don’t see the issue on the way you are defending the idea that assassinating a political opponent is the only way to defeat that opponent?
You are defending the republican gun nutjob that went to shoot trump and accidentally killed someone else? You are saying his decision making was the kind of behaviour to glorify? The same kind of nut job that will happily join in the death squads you talk about? What the fuck, how does your brain work? How can you not see the hypocrisy of what you are saying…
Of course that’s assuming a sincere take and not just some piece of shit bot or account made to increase violence hatred and division.
You lost all respect for Jack Black because his career was worth more to him than one extremely shortsighted comment that he didn’t even choose to make himself?
Your point is apparently that anyone who doesn’t stand proudly by “good” assassinations is a piece of shit?
Trump getting shot has really shined a light onto the Lemmy audience. For fucks sake within 20 minutes every other comment written about it was a stupid conspiracy theory about it.
Now people are saying shit like you did and getting upvoted for it. I guess I won’t be here much longer.
Well said. Jack Black is the fun guy making fun music. He’s obviously not pro-Trump but he’s a professional - I don’t blame him for not wanting to be associated with comments like that for the time being.
I’m a little disappointed with the phrasing of the announcement but there’s unfortunately a high chance Trump will be president and he’s pretty outspoken about getting rid of his critics.
people who won’t stand for their convictions is why the Democrats can’t get shit done. he believes it, just doesn’t want to lose $ saying it out loud. it’s ALWAYS money.
trump deserves it, he wishes violence and death on many people, bummer that someone should make him eat his words.
This isn’t anything new. There’s a whole lot of people on the Fediverse who throw the word Fascist around willy nilly but who will happily make use of Fascist rethoric in regards to those who they see as political enemies.
They seem to think that the bad thing about Fascism isn’t the authoritarianism, political violence, censorship, etc, but the fact it’s a “right wing” government behind those - those would all be perfectly justifiable means to an end in the name of a left wing movement.
I see this happening more in american politics than over here, and I think it’s in part a lack of knowledge of history, but also never having had an actual fascist regime in the country’s recent history. My parents were tortured by the political police. I have a bunch of family who lived under an actual Fascist regime, and colleagues from other countries with a recent history similar to mine, and I notice that people in general, even in the far left, are way more careful about how they use the word Fascist. American internet “leftists” - which I put in quotes because many don’t seem to actually hold any left wing views - love LARPing about living under fascism and that somehow excusing every thing they claim Fascism is bad for - against their political enemies.
There was a phrase tossed around by some “leftists” in opposition to the terrible clusterfuck that was gamergate back in the early 2010s. Sometime around then at least.
“No bad tactics, only bad targets”
Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of people in the world lately who believe it.
Jack Black is trying to use his massive A-list star power to get Biden elected, something that will actually help people. Kyle Gass made an offhanded joke that could jeopardize that. So Jack Black needs to distance himself, and I’ll bet you money Kyle Gass agrees with him.
It’s an impossible situation to be in, but I kind of agree with Jack Black’s move on this. He can do more good as a Hollywood A-lister for Biden than he can as an “edgy” rock star with a guy nobody’s ever heard of.
The disrespect to the Gass man is ridiculous. Honestly Tenacious D comes from the same era of ridiculousness that gave rise to Borat, and I don’t see why Kyle shouldn’t be given the same leeway to say wild ass shit that Cohen did.
Yeah… pointing to the Zionist who just got canceled For being sexually inappropriate on set and to defend himself released a video of himself being sexually inappropriate on set isn’t the defense you think it is. Even his wife left him.
And no offense to the gas man. I’m a 35-year-old white guy. I’ve been in love with the gas man for two decades now. But be honest with yourself, Most people don’t know about Tenacious D. The second biggest category think of Tenacious D as Jack Black’s band with that guy. That doesn’t really compete with Bowser from Mario levels of fame.
Man I’m actually kinda sad I somehow missed Cohen getting super canceled. I’ll have to go look for it.
This is a good take, but I really fucking hate the constant “we go high” shit.
I really fucking hate the constant “we go high” shit.
The guy that took a shot at Trump was a Republican. And the guy who would have inevitably driven a car-sized fertilizer bomb into a crowd of Tenacious D fans would also be a Republican.
This isn’t “going high”, its self-preservation. We live in a fascist country swarming with fascist cops and fascist vigilantes, and we need to fucking act like it. Every concert going forward would have had insane security costs because of this one off-handed remark.
Shit is so dark right now. The rational, empathetic person in me is still very much in control, and agrees with you. But the geopolitical realist in me is quietly whispering “Kyle has chosen the path of martyrdom.”
The thing is, our opposition is not rational or empathetic.
Recently had to take a trip to the USA for work and it felt surreal… all the posters of whatever celebrity with captions like “XYZ wants you to stop littering” or “Such-and-Such only use Colgate”. It felt like a brain washing operation for toddlers (and this was at the airport)
Oh Kyle, why did you say that? If you say your birthday wish out loud it won’t come true!
Today I learnt to respect Kyle Gass even more
