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.
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?
In order of your questions.
Yes, the reaction would be justified. If he genuinely meant he wanted trump dead, despite the fact that i think trump is a trash human being who will further destroy america and cause pain and suffering to millions, i do not wish him death and any celebrity in a position of influence should not be inciting violence like trump did.
Yes, absolutely. He would have to justify a lot of things he said, but if it became clear that he was joking the entire time and that it’s just an act, then i would accept that.
So, is there any set of jokes a comedian could make that are filled with enough punching down or hateful rhetoric that you would condemn, even if the comedian was adamant they were just jokes and that he doesn’t believe anything that’s actually racist/sexist/transphobic/pro-genocide/etc?
Or is it a “no true Scotsman” thing where, if the jokes are bad enough, you just decide that he must actually mean them for real, and therefore you can condemn them out of hand?
Why does it need to go to the extreme? Are you telling me you have this all figured out theres no room for improvement in your view on morality? Im navigating this as it comes. Anything i say or have said is and should always be subject to change. And im also not willing to be the one who sets the bar here. Im not the one who decides whats ok and whats not. That is a collective thing that must be decided by society. You are too adamant in your beliefs for me to take you seriously. Its not on the individual to decide. Its up to everyone.
I would say, yes there must be a point where i would condemn a comedian based on jokes they are telling. But im still working that out.
I think intent matters. I think it is a strong factor in deciding if a joke is ok or not. To me the joke was more about kyles political leanings. I dont think he was advocating for murder. I think he was using that attempted assasination as a vehicle to state he doesn’t want trump to be president. Sure, there are better ways of saying that but if you truely belive there is no room for nuance here then i belive it is a failing on your part to understand the joke as opposed to a failure on my part to have a divine sense of morality.
Of course there’s nuance. Of course every set of jokes fall on a spectrum from universal to heinous.
And obviously a lot of factors go in to deciding if something is truly unacceptable, up to and including if the person truly believes what they’re joking about.
I’m not really arguing against any of that, and I think we’re in fact largely in agreement on that score.
The point I’m actually fighting is one of introspection. To what degree is your opinion on whether a joke is okay or not dependant on your personal political leanings?
How much are you using things like “whether they meant it or not” as a post-justification to make you feel less biased about why you took the position you did? If I provided a hundred different jokes by a hundred different comedians, would your “this is acceptable” vs “this is not” graph more align with a graph of how much they meant what they said, or with how left or right leaning the joke was?
And maybe for you, it wouldn’t be politically skewed at all. Maybe you truly hold an objective metric that can be applied across the board, without a bias towards accepting more things that align to your own beliefs. But you must admit, if so, that it would make you an overwhelming outnumbered minority.
And furthermore, surely you would admit, that most people who do have the “it was a joke against my candidate, and therefore it’s unacceptable, but it’s fine if the joke was about the enemy,” mindset, are quick to argue that they are in fact the most objective person on earth and only make decisions about acceptability based on cool hard logic and rules, not partisanship.