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.
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.
I don’t care if Dave believes it or not, he’s attacking people from a position of power who are at danger in our society. It’s not an unbreakable rule, but it’s the core context used when trying to decide whether it’s productive. You can say a lot of terrible things about people who are hurting and elicit a chuckle from at least some subset of the population, that doesn’t make it good (in the good for society sense) comedy.
That’s why there’s a world of difference between KG and Chapelle, and no lack of consistency in people that think KG made a harmless joke and Chapelle is contributing to a trans panic that both oppresses and endangers lives. And it’s not a mistake. There have been other comics that have had off-color sets that when confronted about them thought about it and realized it could be harmful and wasn’t really that important to keep. It’s not his job to make trans jokes and that’s a very different comedy than simply being “incendiary”.
OK, let’s assume for the sake of the argument that everything you just said is 100% correct. Why aren’t you also saying Dave Chapelle is a pedophile, or a racist, or a homophobe? Children, racial minorities, and gay men are all other groups he made jokes about and they all fit your criteria of “people at danger in our society”.
The fact that transphobic is the only descriptor I hear about that show suggests to me that this is not really the criteria you’re using to evaluate the situation, it’s merely convenient cover to give when pressed that will pacify most people. At minimum it means you’re giving those other comments a pass as jokes and choosing not to do so with his trans jokes and that is absolutely inconsistent no matter how you try and spin it.