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.
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.
Well said.
The only point I mildly disagree with is that all jokes should be on the same level, as some things are just… Not jokes. They simply masquerade as jokes because the person telling you their views doesn’t want the potential backlash if you disagree with them.
Chapelle’s stuff strikes me as more of that.
He’s just telling us how he feels and tries to layer it with “jokes” so he can act like he’s somehow in the right and we’re the ones who just “can’t take a joke”.
That’s pretty case dependent though, and someone who knows Chapelle better than I, or even someone with a different upbringing clearly can think differently.
There’s just so much that you could actually have a comedy routine about that’s not divisive.