Jb should have just kept his mouth shut, maybe made some half assed apology, but that’s about it. Making a big deal about how unacceptable Kage’s comment was is just pandering to the far right. It’s mostly just the far right that is pearl clutching over this.
Comedy is the last bastion of free speech. If you do not like the joke then stop listening, move on, change the channel. Censoring comedy because someone doesn’t like the joke is the only thing that is unacceptable here. Really disappointed in Jabels here.
What is this about? I must’ve missed this.
His partner in Tenacious D, Kyle Gass, had his birthday the day after the Trump assassination attempt. When asked what he wished for his birthday live on stage, Kyle said “don’t miss Trump next time”.
Jack canceled the remaining shows and has posted some huge social media posts about how terrible that joke was and how upset he is.
Oh and in his posts he said that all future creative plans for the band are on hold, not just the tours.
Which to me seems like a massive overreaction. I can understand canceling the tours for safety but everything else? Eh…
I can agree. It was a joke in poor taste but a stern talking would have been fine, right? People make mistakes and it’s best to keep politics far from entertainment.
Jack canceled the remaining shows
Pretty sure it was venues that started cancelling shows
I can’t see that unless some trump turd was in charge of the venue bookings. Most operators are going to take money over pearl-clutching, and hell knows most people that would go see a TenD concert would have preferred to see Donny take one between the headlights to begin with, so they aren’t going to complain.
Especially since at the concert everyone laughed, there was no pearl clutching till the twitter post
Yeah…
Or maybe theres more to it than we know. I’d actually be shocked if he and his family weren’t receiving death threats for those comments, so I dunno, maybe he didn’t want him and his fans to get shot the fuck up at one if their shows (or at the very least have issues performing due to anxiety over such an event).
Unfortunately, in the current US, it’s not an irrational fear for someone like him. I can’t say I blame him at all.
It’s fucking stupid, but here we are.
Canceling the tour and essentially breaking up the band is what brought all the attention in the first place. My point was that nobody in the US would have heard about this if JB hadn’t made such a big deal.
Australian venues were already cancelling before JB did anything.
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You never paid attention to the lyrics of City Hall
The government totally sucks mother fucker, the government totally sucks…
Tenacious D… inoffensive…ok.
Tenacious D have a song about Don Jr. bring a fascist KKK dictator who they overthrow.
All you people up there in City Hall, you’re fucking it up for all the people that’s in the streets, this is a song for the people in the streets not the people in City Hall…
The fuck are you talking about? As far as I understand it, he didn’t throw Gass in a cage to keep him from every stating a joke again… he just chose not to participate in something he didn’t agree with. That kind of choice thing you claim to be for.
Are you some sort of free speech absolutist who only wants people to agree with you?
Imo, JB capitulated to the far right by so staunchly objecting to KG’s comment/joke… it wasn’t necessary for him to make such a big deal about it, legitimizing the outrage which, imo, wasn’t justified.
Have whatever opinion you want, idgaf.
Also, a ‘free speech absolutist’ and ‘only wanting people to agree with you’ are unrelated concepts… to quote you, the fuck are you talking about?
legitimizing the outrage
Was there even any outrage? The only news I read was about Jack Black canceling the concerts, nothing about Kyle Gass’ original comment.
It was a Streisand effect for sure. There was a small backlash/outrage, then JB shined a light on it by canceling the tour.
kevin rudd was physically ill, the poor dainty
it’s kind of dramatic to frame “hey it’s not cool to use our platform to jokingly encourage would-be assassins” as “capitulation” to such-and-such political movement. by all means make assassination jokes in private but it’s different when it’s through a megaphone like that - we live in an age of stochastic terror man, that shit’s been weaponized for a decade now and it’s silly to pretend it isn’t as long as the “joke” reflects your own feelings. this is some maga-level mental gymnastics, maybe think more about it.
Why can’t people see that this is about self-preservation, not PR.
Like for fuck sake, do you need to see gay people lined up against a wall by conservative death squads before realizing how fucked up the situation here is?
I’d be shocked if both of them (and their families) have not been receiving death threats since Gass made the joke.
So fucking what? He is a public figure. They get death threats all the time.
If you honestly cannot tell what’s different about the current political atmosphere in the US, then I truly don’t know what to say.
The difference is the missing backbone of too many people.
Sure thing, bud.
So you cant really disagree with arguments then? Cool.
Fuck yeah love the satire, I lost so much respect for JB over how he handled kyle glass’s comment. Tenacious D is one of my favorite sleepover movies from when I was a kid.
the left needs to stop being a bunch of cowards. tell the right we’re coming for them. they need to be scared of us. quit living up to the stereotype of ‘average liberal soyboy’.
If liberals weren’t soyboy cowards they’d be a proud vegetarian socialist.
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” When fascists eventually resort to it, they find they’re not the only ones who can use violence.
or we could just shut them all down now before that day ever comes.
What if the day you decide it’s time you go outside to realize the day was two years ago and now half your friends are being “re-educated” and you have to hide that you ever knew the other half.
I tell people as often as I can, especially my trans and bipoc friends; now is the time. Get a couple guns (a long one and a short one) and learn how to use them. Learn some basic first aid, you really just need to know how to stabilize someone. Start networking with like-minded people in your communities. The police will not protect us, they’ve proven they’ll happily club senior citizens to the ground and shoot any protesters in the face with rubber bullets while escorting a rightwing murderer to safety. We only have soap, ballot, bullet, and jury boxes and obviously the soapbox has limited impact and the ballot box increasingly less.
Iran was a secular, liberal state until almost 1980 when they (mostly legitimately) elected an Islamist theocracy; it could happen here.
I feel like this is referencing something I’m out of the loop on
Jack Black canceled his tour after Kyle Gass made a joke about the Trump assassination attempt.
It was not the greatest joke in the world. No, it was just a tribute.
Let’s not bury the lede here: the joke in question was making a birthday wish while blowing out candles saying “don’t miss next time”. Joke or not, that is publicly encouraging the assassination of a former president.
Like, there’s a big difference between “I heard he shit his pants when the bullets started flying” and “I hope it happens again and succeeds this time”.
Fuck Trump. Fuck everything about him. But you gotta know that shit isn’t acceptable when standing next to the guy who played Bowser for Nintendo
EDIT: Whole lot of people in here can’t fucking read lmao. I don’t give a shit about Trump, conservatives, or anyone on that side of this issue. I just know that it’s a dumb move to make that joke standing on stage with a guy who stars in PG movies for a living. Y’all need to get a grip
Spare us the sanctimonious lecturing. I don’t give a single shit about the pearl clutching coming from conservatives after they spent the last two years thinking it was utterly hilarious that a lunatic with a hammer savagely attacked Paul Pelosi… Including Donald “look at my YUGE bandage” Trump. They can dish it out but they can’t take it, fuck this apologia nonsense. A comedian made a tasteless joke about Trump at a concert in Australia. Boo hoo.
As far as I’m concerned the only one whose reputation has taken a hit here is JB. Immediately throwing Kyle Gass under the bus, cancelling their tour, and announcing “all creative plans are on hold” over that seems like a massive overreaction. I still think he’s an incredibly talented dude and he seems like an otherwise good person but it has made me think quite a bit less of him.
Edit: And now this jackass is doubling down and insisting anyone that disagrees with their stupid point simply didn’t understand it. Blocked.
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I thought everyone (incl GP) understood? It’s right there in the title of the post.
lmao calling it spineless is the epitome of missing the forest for the trees. JB is taking heat he never had to while Kyle sits off to the side looking like a victim now. JB gets to keep his career, and they’ll be back on tour in two months when everyone has forgotten this happened. You all want him to make a stink for YOUR own satisfaction when, in reality, he’s taking the L like a champ because it’s what’s best for everyone involved after a mistake was made.
Bunch of children who can’t see past the tips of your own noses, you lot.
Are you just copy pasting a lot of these? FWIW I understand what point you are trying to argue.
How the fuck do you square saying you agree with his position while also saying it isnt justifiable?
I didn’t say it wasn’t justifiable? The content of the statement is justifiable. That doesn’t mean it was a smart thing to say in the time and place he said it.
And in your worldview, it’ll just be a race to the bottom.
JB did the right thing. Him and Kyle will be able to come back from this because of the actions of JB. After all, who is the heat on now? It’s not Kyle. He looks like a victim now. Jacks taking the heat. Heat he can easily handle. Heat that will fade away in the coming months and be forgotten.
Instead of throwing a massive fight back and blowing the situation up even more out of proportion. Instead of now having to wonder if you’ve made yourself a target of insane Trumpers.
This was masterful PR and it shows who knows actual PR and who has too much ego to take an L when needed. This pretty much guaranteed that JB AND Kyle are protected. Everyone took just enough dirt to look like they got punished but it’s not enough to actually end anyone.
The only race with fascist is the race to the gas station to make sure the eaves are strong enough
Glad there’s at least one other person here who gets that this wasn’t a political decision but a PR one
Literally everybody here gets this. It’s in the fucking title of the post… And it is also exactly why everybody is hating on JB now and downvoting your comments. JB should have stood by his lifelong friend and creative partner, and care fuck all about the corporatist PR image after one bad joke. Especially because Kyle’s joke wasn’t a career endingly bad one. But JB made it out to be one. He has effectively killed KG’s career now, by blowing the thing way out of proportion, completely unnecessarily. All because he thought that HIS career was in danger too. That is why everybody is angry at him now. He has acted 100% selfishly.
What he should have done, if anything, was to say sthing like, “Kyle made a mistake, it was a joke in bad taste. But I’ve known him forever, I know he’s a good man with a good heart. He will reflect on this and learn from it and do better in the future. An assassination attempt, and the death of an innocent bystander can never be a joke. We will dedicate the oncoming stages of the tour and all proceeds from it to the family of the victim. Blah blah blah”. That’s all JB had to do and say.
Instead he threw KG totally under the bus, ended his career, and by making the morally wrong choice, probably damaged his own as well.
I’m not going to retype my explanation of why this is a childish view of the situation. You can read my other comments in a different fork of this thread if you want to learn why this is self-righteous, self-satisfying crap. That’s what YOU want. It’s not what’s actually best for JB or Kyle.
I’m sure some vaudevillians were patting each other on the back and saying the same thing, right before World War II.
They were wrong then and you are wrong now.
Whether or not Jack black is engaging in pr has nothing to do with ww2
Speedrunning Godwin’s law, are we?
Jack Black distancing himself from talk of assassination isn’t what leads us to WW3 you absolute mongrel. Trump being a malleable narcissist with delusions of dictatorship, a soulless GOP, funding genocide, failing to stop Russian westward expansion, and actual spineless Democrats who can’t play the game half as well as their opposition are what lead us to WW3
They’re comedians on stage. That joke was tame as hell. Republicans have openly said worse about trans people, and they’re not joking.
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And when Republicans are trying to star in Nintendo movies maybe that will actually be a relevant comparison
I hear what you’re saying, but I’m not sure I buy the argument. Jack Black is not just School of Rock, he’s half of Tenacious D. The band that made a movie about cock pushups and wrote “Fuck Her Gently.”
Being the goofy dad in Full House didn’t stop Bob Saget from being a very blue stand up comedian.
There’s a huge difference between bucking puritanical social norms around sex and vulgarity, and making light of a situation where an innocent bystander was killed, and a former president and current candidate was shot at. Those things are drastically different and it’s honestly crazy to me that people are trying to use JB’s prior sophomoric humor as a reason why he should have been okay with what might charitably be called gallows humor
Had he not missed the bystander would be alive.
So.
Are you a corporate shill? Who gives a flying fuck about nintendo?
Jack Black gives a fuck about Nintendo, that’s my point
That’s exactly the “spineless PR” you’re arguing against!
And that makes him a piece of shit. Welcome to the point of everyone else.
Former president, and current Republican frontrunner. If condoning political violence is bad, then Trump is the next Charles Manson in instilling violence in his cult.
So as long as someone else does something first, any act is justifiable in your mind?
It’s so weird that one assassination attempt turns everyone into grade schoolers.
“But teacher, they started it!”
You’re generalizing too hard. There is a legally convicted felon inciting race riots and attempts to overthrow the government. He had his chance as a leader, caused mass cultural and economic damage to America, and he is looking to do it again.
Violence is historically what is needed to make change to a government that is out of touch with the culture and the people it’s meant to represent.
You’re all misreading what I said. I never said it was bad. I said it was stupid.
I will say myself that I wish Trump were shot in the head (barring the unfortunate side effects that would bring about but that’s a separate conversation).
But I’m not standing on a stage next to Jack Black 🤷
I just know that it’s a dumb move to make that joke standing on stage with a guy who stars in PG movies for a living.
The set list included ‘fuck her gently’, ‘Double Team’ and ‘low hanging fruit’, get outta here with that PG shit.
As I said elsewhere there is a dramatic difference between bucking puritanical norms around sex and vulgarity, and making light of an attempt to assassinate a former president in which an innocent bystander was killed
It was a tossed off joke made in the spur of the moment. You are allowed to not like it, but don’t make up an elaborate censurial framework to justify that dislike. That’s a fool’s game bred by moral puritanism and it’s leading you to make arguments that are completely horseshit
Any problem with a hitler assassination joke?
The dude made an edgy joke about a child rapist fascist who has a high likelihood of controlling the worlds most powerful nation a second time where his backers have a open plan to immediately invoke martial law and completely replace the government on all levels with their own lackies should they win. Lets not pretend Gass has any real ability to put out an assassination attempt on a potential presidential candidate, so we’re not hiding anything when we say its just an edgy joke where the person who’s the butt of it is a certifiably nasty person. You dont actually have to support political violence to get that
That has absolutely nothing to do with JB not wanting to make light of an assassination attempt where an innocent person died.
Hey maybe if the shooter hadn’t missed, that innocent father & former firefighter wouldn’t have died either.
It’s lede just for whatever it’s worth.
Oops! That’s what I get for trying to swipe-type uncommon words xD
I also wish the assassin hadn’t missed. What’cha gonna do about it, snowflake?
Literally nothing? Because I do too? Can you read?
I can wish the bystander didn’t die, but that would mean the shooter would’ve had to not miss, which also would’ve resulted in the death of a pedophilic, racist, rapist cancer on this country, so… Win win?
I sincerely hope it happens again and succeeds this time. Trump is a threat to democracy and I hope somebody does something about it.
*Disclaimer: I am not instructing anyone to do anything, I am stating how I would feel if that thing were to happen.
Yep, I’m with JB on this one.
That joke is harmless…although the blowing out candles and making a wish is slightly troubling
It’s completely harmless.
It’s still a stupid thing today on a stage next to Jack Black.
People can down vote me all they want, it doesn’t change the fact that regardless of how justifiable the sentiment is - and it’s a sentiment I completely agree with - it was just plain stupid to say in that situation
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There may be more to this that we arent aware of like they agreed to not do controversial material ages ago and Kyle pitched the joke and Jack said “Dude fucking no, we dont want to touch this.”
It might be more about creative differences than the actual joke is what I’m saying.
Never thought I’d see someone think they had to white knight Jack Black, but here we are
NGL I’m kind of hoping that Jack isnt a closet MAGA asshole. Ill take a benign capitalist motive over that.
Oh, I don’t think he’s MAGA, I think he’s just entirely too worried about his acting career and threw Kyle under the bus without a second thought. Kyle just said what occurred to him in the moment and rather than backing Kyle, Jack just turned weasel.
People can lie but he seems to support Biden.
He supports Biden, but not his best friend.
Goddamn it, JB. Just goddamn.
Man, imagine thinking your argument is so flimsy that you have to justify your argument with lazy “white knight” accusations.
“How dare you join the discussion and not immediately be as outraged as I am! What are you, some kind of simp?!”
Last week, Kyle quit the band…
About ten years ago my girlfriend and I were driving late at night on the interstate and we got a flat tire. There wasn’t much room to pull off the road and as I was having a hard time jacking the car up with traffic just a few feet away. I was about to give up when a truck pulled up behind us and the driver came over to help
…wrong thread, or am I missing some reference here?
Since we’re all talking about Jack Black I just wanted to share a story
That driver was Warren Buffet.
We never did get his name
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I will not sit idly by while Jack Black is besmirched in this manner!
The man is a national treasure.
He kinda besmirched himself by immediately throwing KG under the bus the way he did. I’ve been a fan for decades now to the point that I don’t even realize I’m quoting them sometimes…but my respect for JB definitely took a hit there and I have to think now about how much of his public image has been carefully crafted by PR agencies over the years.
Dude threw himself under the bus by trying to tell an unscripted joke wherein he encouraged the assassination of a former president and current nominee.
Like, Trump is a piece of shit who deserves a bullet in the head but you have to be an idiot to think that’s an okay joke to tell while standing next to the guy who played Bowser for Nintendo and had a substantive role in a Muppets movie.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Calling JB less funny than CF is not much of an insult, as CF was a legend. And though JB is also a legend, he is both a comedian and a musician, whereas CF was not a musician (as far as I know).
Now I’m reading JB and CF as James Bond and Captain Falcon
Show your moves!
Agreed, everyone boo that commenter! Booo!
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Say what you will about nacho libre, but school of rock was fucking fantastic
Well, Chris Farley is dead, though.
I didn’t even know he was sick
He was another victim of the housing crisis. He picked up a wicked virus after a few years of living on a van down by the river, and he just never recovered. RIP in peace.
The idea being that all fat funny people are in competition? Bizarre.