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.
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.
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.
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
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
:shrug: Ever consider the dude actually thinks KG crossed a line? Not only that but he's put himself front and center instead of KG, who doesn't have the type of resources JB has to roll with the punches when lunatics come after him. Spineless would have been letting KG deal with the fallout from the comment while he melted into the background saying "no comment".
Y'all are legitimately being insanely selfish. You want your entertainment and fuck the consequences for the people involved. It's disgusting. Not one of you is considering what the actual people involved want or what's best for them. You want a sock puppet. Get over yourselves.
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.
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 🤷
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.
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
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
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?
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
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.
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.