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.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
Babet, a United Australia party senator, demanded the federal government deport the band after Gass appeared to joke about Donald Trump’s attempted assassination at a Sydney concert on Sunday.
Video from the event showed Gass being presented with a birthday cake and told to “make a wish” as he blew out the candles.
“I call on the prime minister Anthony Albanese to join me in denouncing Tenacious D, Jack Black and band member Kyle Gass, and I call on the immigration minister Andrew Giles to revoke their visas and deport them immediately,” Babet said on Tuesday.
While conservative and pro-Trump accounts online were heavily critical of Gass’s comment, Tenacious D did receive some support from others.
Black has publicly criticised Trump previously, and recently appeared at a celebrity fundraiser for Joe Biden.
The original article contains 417 words, the summary contains 163 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
So who actually postponed the show? One senator got his balls in a twist, but it doesn’t seem like anything official’s been done yet.
They (themselves) have now completely canceled the rest of the tour:
Because of that comment? Come on guys, don’t give in like that.
Looks like Jack Black was genuinely bothered by it.
I also wonder if there’s a part there aren’t saying. Maybe they have gotten death threats or fear for their lives
Make a comment about a horrible man nearly missing his demise, cancel tour.
Horrible man rapes children, defrauded charities, wants to fuck his own daughter, cheated on all of his wives, tries to destroy democracy in America, yet he’s still Republican’s #1 choice for president.
Republicans are complicit in the destruction of America.
That definitely feels like Jables had a “come on man, you can’t say that shit in public” moment with KG. I wouldn’t be surprised if they lay low for a while on the band and focus on other stuff until this blows over.
Yeah Jables can’t really be associated with that. He might lose his spot in Jumanji 5: More Money Please.
Or Kung Fu Panda 5: ok, but this is the last one for real!
Seriously though, Jack Black is a treasure as a performer and seemingly as a person, normally.
He’s dead wrong on this one, though. Poor Kyle must feel so damn betrayed right now!
I lost some respect for jables here, the way he’s seemingly throwing Kage under the bus… But at the same time I can recognise that JB has always tried to keep up a positive persona. Not apolitical but he’s never been the type to promote violence directed at specific people. Kyle did him kinda dirty by doing something to potentially harm that (assuming he was truthful when he said he was blindsided by it, and not just saying that after it blew up in the news).
Not saying Kyle is wrong and Jack is right here, though. I’ve always felt a little bad for Kyle that Jack put tenacious D and therefore Kyle on the sidelines when his Hollywood career took off. Kyle was rightfully quite jaded about that and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s led him to doing this without considering the possible consequences for Jack.
The whole thing sucks for both of them, I guess.
I’ve lost some respect for shutting it down as hard as he did. I could see postponing some shows, dropping out of the Rock the Vote things they scheduled in October. Maybe more if they’re getting threats and have safety concerns now.
But going as far as to say that all future creative plans are on hold I think was too far especially. Though I can see if he truly was blindsided, that it could hurt.
Happy Birthday Kyle
Keep on rockin! 🤘
Maybe he did miss Trump and wants to really meet him at the next opportunity? 🤔
Unbelievable how every right winger shows up anytime a conservative white dude “just tells a joke and gets attacked by woke” but when the shoe is on the other foot they explode like the fucking Hindenburg
Kinda like most liberals who generally scream about better gun control/laws… But are REALLY disappointed Trump didn’t take that bullet to head directly.
Oof forced af my dude
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It’s a wonderful comparison going back at least thirty years: https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1994/07/15
So glad Limbaugh is dead.
Good shit. Holy fuck
they haven’t changedthey’ve only gotten worse and more powerful in 30 years ouch oof owie my doomerism hurts
I think “the shoe is on the other foot” is cutting both ways here. Read this thread, it’s filled with people defending banning people for hate speech, but the defending him here for literally asking for someone to be murdered.
Man everyone just gonna roll over for trump. Are we still expecting the justice system to hold him accountable?
Seems like it. Everyone is being told to stop the harsh criticisms of Trump because it’s what fueled the political violence. Dont fall for the gaslighting. He’s a fucking fascist and we should still treat him as such.
Yeah it’s normal when he calls for political violence that results in “Hang Mike Pence!” chants, but when he’s the target of it, somehow it’s now bad.
“We can’t stoop to their level!”
Meanwhile, right-wingers are happily hamstringing everyone.
It’s not stooping when all that bad shit is true
as always, they’re based.
i don’t think that idiot killing him would accomplish anything but don’t pretend it would’ve been a sad day if we lost a SELF-PROCLAIMED WANNABE DICTATOR.
Without a head, the body withers.
not so with a hydra
It wouldn’t be a hydra.
If you chop off a head, then 2 heads of half its size would appear.
It isn’t like the Trump base would double in size.
it’s not about the base. it’s about democratic turnout. TFG not being there would likely reduce turnout. that’s not good for the democrats.
I tentatively agree. The man himself I have no sympathy for, but an assassination of presidential nominee would have made everything even worse. GOP would get a huge boost, and could replace Trump with someone that is actually competent enough to fully implement their 2025 treason-esque bullshit. Not to mention how much that would have inflamed an already looney tunes level of political discourse.
It’s also just not how we should do things in America. Call me a hopeless patriot, but we should try to live up to the ideals we espouse.
He was shot by a conservative. Why would there be a boost? It’s not like this would be in an alternate universe where he was shot by an antifa supersoldier. If Joe Biden got shot by a Democratic loner people would think “man that’s weird”, not “we have to punish the Republicans”.
I don’t think it would prompt some kind of vindictive vote. That side of it is only going to energize those who were vehemently republican anyway. Republicans would hammer on any and all sympathy they can eke from having their candidate assassinated (regardless of the truth they will say it was the left, and at best people will think the guy was just crazy), and the average person only half paying attention will eat it up. Dems would be even more hamstrung in their rhetoric against the GOP considering the gravity of an event like that. Even with that aside, they’re now running Joe Biden against whichever face the GOP tells their voters to line up behind – who you can bet will be all in on the kind of stuff that will do even more lasting damage to our country. Biden is not a strong candidate, and without the uniquely unlikable personality and character of Trump I’m not sure there’s enough motivation amongst voters to carry him to another term.
But all of that was a lot to type, so I just said it would give them a massive boost
Why does everyone say they would get a boost? Literally no one who is going to vote for Biden is going to change their vote because of that. At most it would energize the base but Republicans don’t really have an issue with that like Democrats anyway.
the problem isn’t that a replacement candidate energizes republican voters, it’s that TFG energizes democratic voters. he invokes a lot of negative partisanship. there are a lot of people who think “bOtH sIdEs aRe tHe sAmE”, but more people think so when one of the sides isn’t the orange turd, so with him gone there would likely be less turnout for democrats.
idk why people keep forgetting how unpopular he is and always was. the reason biden is getting his ass kicked in the polls isn’t because his opponent is popular. it’s because he’s giving major “died years ago and being weekend at bernie’sd through the election season” vibes.
It would definitely accomplish something. It’s not clear if that would necessarily be a positive thing, but it would definitely be a pivotal moment in history. Even just the attempted assassination might eventually be seen as pivotal.
The right-wing is full of so many contradictory forces, and right now it’s only Trump’s cult of personality that’s holding them together. It seems very likely to me that post-Trump they’re going to fracture. If Trump becomes dictator he’ll probably groom Don Jr. to succeed him, and he’ll eliminate anybody who might question that decision. But, right now, Jr. is not in a position to take over from dad, so if Trump were no longer in the picture, there would be a power vacuum and massive infighting.
But, if the assassination attempt had succeeded, there would probably have been a lot more political killings, and just violence in general.
Kyle Gass was based, not Jack. Jack Black denounced the statement, canceled the tour and put the entire duo on hiatus. Utter sellout.
I don’t think Trump’s death would solve anything.
The only positive outcome is for him to get trashed in the polls in november.,
I think it would have. It would kick something off, but I have a feeling whatever got started would end fairly quickly.
Also, like another reply to your comment said, the other possible candidates don’t have nearly the same amount of popularity with “the base”
In the short term, the GOP would have to decide on a new candidate, and one of them literally shot the ear off the current candidate so fat fucking chance, mate.
He’ll get stomped in November. Volunteer to drive people to vote, anything you can do to help others have their vote heard. Something the right works VERY hard on making sure doesn’t happen because they know if everyone votes, they lose. If you think about it, that’s the biggest problem we have. We have a minority making terrible decisions for us, because they’re just in it for the money and their sponsors, the corporations. Their voters are fools that are fueled by hatred and stupidity.
Their voters are fools that are fueled by hatred and stupidity.
Whole-heartedly agreed on this.
Perhaps this is arrogance, but I have the strongly held opinion that the vast majority of conservative voters vote against their own interests.
I agree with you 100%. They do in order to cause hurt on others. They don’t see irony either.
in order to cause hurt on others
Actually that’s not my experience. This might be a really simplistic view but in Australia it seems the left supports the working class, and the right favors the corporate class.
My parents, now in their 80s, have been firmly “working class” their whole lives, and are now retired and living on a government pension.
They’ve voted for the conservatives their entire lives simply because of conservative values around social issues. They don’t seem to realise that their preferred party is also reducing social benefits like their pensions.
I see this exact dynamic a lot. As in… “my life is so hard because there are no social services or financial support, it must be the fault of immigrants, so I’ll vote for conservatives who will be mean to immigrants and poor people, and make me feel better about my hard working self”.
Which leads me to the next category… a lot of Asian migrants are deeply conservative, and the conservative party is constantly seeking to make migration from non european countries more and more difficult. My partner is a first generation migrant from Asia, so this is something I see a lot from her and her compatriots.
That said, I guess there’s a strong undercurrent of, as you say, people just being so miserable and beat down they feel like someone must be to blame, and if a conservative govt is going to put some minority under the thumb then that might feel pretty good.
IDK. Shit is fucked.
It might not solve anything, but at least he’d be gone. We all know he isn’t going to be punished in any meaningful way for anything he’s done, so at least him being killed would mean he could no longer bring harm to anyone.
Pragmatically it definitely would. Republicans have a fairly unpopular platform they’re running behind a demagogue. The rest of the party “stars” have the personality of a wet paper towel so hard to imagine them garnering anywhere near the enthusiasm.
It would, you don’t see people screaming “Republican Party!”, you see them screaming “Trump!”.
fascists worship whoever’s at the top. they will fall in line.
Not really, it died in Spain with Franco and in Italy with Mussolini and there was no second coming of the Nazi party in Argentina where all the officials ran to.
except the republican party isn’t any of these parties. it was fascist before him and will stay so after him. anyone who thinks one man dying will suddenly stop the republican fascist party from enacting their agenda that they’ve been working on for decades is either wishcasting or has been in a coma for the last half century.
Ok but what would they scream if Trump was assassinated? It wouldn’t solve the hyper partisan hatred.
I’m sure all the fans that wanted to go to the show will be very thankful to the senator for cancelling the show at the last minute for political reasons. Free speech must not be allowed in Australia
Free speech isn’t a constitutional right in Australia, or in most places. Conservative voices have been blocked from Australia before. In 2019 it was that Milo guy, and I think Lauren Southern was banned from the UK?
Free speech isn’t a constitutional right in Australia
https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/rights-and-freedoms/freedom-information-opinion-and-expression
I am not very well versed in Australian law, but this indicates to me that free speech is indeed protected in Australia.
Lauren Southern was banned from the UK?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Southern
She’s a far-right racist conspiracy theorist nutjob who was denied entry into the UK for spewing hatred. Her right to express herself ends where other people’s rights for freedom, health and safety begin.
I am not very well versed in Australian law, but this indicates to me that free speech is indeed protected in Australia.
It aims to, but it is not a right.
See the two exclusions on the page you linked.
blocked when…
( a ) For respect of the rights or reputations of others; ( b ) For the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals.
In this case, public order may be considered valid, although my personal view is that it wasn’t.
In Australia, humour has a long history of bad taste, but a longer history of religious repression through law. Think 1960s America - that describes much of Australian rural culture, with extra bad language. (Although NSW was a lot more tolerant when I travelled around the country)
In the UK, free speech is not possible either. See D-notices, and later super-injunctions to stop media and individuals reporting on facts.
In the UK, free speech is not possible either. See D-notices, and later super-injunctions to stop media and individuals reporting on facts.
Please provide examples.
Sure, although google does the heavy lifting as I’ve given the strings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Notice
https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/law/civil-law/super-injunction/
( a ) For respect of the rights or reputations of others
So you can’t just insult someone, that’s not bad
That’s about defamation and privacy, we have the same law in America. The First Amendment doesn’t protect defamatory speech or speech that infringes on recognized privacy rights, such as the right to self publicity, the right to be free of misappropriation of name or likeness, etc.
Hoping a shooter would have killed someone, even Trump, is - not even borderline - hate speech, I don’t get it. Jack is right. And US laws mean nothing outside US
“Hate speech” isn’t a ban on being able to vocally hate individual people.
Nope, see others commenting below.
And my point was, you can’t be surprised that conservatives turn around and do what the left does to them when they have the chance to. That’s why I was so against Dems ousting Trump supporters from their jobs, because I knew they would turn around and do the same if/when they had the chance.
It’s why we have to be very careful about any laws we pass when Dems are in power. Power will always swing back to Republicans at some point, and you’re fucking crazy if you think they’re not going to use those same laws to repress their political opponents
Not that I think the concert should have been cancelled. . .but isn’t asking for someone to be killed “spewing hatred”? Isn’t asking for them to actually be shot infringing on their “health and safety.” This is “if the shoe is on the other foot” example for me, it doesn’t appear that their ban was unjustified, or her ban was unjustified. Although, it probably doesn’t even really count because we are talking about two different countries here.
The senator didn’t cancel the show, they don’t have that sort of authority.
Obviously the senator didn’t literally cancel the show. They just made it happen by creating fake outrage.
He’s the only senator for his party UAP, no one gives a shit about him.
Shit the party he represents doesn’t even actually exist as they de-registered in 2022.
He’s jumping on outrage to get his name printed in a paper, it doesn’t mean people actually do or care what he says
Are you claiming that he didn’t help create or spread this outrage? Even if that was true, which it’s not, why would it matter when the article that this post is about points to him directly? Not sure why you’re so adamantly making this point. What’s your goal?
Yes he did not help create this outrage, as for spreading it, no more than any of the other idiots who probably shared something on social media. This nobody is not as influential as you seem to think he is.
As for why the media is mentioning it? Because making up drama sells.
My goal is to point out that they cancelled the tour themselves. And to fix your misconception about how important this politician is. This whole story would have played out exactly the same with or without Babet, in fact many news articles on this don’t even mention him.
Ok gotcha. He’s officially not very important!
I may not care about their music, but I support them. DJT and all of his frothingly mad followers are the whole reason that the violence and anger have wildly increased out of control in the first place. As far as I’m concerned, this is just them reaping what they’ve sown.
Free speech, you snowflakes.
The world has gone PC mad 🤦🏻♂️
That’s not what’s happening. These are authoritarian fascists being upset at slights against their Great Leader. Textbook behavior.
Very very very different than common context for “PC”
So wishing/advocating someone murdered is a “slight”?
CANCEL CULTURE!!!
PS: Elon Musk and the rest of the hypocrites can stuff their opinions about how to react to assassination attempts after the way they responded to Nancy Pelosi’s husband being attacked.
You mean to say that right wing politician can’t take a joke without getting offended? What a bunch of snowflakes. Man up, facts don’t care about your feelings!
I like jack black, but seriously fuck him for this and for not taking a stand against fascism.
What do you want him to do, exactly?
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Not throw his partner under the bus? Go out there and be the Tenacious D we know and make rock history. Instead he cowers behind a PR statement.
I did not mean…
