Kyle Gass’s ill-judged Donald Trump assassination jibe has put Tenacious D on ice. Will he be for ever cancelled, or bounce back like Billy Connolly and Jo Brand?
On the edge. Walking a tightrope. When we admire comedy for its outspokenness, we make it sound like a death-defying act. But now and then there are casualties. The career of the comedy-rock band Tenacious D has been put on ice this week after one half of the duo, Kyle Gass, made an impromptu joke about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Outrage was duly provoked. “All future creative plans are on hold,” according to the band’s other lead vocalist, Jack Black. It’s a classic case study of an on-the-edge gag tumbling off that edge, and falling a long, long way.
This is not a first: egg-on-face is an occupational hazard for those who make a living from saying outrageous things, often off the cuff, in public. All the more so when amateurs have a go. In the pantheon of backfiring jokes, none occupies a more ignominious place than the note left for his successor in government (“there is no money left”) by Gordon Brown’s chief secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne. Like Gass, Byrne presumably saw this as just a jaundiced wee jibe, more or less for private consumption. But it went public, was ruthlessly weaponised by the incoming coalition government, and helped stoke the “Labour bankrupted the country” narrative that kept the opposition on the back foot for years.
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