It shouldn’t be a surprise that Tenacious D has cancelled the rest of their Australian tour after one half of the American comedy rock duo made a bad-taste onstage joke lamenting that the man who tried to kill Donald Trump missed.
Anyone old enough to remember the political controversy two decades ago involving the country trio the Dixie Chicks – since renamed the Chicks – knows what can happen when musicians manage to offend those engaged in nationalist, populist or identity politics.
Both were American musicians speaking derisively about their country’s politics while touring another. The Dixie Chicks were accused of treachery for the fact that they criticised home – which also happened to be the name of the album they were touring – from another shore.
But there’s an important difference between what Tenacious D’s Kyle Gass said as he blew out the candles on his birthday cake at Sunday night’s Sydney show and what the Dixie Chicks vocalist Natalie Maines said about then US president George W Bush in March 2003, just days before the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Gass was speaking just hours after the attempted assassination of one of the most powerful and polarising political figures in the world today.
“Don’t miss Trump next time,” he said when his actor-singer bandmate Jack Black asked if he had a birthday wish.
Gass wasn’t the only Trump critic who said that or similar when the news of the shooting broke, though most others were quieter. It’s not the done thing to wish a would-be assassin had been a better shot. There’s a good reason for that and it has nothing to do with politeness.
The circumstances around Maines’ comments were different but........