7 Dumbest Celebrity Reactions to Vegas Massacre
No one does “hot takes” worse than celebrities.
Name the hot button issue, and chances are a star will have something downright stupefying to share. Often it comes in ALL CAPS … but not always.
OJ Simpson released from prison in the middle of the night. Cue white people outrage & obsession over his freedom. Trump still unindicted.
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) October 1, 2017
This happened again after Stephen Paddock, 64, shot into a crowded concert audience in Las Vegas Sunday night, killing 59 and wounding hundreds.
Awful. Tragic. Heartbreaking.
And the instinct to respond, to offer up some kind of solution to gun shootings, is understandable. The following celebrity reactions hardly fit into that category. Instead, they’re just plain dumb, ugly or a toxic combination of the two.
No way not to politicize this tragedy. It’s about gender & race as well as access to guns. Considering it random is comforting & dangerous.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) October 2, 2017
Americans killed on 9/11: 2,996
Days it took Congress to authorize war:3
Americans killed by guns in 2017: 11,652
Days in 2017 so far:275
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) October 2, 2017
Here’s two brilliant takedowns of the former Obama operative’s “logic”:
Number of days @barackobama was President and didn’t do anything about it except blab: 2,920
— 🇺🇸GayPatriot🇺🇸 (@GayPatriot) October 3, 2017
Number of gun laws that could have prevented any mass shooting: 0
— Black Freeman (@silkyjohnson403) October 2, 2017
On with more dumb reactions:
Kimmel: “They should be praying for God to forgive them for letting the gun lobby run this country” https://t.co/Roy3hkzq1W
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) October 3, 2017
Here’s a perfect takedown of that dumb argument:
The NRA is #92 on the list of top political contributors. 7 of top 10 are $100 blue, two more are 50/50. https://t.co/iWjS7J3k6z https://t.co/ltvi4aIhoG
— neontaster (@neontaster) October 3, 2017
Now, more inane reactions:
The NRA IS now a Terrorist Organization in The UnitedStateOfAmerica.The FACT here is White Males will not identify White Males as terrorists
— Chuck D (@MrChuckD) October 2, 2017
The NRA stokes fear to achieve political ends, relentlessly works to put weapons of mass destruction in the hands of individuals. Terrorism. https://t.co/zlDNrFmFMY
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) October 2, 2017
“The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah weighed in on the “time” to talk about gun violence:
“When is the time?” Noah asked. “And also, if you say after a mass shooting is ‘never the time’, you’ll never have the conversation in America, because there’s a mass shooting almost every single day. So when is the time?
“When a plane crashes, we talk about plane safety immediately. When a bridge collapses, we talk about infrastructure immediately,” Noah added. “We seem to do everything to avoid talking about guns.”
Does it even need to be said that American conversations on guns have been roiling for years? That we rigorously talk about guns across every possible platform and will continue to do so?
RELATED: Comedy Central Airs Hour-Long Assault on 2A, NRA
Finally, here’s the most disingenuous comment from Kimmel. It doesn’t necessarily fit into the “dumb” category, but it needs to be exposed all the same:
“I want this to be a comedy show,” he promised. “I hate talking about stuff like this. I just want to give you something to laugh about at night. But that has become increasingly difficult lately. And lately, it feels like someone opened a window into hell.”
Balderdash.
Kimmel is loving every ounce of his pundit transformation. He gets to pontificate on the news of the day, bash his ideological enemies and bask in press adulation.
He didn’t want that Las Vegas tragedy to happen, of course. No sane soul thinks that. But he’ll weaponize it as aggressively as his Hollywood peers.
UPDATE: The dumbest celebrity comment, by far, comes from “Miss Sloane” herself, Jessica Chastain:
Welcome to America, where you’ll wait 6 months for an X-ray but hey, you can buy an AR-15 in 5 minutes flat.
— Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) October 4, 2017
Stop calling them celebrities. Identify them as the “NUTCASES” they are.