Depp gets in on the act
A growing number of artists have used violent imagery when talking about Trump.
North Korea the ‘victim’
North Korea has described the death of American student Otto Warmbier, who was released from the nation this month in a vegetative state, as a “mystery” and denied he was treated cruelly or tortured during the 18 months he was held there. Pyongyang also claimed that North Korea was the big victim in the affair and that “there would be no more foolish judgment than to think we do not know how to calculate gains and losses”.
Pakistan attacks
At least 40 people have been killed and nearly 100 wounded in four separate bomb and gun attacks in three major Pakistani cities, Quetta, Parachinar and Karachi. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ordered security to be tightened across the country after the attacks. In a competition usually dominated by the old, the tiny, and the hairless, a 3-year-old, 57kg neapolitan mastiff called Martha (above) has won the 29th annual World’s Ugliest Dog Contest in Petaluma, California. She was a crowd favourite from the start, plopping down on her side on stage with her droopy face spread across the ground when she was supposed to be showing off. The judges didn’t even need to hear her signature snore to give her the award. She was the only animal in this year’s contest too big to be held by her handler.
Johnny Depp apologised yesterday for joking about assassinating Donald Trump during an appearance at Britain’s Glastonbury Festival in what was the latest example of artists using violent imagery when dealing with the United States President.
“When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?” Depp asked the crowd at Glastonbury Festival on Friday, in reference to the death of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth in 1865.
The 54-year-old Pirates of the Caribbean star then added: “I want to clarify, I am not an actor. I lie for a living. However, it has been awhile and maybe it is time.”
Depp said in a statement yesterday that he did not intend any malice and was trying to be amusing.
“I apologise for the bad joke I attempted last night in poor taste about President Trump,” the statement said.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said “the lack of outrage” over Depp’s comments was “a little troubling”.
“The President has made it clear that we should denounce violence in all of its forms. And if we are going to hold to that standard then we should agree that that standard be universally called out,” he said.
That message was undercut when an adviser to Trump’s campaign who called for Hillary Clinton to be shot visited the White House just hours before Spicer spoke to the media.
Al Baldasaro, who advised Trump on veterans issues, said last year that he believed Clinton “committed treason” for putting American lives at risk while Secretary of State. He then said “anyone that commits treason should be shot”.
Depp’s remarks come weeks after The Public Theatre in New York was criticised for its production of Julius Caesar that portrayed a Trump-like dictator in a business suit with a long tie who gets knifed to death on stage. The show followed condemnation for comedian Kathy Griffin, who lost her job co-hosting CNN’s New Year’s Eve special and had all her upcoming comedy shows cancelled after posing for a photograph in which she gripped likeness of the President’s severed, bloody head. Pop star Madonna also was criticised for saying at a rally that she had thought “an awful lot about blowing up the White House”. Snoop Dogg shoots a Trumplookalike clown in a music video and Moby has put out a video in which Trump resembles a Nazi-like Iron Man who takes over the world with a missilefiring machine shaped like a swastika and dollar symbol.
During last year’s election campaign, Robert De Niro said he’d “like to punch” Trump “in the face”, Carly Simon repurposed her song You’re So Vain into an anti-Trump anthem, and singer-rapper Will.i.am produced the damning video GRAB’m by the . . .
Other presidents have found themselves the target of celebrity ire, including George W. Bush, who was attacked by the Dixie Chicks and by Kanye West, who said Bush “doesn’t care about black people.” a