OPINION:
Johnny Depp, Hollywood movie star, made a tasteless joke about President Donald Trump’s assassination — just the latest on the left to poke fun at killing or physically harming the White House commander-in-chief.
If this had been about Barack Obama, the mainstream media would be alive with rage, and the jokester would be out of work. Remember the Missouri rodeo clown?
But it’s Trump. So the response in the media is tepid.
During introduction of his film “The Libertine” at the U.K. music festival in Glastonbury, Depp, 54, posed to the partiers in attendance: “Can we bring Trump here?”
The crowd booed, and Depp responded, “No, no, no, you misunderstood. I think he needs help.”
Depp then dropped this: “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?”
And on that, the crowd wildly cheered.
Funny, right? Belly laughs all around. Depp’s comments come on the heels of comedian Kathy Griffin’s equally hilarious hand-hold of a faux bloody Trump head, and the theatrical production of “Julius Caesar” at “Shakespeare in the Park,” that anyone with eyes could see depicted the murder of Trump.
But it’s all art, so anything goes — if you’re on the left and the target of your joke or theatrical production is a conservative.
In 2013, a rodeo clown donned an Obama mask and mocked the president at the Missouri state fair, drawing condemnation from media pundits and leftist politicians, and ultimately receiving a lifetime ban from the Missouri State Fair Commission. The Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association also issued an apology for the show, saying the “sport of rodeo is not meant to be a political platform” and vowing to take “measures by training and educating our contract acts to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.”
The association also made clear that all its members “are very proud of our country and our president.”
Even the lieutenant governor of the state, Republican Peter Kinder, issued a statement against the Obama clown, condemning his actions and calling them “disrespectful to POTUS.”
And U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill said similarly, decrying the fact that taxpayer dollars actually help fund the fair and that the “young Missourians who witnessed this stunt learned exactly the wrong lesson about political discourse.”
All that — for a clown who actually performed the same mocking act and donned the same mocking face masks for presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.
But Depp?
Griffin and the “Shakespeare in the Park” producers and actors and participants?
It’s the First Amendment — it’s all for art.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.