A comedian has been forced to apologise after making jokes about the late rapper XXXTentacion.
A clip posted to social media shows comedian Dina Hashem making remarks about the rapper’s death during an episode of Comedy Central’s Comedy Cellar programme.
XXXTentacion, real name Jahseh Onfroy, was shot and killed outside a motorcycle dealership in Florida last year, June 2018. Before his death, Onfroy had faced a number of charges from authorities surrounding a 2016 domestic abuse case and other, separate violent crimes.
Footage of Hashem’s stand-up routine has been shared online, in which she says: ‘Is anyone still mourning XXXTentacion?’
She continues:
He’s a rapper, who was murdered, he’s dead now. He was shot, he was on his way to buy a car with $50,000 in cash and somebody shot him and took the money, which is very tragic.
But I also think it would be a very good Venmo commercial. That’s the first thing I thought when I heard that. Like, “I don’t have Venmo, I should get Venmo”.
(If you’re unaware – Venmo is a money app, similar to PayPal, which lets you make payments online.)
The comedian’s comments weren’t taken well by many of the late rapper’s fans, however, and Dina Hashem has since made a number of apologies.
Taking to Instagram, Dina wrote:
I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone’s feelings, that’s never what I want. I’m a comic and use jokes to try and make dark topics less painful but I realize not everyone feels that way, and don’t want anyone to feel badly. It was taken down and won’t air on TV.
According to Heavy, Hashem received a number of death threats regarding her joke, which she wrote about in a now-deleted post on social media where she reportedly said ‘one dumb joke’ about the rapper ‘is not an atrocity’.
In the time since Hashem’s joke was made public, and the backlash it has received, many comedians have stuck up for the comic, defending the joke and saying material should be allowed to be based on any topic.
For example, comedian Liz Miele wrote:
Either everything is off limits or nothing is off limits. Comedy can’t exist in a “how you personally feel about the topic” world. To support @dinahashem_ (a good comic) is to support the art of comedy. And all this PC shit is coming from hip hop fans? Do they not see the irony?
While former Tonight Show writer Mike Drucker added:
If you’re more comfortable with a violent abuser than you are with a comedian making a joke about a violent abuser, that says more about you than the comedian
Comedian Adam Newman said:
XXXTentacion bragged about stabbing nine people and “bashing” his girlfriend’s face publicly on the Internet. Dina Hashem used his name to make a joke about Venmo. Maybe think about which one makes you angry. (For me, it’s Venmo. You don’t fucking touch Venmo.)
If you have a story you want to tell send it to UNILAD via story@unilad.com
Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.