Trudeau Calls ‘Peoplekind’ Comment a ‘Dumb Joke,’ Ending Controversy Forever

Everything is really goddamn dumb—like really, really goddamn dumb.

Case in point: there was international “controversy” over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau using the term “peoplekind.”

To catch you up, at an Edmonton town hall, Trudeau responded to a long, meandering question about “the mother god” with a clear joke by saying, “we like to say ‘peoplekind,’ actually. It’s more inclusive.” A clip of the remarks, edited down and removed of context by right-wing media and trolls, quickly went around the web. But as my colleague Drew Brown pointed out, a mere three minutes of fact-checking would have shown it was just a joke gone awry.

Stupid? Yes. Unfunny? Yes. Pointless? Yes. A dad joke? Yes.

Now, after an international cabal of shitty media commentators, including Piers Fucking Morgan, raised their angry voices in unison, the prime minister has backed away from “peoplekind.” On Wednesday, when speaking to reporters outside a Liberal caucus meeting, he addressed the dumb joke in the room, unprompted.

"I made a dumb joke a few days ago that seems to have gone a little viral in the room on the 'peoplekind' comment,” he told reporters. "It played well in the room and in context. Out of context, it doesn't play so well.”

(Yes, the internet kills context and therefore comedy, but bad jokes are also bad for comedy.)

After initially being amplified by a pizzagate affiliated site, right wing media seized on the comments and the dumbest thing to happen in 2018 thus far spread across the globe. Notorious salad tosser Piers Morgan called the PM a “spineless virtue-signalling excuse for a feminist,” and controversial anti-PC prof Jordan Peterson stated that Trudeau “will pay” for this leftist dogma (on Trump’s favourite TV show, no less), and Australian columnist Rita Panahi called Trudeau “dangerously dumb” and “shameless.”

In a shocking twist, opposition MPs grabbed some low hanging fruit to score some cheap heat against Trudeau. Conservative MP Michelle Rempel apologized to the woman Trudeau interrupted on “behalf of Parliament,” and Lisa Raitt told Trudeau to “people up” in the house. HAHAHAAHA. Hilarious.

Now, Trudeau isn’t exactly a hilarious guy, even with a dad joke bell curve, and he does seem to acknowledge this—a bit. In his comments to reporters he admitted that humour probably isn’t the best option for him anyhow, saying "it's a little reminder to me that I shouldn't be making jokes even when I think they're funny.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.