Blake Shelton Makes Jokes About Killing Turtles

Blake Shelton is so weird. He seems like such a sweet, fun guy on The Voice, but then he does things like make possibly homophobic tweets about Shania Twain songs, and I don’t even know what to think. Or, well, I didn’t know what to think. I believe I’m a little closer to making up my mind now.

Here’s a little something that Blake tweeted a few days ago:

Does anyone know if the Eastern Box turtle is protected in Oklahoma? If so I didn’t just swerve to the shoulder of the road to smash one…

And understandably, no one liked it.  Here’s a response from a concerned NPR blogger:

That turtle’s life meant something- was your tweet a bad joke? Why would you be so cruel to a living being?

And Blake’s heartfelt response:

Shut up…

And, surprise, surprise, everyone hated that too!  Blake tweeted back and forth with some people for a while, charming little exchanges where someone would say something like “it’s not ok to run over turtles,” and Blake would say something like “were you born that dumb or was there an accident?”  One follower that claims to be an actual turtle (!!!) kept making comments to Blake, and he eventually replied with this:

Hey @turtlefeed. Before u make an even bigger dipshit of urself you should research on how much money I have raised to feed homeless animals. I solely have raised over a million dollars in animal rescue/conservation alone… How much have you raised? Oh. Ok. Next!”

Remarkably, that didn’t do anything to put out the Twitter fires, so he had to explain that it was all a big hilarious joke:

The best part of all of this is that the dumb asses didn’t even look to see that I’m not even in Oklahoma today!! I’m in North Dakota!! Do they even have turtles in North Dakota?!!! God almighty!!! What’s wrong with people?! Get a life!! Get a job!! Get laid!! For once!!!

But people still wouldn’t let it go, so he said this:

For the last time I didn’t hit a turtle! I haven’t seen a turtle! So please all you turtle freaks go back to eating your boogers!! It’s ok.

And the next day, when people were still upset and Blake had taken some time to reflect, he said this:

Ok.. Now that “Turtle-Gate” is over I want to apologize for my ignorant joke.. I never ran over a turtle. It wasn’t even possible.

Yeah, I don’t get it. I mean, I kind of get it – when I was little, my dad used to swerve in the road a little and tell me that we were hunting possums – but I don’t really get why Blake handled this whole thing like he did. Why couldn’t he have just admitted after the first dozen outraged responses that he’s just really bad at making jokes? Even Ellen felt the need to tweet that sentiment:

Here’s what’s funny: knock-knock jokes. Here’s what’s not funny: animal cruelty.

Maybe one day Blake can learn how to make a funny tweet, but unfortunately, today is not that day.