John Hinckley Jr. spent 41 years 2 months and 15 days under one form of supervision or another — primarily during a lengthy stay in a Washington mental hospital — as a result of his attempted assassination of former President Ronald Reagan in 1981. And since entering back into society as a free man in 2022, he's been trying to make a go of it as a professional musician. But it's not going very well.
On average, as soon as Hinckley books a show — be it in Brooklyn, NY or Naugatuck, CT, where he was scheduled to perform at Hotel Huxley on a date that would've marked 43 years, to the day, since shooting Reagan — the venue finds reason to shut it down before he even takes the stage. In a recent post to X (formerly Twitter) he offers his theory on why that is.
"With all of my concerts canceled, it’s a fair statement to say I’m a victim of cancel culture!," he writes, to which user @UsingCigarettes replied, "You should think about alternative venue options like house shows."
“It keeps happening over and over again,” Hinckley said in a recent interview with New York Post. “They book me and then the show gets announced and then the venue starts getting backlash. The owners always cave, they cancel. It’s happened so many times, it’s kinda what I expect. I don’t really get upset."
Watch his video announcement for the latest ill-fated show here: