Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson gets backlash after he celebrates having an army tank named after him
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s popularity has landed him a new recognition that he’s pretty pumped about. Many of his fans, however, are upset.
Over the weekend the actor shared the news that a tank in the 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss has been named after him. According to the local El Paso Times, the name was selected by soldiers for the Blackhawk Squadron, who last year named another tank “Dropped as a Baby.”
"If you smell what America's Tank Division is cooking!"
Shoutout to the #IronSoldiers assigned to the @Blackhawk_SQDN for naming one of their tanks in homage to the @TheRock.
Hopefully the "People's Champ" will see it and give you guys a shoutout and a retweet!#TuesdayThoughts pic.twitter.com/xMm2aKBArS— 1st Armored Division (@1stArmoredDiv) March 12, 2019
News of the new tank’s moniker got back to Johnson, who shared his “salute of respect and gratitude” over the honour.
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The proud and “grateful to the bone” star had nothing but good things to say about the tank, which he called “heavy-duty, bad-a**, sexy AF and built to take care of business.”
A post shared by therock (@therock) on Mar 15, 2019 at 7:42pm PDT
And while plenty of his followers were equally impressed, some didn’t think it was an honor worth celebrating.
“Having a death machine named after [you] seems cool until it’s used against beings that don’t truly deserve it,” read one comment. “I think they should name a few nukes after you and really get you excited. Maybe they will make a new gun modeled and named after you that can one day be used against innocents. Or maybe just the bullets. Gosh, so many death machines out there, you must be stoked.”
“Wow … getting your name on a kill machine,” another person wrote.
“Those poor people in some random oil-rich country ain’t gonna know what’s hit ’em,” added a commenter.
“You’re obviously not stupid to know what you are representing or what this machine would do and to who — unfollow!” a disappointed follower chastised the star.
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“How are you OK with people getting killed with your name?” a critic asked, while another wrote, “Not sure having a destructive weapon named after you is such a great honor.”
“You were one of my favorite actors,” a fan added. “So disappointed now seeing this. We keep making [these] machines to kill people and you are proud one of them has your name … wow.”
Some commenters also found the post to be in bad taste following Friday’s terrorist attack at two New Zealand mosques, in which 49 people were killed.
Johnson hasn’t responded to the backlash. In the meantime, the 1st Armored Division has issued an invite for him to visit Texas and personally ride in his namesake tank.
Reporting by Erin Donnelly, Yahoo Celebrity US