If you would have told me pre-pandemic that so many conservatives would be dying from a preventable disease and losing their jobs out of pure stubbornness I would not believe you, but here we are. As the vaccine mandates go into effect we’ve seen countless sports stars and actors screw up their careers by refusing to comply. The latest is Ingo Rademacher, Jax on General Hospital, who won’t be returning to the show. He’s been sh-tcanned after refusing to comply with the vaccine mandate. He’s been posting a bunch of anti-vaxx content and he even posted an anti-trans meme over the weekend. Ingo has been on General Hospital on and off for 25 years.
Longtime “General Hospital” star Ingo Rademacher is out at the long-running ABC soap opera because he declined to comply with the production’s vaccine mandate. His last episode is scheduled to air on Nov. 22, Variety confirmed.
News of his departure comes amid backlash to a transphobic meme and anti-vax sentiment he posted on social media Sunday. Rademacher has played the character Jasper “Jax” Jacks on the daytime medical drama since 1996 and has been a regular on the show for 25 of its 59 seasons.
The anti-trans meme shared by Rademacher on his Instagram account was a photo of recently elected Virginia lieutenant governor Winsome Sears, the first Black woman to hold the post, and Dr. Rachel Levine, a four-star admiral in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. The image’s caption was: “Hello, and welcome to ClownTown, where the dude on the left is an empowering woman, and the woman on the right is a white supremacist.” It had originally been posted by a conservative commentator.
Rademacher also shared an anti-vaxxer message on Instagram on Sunday. It stated that he would “stand with you to fight for medical freedom.” Before this incident, the actor had been outspoken on his social platforms about his opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates and had subsequently come under heat for his views.
On Monday, Rademacher posted a video of himself on Instagram apologizing for not “crossing out dude” in the meme and that his intention was to highlight the “hypocrisy of the left-wing media.” He also directly apologized to Cassandra James, a transgender woman and “General Hospital” co-star, calling her an “absolute talent” and “very beautiful.” James had previously reacted to the transphobic post on Twitter, expressing her disappointment with Rademacher.
This dude is 50. He’s been on General Hospital his entire career with a few guest appearances in other shows. He finished fifth on Dancing with the Stars in 2013. Maybe he’s saved enough cash to retire at this point but I doubt it. He should call up Gina Carano and ask her how she’s been able to make ends meet after being an anti-trans POS online. I’m sure we’ll hear him crying about cancel culture next.
I watched this whole video below and you owe me. He calls people calling for him to be fired “bigots” because these white anti-vaxxers love to play the victim like they were born this stupid and can’t help it. He cites the vaccines 95% effectiveness rate as reason why the mandate doesn’t make sense (when that’s how all vaccines work and 95% is awesome). He also claims that natural immunity is better than getting vaccinated, which is so false. These people lack very basic reasoning skills that they should have learned in grade school. He also uses the “opinion” argument about vaccines. Science ≠ opinions and stupid opinions like this kill people. There’s another video he posted trying to explain his anti-trans meme but I’ll spare you. You can watch that here. At least he figured out how to fix the aspect ratio.
Misgendering trans folks is violence and if you come for one of us, you come for all of us. The cis world doesn’t get to decide which of us is valuable. I am so proud of the fans for always holding us to a high standard, for calling out transphobia and violence.
— Cassandra James (@cassandrajames_) November 8, 2021
Patagonia would like to be left out of this conversation.
Aw, man. I hate that another favorite turns out to be a total douche.
@BELLA – same. It’s always sucks when you like a character and learn the actor behind them is an a&%hat.
He is a moron.
No lost. If I hear one more man say, “My body, my choice” I am going to lose it. Well he can always go back to where he came from, except they would probably demand proof of vaccination.
Iirc he’s Aussie? We don’t want him (and bloody oath he’ll need proof of vaccination)!
He grew up in Australia. He’s not from there. He moved there when he was a tween if I’m remembering correctly.
the part that annoys me the most is that it IS their choice – no one is forcing the vaccine on anyone! people can CHOOSE to leave their job rather than get vaxxed
Peace. Jax always annoyed me anyways
Trash taking itself out. Love to see it.
Lol, that guy is still around? I guess not anymore!
Seriously! I watched GH in high school, late 90’s, when he was a main character in the love triangle and I thought he was hot, oh well. Sonny forever!
Plenty of hard-working, vaxxed, mandate-following actors out there who would be more than happy to take over the role on GH. Not sorry for this douche.
I suppose he thinks that he can make it as a conservative darling? But this guy isn’t even in the ranks of Scott Baio and Candice Cameron Bure, so I’m not sure how that’s going to work.
He used to do standup comedy and one of my local chinese restaurants was on that circuit. I never did go to see him though….
He doesn’t vaccinate his kids so he was never going to comply with Disney’s mandate. He has a history of being horrible and it’s just all catching up with him now. His character Jax is a Captain Save a Ho. He will not be missed.
I always hated Jax anyway, his character was an obnoxious, self-righteous asshole, so I am not heartbroken to learn the actor is too.
I really dont understand these anti vaxxers that refuse to vaccinate infants who truely need protection from an array of childhood diseases and viruses.
I had an aunt who suffered from polio as a child that left one foot severely damaged. I don’t understand how people can forget.
I don’t either. A friend of my family had polio as a child, and has never been able to walk without assistance.
I neither know nor care who this guy is, but f him for that disgusting anti-trans bigotry, and for putting the rest of the cast and crew at risk out of selfishness. Glad he got the boot. Everyone deserves to work in a safe environment.
I heard an interesting perspective that vaccines have been so effective throughout our history that younger generations just cannot fathom how bad it was before we mass vaccinated our populations. And couple that with a lack of critical thinking and the “I can’t see it so it isn’t real” or “It doesn’t affect me, so I don’t care” mindset, it become easier to radicalize and misinform people over vaccines, especially over social media.
I was telling my GM that I’m leaving early Friday so my 5 year old can get his first shot and he was all “really? You’re vaxxing your kid?”
Um yes? It’s about protecting other people. I would be devastated if I gave Covid to someone and they got sick or died. Is there still a chance that might happen? Yes but the odds are so much lower and I know I did what I could do to avoid that.
And I’m also not allowed to work from home so if my kid gets sick or his class has to quarantine I’m screwed. So yeah my kid gets vaxxed Friday and I’m leaving early, the end.
I’ve been hearing that for a while now and truly believe it. I’ve known anti vaxers even before this, chiros, and they got into my head for a few years but luckily I snapped out of it. I also think there is just a prevalence of selfishness that runs through people now. There is no sense of community or doing something for the greater good and I also think think the internet has a lot to do with that. People don’t go out and connect with their neighbors or community anymore and don’t feel like they are a part of it. Everyone just sends texts.
My dad had polio as a child that affected his right leg. He went through what I’ve called “Frankenstein” surgeries in the 1950s to try and “fix” his leg. Then post polio syndrome hit him in his older years.
My son is on the spectrum. (NOT FROM VACCINES!!!)
I’m the rabid pro vaxx person the anti vaxxers hate to try and debate on Facebook (lol).
But with COVID-19, I’ve had to remind several of my cousins, who grew up and knew my dad all their lives and knew about the brace, and the cane, and the limp and knew why, that vaccines are vital. That sure, polio didn’t kill my father. But he didn’t escape unscathed either!!
The problem with the internet and social media is that every moron has a megaphone now. 50 years we had as many idiots. Now their idiocy is circulated around endlessly for millions to hear or read. I do like that he’s been fired. Good.
So many things to dislike about this man. He named his son Peanut. His unvaccinated child has to go through life with the name Peanut Rademacher. His character was a self righteous jerk and he is too. Misgendering trans people is horribly abusive and dangerous. I’m sure the rest of cast are happy to see him out on his ass.
And the kid has an unusual Hawaiian middle name so not something even normal to fall back on.
😬. Cultural names are normal names. ‘Unusual’ is a perspective and it is marginalizing.
His middle name is Kai which isn’t unusual and the child is 1/4 native Hawaiian so it’s honoring his mother’s family.
sheesh, you know how many white guys named Kai there are?
that is NOT an unusual name at all.
and it’s WAY better than Peanut. poor kid, I’d DEF go by “Kai”.
There’s nothing wrong or “unusual” or “not even normal” about a person with Hawai’ian ancestry bearing a name that honors their culture and family members. What’s wrong is (attempted) white supremacist erasure of indigenous existence. Think about it…
Kai is also a German name. This asshat was born in Germany to German parents.
So he never had any intention of returning to Australia then.
Because they ain’t playing either.
He only grew up in Australia. He wasn’t born there. He’s originally from somewhere in Europe. I want to say Austria.
Ahhh gotcha.
This is making more sense now.
He was born in Germany.
Nancy Lee Grahn, one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter and also a General Hospital cast member, tweeted that he “mercifully was no longer part of the cast.” If true, yay.
Sounds like they’re happy to see him go. I’m guessing he wasn’t too pleasant to be around in general.
GH writers should double-down and kill his character off from COVID
Covid doesn’t exist in Port Charles.
@ pottymouth pup:
Yesssss!!!!!!
They used to be tight and the Jax/Alexis friendship was awesome. I haven’t watched in forever though. Covid really caused a lot of people to show their asses. People are, rightfully, dropping like flies as they do so. It’s like during the height of #metoo. Every time you turned around it was discovered that yet some one else was a total asshole.
Oh wow. I haven’t watched GH in years. Interesting that NLG said that.
What part of “novel virus” do these morons not understand?
Man, Jax joined General Hospital when I started watching, right at age 12. Little me was IN LOVE with him, sucks to find out who he really is.
I’ve never forgiven him for how he treated Brenda.
I haven’t watched in 20 years, so I forget a lot of the details. What happened with Brenda?
When Brenda came back from the dead she had no assets because she’d been dead. Jax drops by Jason’s penthouse to give Brenda a check to help her get back on her feet. Brenda accuses him of trying to make her feel like a prostitute. She’s bawling as she endorses the check over to the local battered women’s shelter and tells him to drop it off and find a new victim. It’s an awesome scene.
I love how your explanation of someone coming back from the dead is so matter-of-fact! lol, soap opera stories are sometimes ridiculous.
“she had no assets because she’d been dead” is GOLD.
@ehatWhat- GH even has a lawyer who specializes in handling all of the return from the dead paperwork. It’s her niche. She just had to use her knowledge and there’s another character about to come back from the dead soon.
LOL. That is every Tinder pic from every 40+ dude…
This isnt entirely applicable, but i got both shots and am currently commenting from the hospital COVID positive ANYWAY and wracking up an enormous medical bill (10s of thousands of dollars). Im recently divorced and hardly insured and ill be dealing with the illness and financial issues for a long time. Seeing things like this confuse and upset me because the issues involved are still so unclear and nuanced.
Nope.
i’m sorry you’re sick in hospital and i’m glad you were double vaxxed because that may have saved your life!
the evidence for getting vaccinated against COVID is pretty clear – if exposed, ur less likely to be infected. if infected, you’re less likely to be hospitalized. if hospitalized, you’re less likely to die.
you did the right thing by getting vaccinated and it sucks that you got sick with a breakthrough case – i hope you recover soon!
omg I remember seeing him on GH when I was obsessively into the ABC soaps (back when there were three and not one) back in middle school. I can’t believe he managed to screw himself out of such a great job that he was so fortunate to maintain when soaps have been going the way of the dodo for years now. Seriously, once you became an established regular in that industry, you had a job for life unless you utterly fucked up. As long as GH was on air, he could have become an octogenarian and still have had his character getting into melodramatic love triangle shenanigans (I don’t know if that was what was going on with Jax, but I assume it was). What a dope.
Lately his character has been pretty useless. No damsels in distress to rescue with his white knight complex. His child is an adult. They can kill him off or send him back to Australia and no one will miss him.
THIS. Ever since Brenda left (I hated the Sonny-Brenda-Jax triangle), Jax has had nothing to do except talk to Carly about their kid. I’m so happy they fired his butt. He’s been this way for years, but because he’s been on and off GH (he lives in Hawaii), no one has noticed until now. I hope they recast Jax and Ingo goes off into obscurity.
They moved back to CA a while ago. He also has a job as a LA County lifeguard which is very hard to get. I’m assuming he’ll need to be vaccinated to be a lifeguard. I don’t want someone who’s unvaccinated giving me mouth to mouth in an emergency situation.
GOOD.
Go, Cassandra!
I haven’t seen much of GH, but I did watch Port Charles. The acting was terrible, but it was kind of fun to tune into every week.
CANCELLED
Heartbroken he turned out to be so arrogant and hateful. Just another a hole pretending to be a victim. His poor kids. He will probably get covid one day and pass it on to them.
So…”I bought my son a dress” is the new “I have a Black friend” I guess?