This is why, imo, the conversation on this shouldn't even get to the question of "do we forgive him?" or "how long after doing a bad thing until we can trust a person again?" While the details...
Louis CK performed a surprise set at New York City's Comedy Cellar, with owner Noam Dworman calling the material "typical" for the comedian (it was later reported the set included at least one rape joke).
This is why, imo, the conversation on this shouldn't even get to the question of "do we forgive him?" or "how long after doing a bad thing until we can trust a person again?" While the details aren't really there and how bad a rape joke is can definitely be at different levels, if you have this kind of shit on you and you come back making jokes about sexual assault or rape or anything, you're just signalling that you don't give a shit and you aren't even willing to make an attempt at treating the situation with the weight it deserves.
I was more convinced than most by Louis CK's initial apology (though I still think what he did was awful), but at this point he's just unambiguously bad in my eyes. Sad too, I liked a lot of his comedy.
To the question of, “Has #MeToo gone too far?” In this case, no. Emphatically, no. Add to this that he didn’t even book these sets, he literally just showed up and asked to be put on. He is...
To the question of, “Has #MeToo gone too far?” In this case, no. Emphatically, no.
Both appearances were surprises, and neither, reportedly, met with resistance. “He just went and told the emcee that he wanted to go on, and it’s pretty much autopilot at that point — the emcee let him go on. It’s not an open mic, but it’s Louis C.K., somebody famous like that,” Comedy Cellar owner Noam Dworman told the Hollywood Reporter.
He is demonstrably still totally fine with flexing his privilege to get what he wants and the people around him are still totally fine with letting him.
I feel like you're reaching with this one. That's how these clubs work; the the owner even confirmed it. If it was Seinfeld or Silverman that showed up and bumped a lesser comedian off, would you...
He is demonstrably still totally fine with flexing his privilege to get what he wants and the people around him are still totally fine with letting him.
I feel like you're reaching with this one. That's how these clubs work; the the owner even confirmed it. If it was Seinfeld or Silverman that showed up and bumped a lesser comedian off, would you call it "flexing their privilege"?
Actually, you might call it exactly that. But they would be flexing the privilege earned by getting famous at standup comedy (notice I said EARNED). Not some white/male/whatever privilege that you're insinuating here.
Its okay to be angry at him. But be angry at him for the right things.
Bumping less famous people because you are famous is a shitty thing to do. He could have booked it under a pseudonym, but instead made it so the world bent to what he needed when he needed it. And...
Bumping less famous people because you are famous is a shitty thing to do.
He could have booked it under a pseudonym, but instead made it so the world bent to what he needed when he needed it. And he only did it because he’s famous. And I guess it’s fine because he’s famous.
I'm sorry, but you're digging your heels into an assumption in order to make a value judgement. For example: where did you see that someone was bumped? I can't see it in any of the articles linked...
I'm sorry, but you're digging your heels into an assumption in order to make a value judgement. For example: where did you see that someone was bumped? I can't see it in any of the articles linked here.
You're also shifting responsibility. He asked to be let on, and he was allowed to be on. Why are you not taking the people who allowed him to task? You're treating it as if he bullied his way on stage, or crashed the venue, when all the accounts seem to indicate that the entire affair was a polite surprise that only lasted 10 minutes.
This is also something that is very common in the standup industry. Look up any interview where a comedian talks about how they hone their craft and they'll always mention doing surprise gigs at clubs. That's generally how it goes in that scene when you reach a certain point in your career.
I make no judgement or claim on how anyone should feel about Louis performing comedy again, nor do I want to express an opinion on that. But changing the story to turn it into an ugly, snarling version is not a fair way to examine a situation.
But surely a case could be made for the other side of that. If he smurfed the setlist then people would be writing posts about how he was too ashamed to book it under his real name. Or if he did...
But surely a case could be made for the other side of that.
If he smurfed the setlist then people would be writing posts about how he was too ashamed to book it under his real name. Or if he did book it under his real name, there would have been a whirlwind of publicity over it before it even started.
If I was in a position like that, i'm p sure I'd go about it just as casually as he did. The owners were cool with it and it's not totally unprecedented for comics to randomly show up before actually getting back in the swing of things, so I'm finding it hard to be outraged by it.
If Ronnie O'Sullivan swung into a snooker hall and took the place of some amateur for the nights competition, then it'd be "okay because he's famous" in potentially thousands of ways. The owner could have admired him so obviously made room for him. The owner could have wanted to use it for publicity, the owner could have just wanted to talk to the guy and be supportive of his interest in the sport.
I don't think he only did it because he's famous, but I'm not exactly sure what i think. I'm just not sure diving on him using being famous is the most sensible conclusion though, but it's not too outlandish either so what can you do.
Yeah, I feel like it deserves being reinforced that this type of moving aside for the big-names in comedy is industry standard. If a famous comedian is looking to try out a set, they walk in and...
Yeah, I feel like it deserves being reinforced that this type of moving aside for the big-names in comedy is industry standard. If a famous comedian is looking to try out a set, they walk in and ask for a time, and do it exactly the way Louis C.K. did. This part is a normal practice.
That doesn't mitigate his habitual behavior leading up to this or the rape whistle joke. Just because it's industry standard doesn't mean the audience has to great him warmly. I would fully expect him to be a controversial figure on the stage as well as off. That's part of the reason for this sort of standard. You get to see in real time how much staying power the controversy had. This one apparently has a bit.
Technically the things he did, he did years before they came to light. So it's been a while since he actually did the things, it just hasn't been that long since it was brought to light.
"how long after doing a bad thing until we can trust a person again?
Technically the things he did, he did years before they came to light. So it's been a while since he actually did the things, it just hasn't been that long since it was brought to light.
Like I said, I don't think the conversation should even get to that point. Also, that only makes it worse, with years in between where he got away with it.
Like I said, I don't think the conversation should even get to that point. Also, that only makes it worse, with years in between where he got away with it.
I would say getting away with it for years and not immediately coming clean with it like other people want to try and paint it to be does make it much worse. He had time to grow or learn or take...
I would say getting away with it for years and not immediately coming clean with it like other people want to try and paint it to be does make it much worse. He had time to grow or learn or take responsibility for what he did, but he didn't.
If you don't think that is worse, I don't know what to tell you. Especially since you're not giving anything to work with for a conversation, and instead giving an empty "nah."
Yeah, there are things people are ignoring. He never forced himself on anyone. He didn't understand the power balance and stopped. Years later people come forward. He admits he was wrong and...
Yeah, there are things people are ignoring. He never forced himself on anyone. He didn't understand the power balance and stopped. Years later people come forward. He admits he was wrong and apologized.
Now he wants to go on with his life and people are shouting priviledge. The thing is, this guy has been in the business what 20 years or more. He knows people. He going in and asking for a spot wasn't priviledge in the sense people are selling it. He is famous from working his way up the ladder, and he knows people. This is just an age old case of who you know more than anything. Of course he had pull when he asked to go on. His privilege is just being known in the business and being famous at this point and knowing people.
Drop-ins in the comedy business are normal, when a famous comedian goes to a smaller club and asks for a set time. A lot of big-name comedians do that to try out new material before taking it to...
Drop-ins in the comedy business are normal, when a famous comedian goes to a smaller club and asks for a set time. A lot of big-name comedians do that to try out new material before taking it to the bigger stage. It also gives a stage to practice on and refine your set. None of this is structurally surprising to me, and people who are surprised about it probably don't know the industry that well.
I do think there's a meaningful difference between surprise for us the readers who weren't there and surprise for the audience members who came to the comedy club for different comedians' sets. I can see how some members of that audience might not have appreciated the drop-in from a controversial figure looking to try out jokes that touch lightly on the sore subject that saw him become that controversial figure.
One person standing and clapping is a standing ovation. It is meaningful if half the room didn't even clap. You can see that sort of split if half the room is standing and roaring while the other...
One person standing and clapping is a standing ovation. It is meaningful if half the room didn't even clap. You can see that sort of split if half the room is standing and roaring while the other half is stone silent.
Do you have a source for half the room staying silent? Or was that just an example? In this article, the quoted woman made it sound like there were only a few other people who seemed upset, and...
Do you have a source for half the room staying silent? Or was that just an example? In this article, the quoted woman made it sound like there were only a few other people who seemed upset, and everyone else was very into it.
I don't. The article merely suggested that several women in the audience weren't particularly keen on reacting at all. I meant for that line to be a hypothetical that would let Louis and the stage...
I don't. The article merely suggested that several women in the audience weren't particularly keen on reacting at all. I meant for that line to be a hypothetical that would let Louis and the stage hands gauge how controversial the set might be.
I typically don't trust anyone's eye-witness accounts with more than a grain of salt (as they're notoriously bias-laden in all sorts of weird ways; you can find Elizabeth Lothus' work on eye witness testimony if you want a research-driven approach to that skepticism), so I probably wouldn't even really be keen on making a clear statement on how warmly received he was unless there was video evidence. And that's just really rare in a club situation like this.
I said “if” each time, no? At least a few people weren’t having it. We don’t know how big that group was, but I’m pretty sure I kept to hypotheticals on the actual feel in the room after...
I said “if” each time, no?
At least a few people weren’t having it. We don’t know how big that group was, but I’m pretty sure I kept to hypotheticals on the actual feel in the room after acknowledging some controversy. If I slipped somewhere, I meant to keep it hypothetical.
Look, maybe they weren’t visible at all from the stage. Maybe they were. A “standing ovation” doesn’t really say one way or another.
This has been mentioned in replies to other folks, but I think it bears repeating— he did force sexual scenarios onto people without their consent (or in situations where they felt unable to say...
Yeah, there are things people are ignoring. He never forced himself on anyone.
This has been mentioned in replies to other folks, but I think it bears repeating— he did force sexual scenarios onto people without their consent (or in situations where they felt unable to say no because of the power imbalance). Even with no physical touching, he still ignored (either deliberately or obliviously) that the act of asking wasn't the same as receiving actual consent. From some of the articles quoted in these comments, it sounds like he didn't even wait for a "yes." One person laughed because they thought he was joking, and he went ahead anyway.
I hesitate to talk about my personal experiences here because I have a few friends who know my screen name. Suffice to say that while I haven't had my consent completely ignored, I am familiar with genuine minor misunderstandings about consent. (As well as how they can be resolved successfully and with no residual harm or bad feelings.) But this, when you consider that he asked but didn't seem to care if the answer was actually "yes," doesn't feel like simply a misunderstanding to me.
Umm...no. He was upfront about it once it was clear he was backed into a corner. Allegations about Louis CK masturbating in front of women without their consent go back at least as far as 2012. In...
he was upfront about it immediately
Umm...no. He was upfront about it once it was clear he was backed into a corner.
Allegations about Louis CK masturbating in front of women without their consent go back at least as far as 2012.
I think your quote is disingenuously out of context. It's clear he's addressing the Horace and Pete stuff, not lying about the allegations. It seems like at worst he's sidestepping the topic and...
The idea of click-bait and what you see as online misinformation — is part of what you’re thinking of the Gawker items from last year?
No. I don’t care about that. That’s nothing to me. That’s not real. For me, Horace and Pete was derailed in terms of its trajectory by this idea that spread online that it was canceled and that I lost money. A good friend of mine who’s a movie producer emailed me and said, “Hey, I’m really sorry about Horace and Pete.” Having to disabuse people of this thing could really hurt me with something like the Emmys if people perceive the show as a dead project. I took that pretty fucking personally.
You didn’t feel any compulsion to address the Gawker stuff? I’ve never seen you talk about it.
Well, you can’t touch stuff like that. There’s one more thing I want to say about this, and it’s important: If you need your public profile to be all positive, you’re sick in the head. I do the work I do, and what happens next I can’t look after. So my thing is that I try to speak to the work whenever I can. Just to the work and not to my life.
I think your quote is disingenuously out of context. It's clear he's addressing the Horace and Pete stuff, not lying about the allegations. It seems like at worst he's sidestepping the topic and at best misunderstanding the question.
No, he's trying to steer the subject back to Horace and Pete (which they discussed earlier in the Vulture interview) as a way of distracting from the allegations about nonconsensual masturbation....
No, he's trying to steer the subject back to Horace and Pete (which they discussed earlier in the Vulture interview) as a way of distracting from the allegations about nonconsensual masturbation. It's a "let's stick to Rampart" type of comment. This is made clear if you hover over "Gawker items from last year" - a sidebar pops up that says
In May of 2015, Gawker posted rumors suggesting C.K. had masturbated “in front of women at inappropriate times.”
I'm disappointed they don't link to that Gawker piece, but it's easy to find - from May of 2015 (that Vulture interview was in June of 2016, so it's clearly what the "Gawker items from last year" is referring to):
“I’m not going to answer to that stuff, because they’re rumors,” Louis C.K. said during the Toronto interview, as he told Vulture last year. But he added on Sunday, “If you actually participate in a rumor, you make it bigger and you make it real.”
So it’s not real? “No.” he responded. “They’re rumors, that’s all that is.”
As far as I know it was never non-consensual. Either he asked and they said yes and he did it, or they said no and he didn't. Is it icky? Sure, but I don't think the guy's a predator as a lot of...
nonconsensual masturbation
As far as I know it was never non-consensual. Either he asked and they said yes and he did it, or they said no and he didn't.
Is it icky? Sure, but I don't think the guy's a predator as a lot of the reporting has painted it.
m'kay...so you call my argument disingenuous, I give additional sources to back it up, then you breeze right past it and on to a new topic? Who's being disingenuous, exactly? He admitted in his...
m'kay...so you call my argument disingenuous, I give additional sources to back it up, then you breeze right past it and on to a new topic? Who's being disingenuous, exactly?
He admitted in his own apology that asking "hey, can I masturbate in front of you?" in those situations isn't exactly consent:
At the time, I said to myself that what I did was O.K. because I never showed a woman my dick without asking first, which is also true. But what I learned later in life, too late, is that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick isn’t a question.
And in one of the cases detailed by the NYT, they didn't say yes or no, they laughed because they thought he was joking:
I don't think the guy's a predator as a lot of the reporting has painted it.
I would advise against getting hung up on the semantics of what "predator" means and whether Louis is one or not...but can you link to an example of him being called a predator? I've read a lot of criticism of him and none of the pieces I've read have used that term.
To add to what @spit-evil-olive-tips pointed out, "never physically touched anyone" is absolutely not an excuse. Any grown adult (hell most teenagers) know it is absolutely not okay to start...
To add to what @spit-evil-olive-tips pointed out, "never physically touched anyone" is absolutely not an excuse. Any grown adult (hell most teenagers) know it is absolutely not okay to start jacking off in front of someone who you don't know is okay with it. He's clearly morally compromised and he never even bothered to properly apologise or actually understand what he did wrong. Technically he has every "right" to come back but a lot of people are going to be very averse to him for good reason. Louis the Wanker is a gross person.
Meh? He denied it and make it unsafe for people to work around him. You can go to jail for pissing in public because it's obscene, what he did would be counted as sexual assault. That's no meh,...
Meh? He denied it and make it unsafe for people to work around him. You can go to jail for pissing in public because it's obscene, what he did would be counted as sexual assault.
Aziz? Fine. I didn't think the blowback he was getting was worth the very typically bad experience he set up for his date. His story was more an opportunity to talk about shitty behaviors and...
Aziz? Fine. I didn't think the blowback he was getting was worth the very typically bad experience he set up for his date. His story was more an opportunity to talk about shitty behaviors and pressures that pervade the dating world than his specific behavior. He also scheduled his events, which is totally normal and fine.
But Louis C.K.? Nah, pass. The details of that particular abuse were so heinous that it'll be a much longer winter before I'm willing to forgive that and hear his material with open ears. A drop-in from him at this point is not great, especially if he's going to try out material to mitigate that very episode in front of unsuspecting audiences.
I don't think listening to him means forgiving him. Pirandello was a fascist, do I "forgive" him if I admire his work? Then there is a logician whose work was useful in type theory in functional...
I don't think listening to him means forgiving him. Pirandello was a fascist, do I "forgive" him if I admire his work? Then there is a logician whose work was useful in type theory in functional languages, his name escapes me, but I recall that he was a Nazi; does our use of his theory means that we "forgive" him? The atom bombs ended the WWII, but do we "forgive" atom bombs? The point I want to reinforce via these examples is that we can hear him without forgiving him. I believe his approach in his shows is an important one to have, and not much comedians are as direct as him.
Also, I don't like thise approach of suppressing the entirety of someone's persona for a bad part thereof, and this newfangled way of lynching. It's bad for everybody. Fighting this guy and that other one is not that useful after all (note that I do not support just letting perpetrators of this sort of behaviour move on w/o consequences), we should be dealing with the abstract institutions that enable and empower predatory and violent behaviour. One thing that separates better places to live than the rest is the function of penitence: is it that of crushing the vilified guity individuals, or should it aim rehabilitation first and isolation from society if that's impossible. The second function is indicative of a higher level of civilisation.
There's definitely a place for the "separate the art from the artist" argument when it comes to industries like comedy. That's much harder to justify when the comedian's regular routine includes...
There's definitely a place for the "separate the art from the artist" argument when it comes to industries like comedy. That's much harder to justify when the comedian's regular routine includes allusions to his outrageous behavior. While I normally would be inclined to separate an artist from their art, that's really hard to do with Louis CK, and I don't think I will any time soon. His behavior was predatory and prolonged, and he regularly (we know in retrospect) joked about it.
So no, I'm not going to change my mind on Louis CK specifically, even if I'm quite open to hearing just about anyone else who isn't a predatory prick who integrates that absurdity into his comedy set. And the other examples about people's academic work doesn't fly for me when we're talking about art.
I'd be for tackling the structures and incentives that make this sort of abuse go unspoken for years, absolutely. That's an effort that requires some sacrifices. Sacrifices like Louis CK seem appropriate.
... this newfangled way of lynching.
Lynching involves death. I'm sure you know that. Louis CK did not die. Hell, we didn't even put him in prison. But given the nature of his offense, I'm not willing to go to any of his comedy or support it in any way just yet, especially since his 'public persona' appears to be remaining fairly similar to the worst excesses that got him in this position in the first place.
I can't object to any of that. TBH I don't know if I'll ever watch a video of him again myself, let alone going to a show of his. But "sacrificing" him is not necessary, because it's not useful....
I can't object to any of that. TBH I don't know if I'll ever watch a video of him again myself, let alone going to a show of his. But "sacrificing" him is not necessary, because it's not useful. That'd be a bit like the global war on drugs, it's never been successful, it's destined to fail. Silencing him will not improve the society. It'll only imply to similar people that when they're caught they'll have a hard time, but we don't want that, we instead want to remove what causes people to become like this, and that's only going to happen through education and discussion and cultural evolution. Individuals like Louis CK are irrelevant, let courts deal with them. Otherwise the situation is not only unlawful, but also alienates the very people that we want to educate.
WRT lynching, certainly I do know the actual meaning of the word, but it's used often as an analogy for mob-like verbal attacks meaning to silence or suppress someone. Maybe that's not common in English, but one of the definitions in the lynch entry in Wordnik is as follows:
To inflict punishment upon, especially death, without the forms of law, as when a mob captures and hangs a suspected person. See lynch law. (emphasis mine)
I think you're making a really important point here, so don't let my skepticism take too much away from the truth that some people (mostly men, to be real) genuinely fear that situations like...
Individuals like Louis CK are irrelevant, let courts deal with them. Otherwise the situation is not only unlawful, but also alienates the very people that we want to educate.
I think you're making a really important point here, so don't let my skepticism take too much away from the truth that some people (mostly men, to be real) genuinely fear that situations like Louis CK could be spun to apply to them and they would be at risk of losing their jobs for no apparent reason. And these (mostly) men would have those fears amplified by situations like Wil Wheaton's where doing almost nothing to provoke a group of people gets you met with all sorts of harassment. We can table for now the recognition that the fame and notoriety of the people involved is a big part of why people are reacting the way they are; those fears would be coming from what seems to me to be a genuine and reasonable place.
That said, what is lawful and unlawful is not all there is when it comes to what behavior is acceptable. And people can and should be allowed to vote with their dollars/feet. The economic punishment of Louis CK bothers me very little, only because of that unique combination of his moral offense and his typical comedy routine. "Sacrifice" is probably the wrong word for this behavior. "Standard setting/reinforcing" is probably closer to the truth.
I definitely hear you on the lynching comment. It's likely that my understanding is too narrow. Someone talks of lynching to me, and I think first of black people, especially in the south and Midwest, strung up to trees for "touching" a white woman, consensual or not, or for daring to own property in what "should" be a whites only neighborhood. It leaves me with a much more visceral gut reaction than I think a lot of people typically have. History can be a bitch sometimes.
I see the point you make in the last paragraph, I'm from a country with similar problems with violence too (Turkey), and also, most English dictionaries do not include the secondary meaning I've...
I see the point you make in the last paragraph, I'm from a country with similar problems with violence too (Turkey), and also, most English dictionaries do not include the secondary meaning I've attached to the word.
And people can and should be allowed to vote with their dollars/feet.
That's actually what I'm saying: let him appear, people will decide for themselves. And also, because at the end enough people can decide to vote "for" him, it might end up being that he practically gets away with all he did, so we must ensure that the behaviour is condemned officially. Another commenter puts forth the card of possible victim-blaming etc., but the situation is already public, and the fact that all the punishment he got is basically some gossip does not encourage victims in more vulnerable situations to seek help.
I'm often guilty of allowing my point to get lost in word soups, so, sorry for that.
WRT the first point you make, it's not that sort of fear I'm talking about. I was talking about attracting traditionalists towards what we think is the better way when it comes to flirting, consent, and sexual relations. This sort of vendetta and all the shenanigans surrounding it does not present our ideals ("us" in the sense that those who support gender equality and consensual relationships, and all the good things attached to these) as coherent and as having the intention of ameliorating the way things are. We won't be able to create a country and exclude "bad/ignorant" people, we'll instead have to live with them and are obliged to demonstrate that our ways are indeed "better" that what is traditionally the normal, like the assumption that no means yes-ish, among others.
I think your use of the term "lynching" is fair. When I think about it, I've heard it used that way plenty enough. It's just not the use that hits me in the gut, so sorry about that. I hope it's...
I think your use of the term "lynching" is fair. When I think about it, I've heard it used that way plenty enough. It's just not the use that hits me in the gut, so sorry about that.
That's actually what I'm saying: let him appear, people will decide for themselves.
I hope it's clear I have no problem with that. I am just perfectly content if people choose against supporting him and his comedy (it is also fine, even if I disagree with doing so myself, for people to choose in favor of supporting him and his comedy). Unfortunately for my ideals, it seems clear that he'll pretty much always be guaranteed to have enough of a following to never be irrelevant, so I suspect he'll be doing just fine in a few months. Official action like what you're suggesting would be needed to make sure victims feel like the industry has their back if shit goes south, and I don't think the way this has been playing out affirms that very much for them.
I was talking about attracting traditionalists towards what we think is the better way when it comes to flirting, consent, and sexual relations. This sort of vendetta and all the shenanigans surrounding it does not present our ideals ("us" in the sense that those who support gender equality and consensual relationships, and all the good things attached to these) as coherent and as having the intention of ameliorating the way things are.
Ah, so if I understand you right, you're saying that attacking Louis CK over this makes it part of the broader culture-war battlegrounds that is so difficult to change anyone's views over. That's a fair point too.
Glad we ended up agreeing! Well for that to happen victims need to sue him, no? When I say that I'm accused of "victim-blaming", which is one of that taboo-ish "buzzwords" used to end...
Glad we ended up agreeing!
Unfortunately for my ideals, it seems clear that he'll pretty much always be guaranteed to have enough of a following to never be irrelevant, so I suspect he'll be doing just fine in a few months. Official action like what you're suggesting would be needed to make sure victims feel like the industry has their back if shit goes south, and I don't think the way this has been playing out affirms that very much for them.
Well for that to happen victims need to sue him, no? When I say that I'm accused of "victim-blaming", which is one of that taboo-ish "buzzwords" used to end conversations abruptly and without a chance of discussion. I despise the "victim-silencing" that's made unpenetrable via that sort of name-dropping. How is it less safe to go to court and sue someone, than to give public interviews accusing someone, non-pseudonymously? We want victims to come out (isn't that the whole point of #MeToo?), and then we think that the possible backlash justifies encouraging them to being afraid and keeping silent. That's deeply hypocritical.
In Turkey prosecutors can start court cases in the name of people especially for public offences or offences publicised like this, so in a similar case here he could've been prosecuted w/o the need for victims' initiative (just ignore the recent situation of Turkey, I'm talking about what's theoretically possible). Isn't there a similar mechanism in the US?
The big problem with victims coming forward and suing a big name like this is that it usually will cost them their careers. The big named comedian's fans don't want to know about what asshole...
The big problem with victims coming forward and suing a big name like this is that it usually will cost them their careers. The big named comedian's fans don't want to know about what asshole behavior their man is doing behind closed doors, and there are far too many among any typical fanbase that would be willing to attack and harass an accuser for merely speaking out, using the legal system or not. It's already generally true in society at large, but it's especially true in the comedy industry where a lot of the big players know each other and are close, genuine friends.
I'm all for using the justice system to adjudicate the grossest matters of this sort, but I have to recognize the practical difficulties of bringing someone to court over something like this. The people who most commonly find themselves in the power dynamic where they can be vulnerable to this sort of behavior are the exact same who wouldn't be able to afford a decent lawyer to tell them what their options are. The legal support simply isn't there for struggling comedians to navigate these questions. It isn't like a typical office setting where you can go to your HR department and ask for advice. There's literally nothing in most of these cases. This is the part that explains why Louis CK's behavior went unchecked for so long. There is no mechanism in comedy that can intervene and try to get him to change his behavior before it would become a major, habitual problem.
In the absence of a judicial system that all classes of people can get meaningful access too, yeah, some of these cases are going to have to be tried by news media. It's really unfortunate. It sucks. It's the worst possible way we can try to seek justice and still have a hope of attaining it. But it's also, for many in these positions, the only realistic option they can see. And that, to me, is the biggest problem with this entire story and the comedy industry as a whole.
I hadn't heard of him, but apparently he died in 1936. I think there's a huge gulf between looking back at someone decades after their death, and looking at their work in context with any of their...
Pirandello was a fascist, do I "forgive" him if I admire his work?
I hadn't heard of him, but apparently he died in 1936.
I think there's a huge gulf between looking back at someone decades after their death, and looking at their work in context with any of their flaws, compared to the current situation with Louis CK where his misbehavior came to light less than a year ago and he said as part of his apology "I will now step back and take a long time to listen". When he re-emerges into public life, I think evaluating if he's fulfilled that promise is entirely legitimate and not really comparable to a fascist who died 80 years ago.
I disagree. First of all, banning people from public life is not a good method of punishment. We can look the other way if we don't like him, but everybody has a right to exist in public. I don't...
I disagree. First of all, banning people from public life is not a good method of punishment. We can look the other way if we don't like him, but everybody has a right to exist in public. I don't think he was jailed. Secondly, it's not less bad when someone was able to get away with what they did before their death. If you think that it's possible that he repeats his misbehaviour, well, then banning him from public is no use, he can keep on and just not be on the public scene. We cannot ban him from existing. On that note, I wonder why he's not actually punished by law, because I think the actual scandal is that: why he has not been sued?
Also, if Louis CK is denied a voice, then so should be Asia Argento, as it's came to light that she's done quite a bit more than masturbating in front of people unwilling to watch it (not that I support this kind of view, but it'd be what coherence requires).
WRT Pirandello, well, I used that as an example to talk about my view.
Spare me this strawman bullshit. No one is saying that he should be banned from public life permanently. The criticism of him is after he said as part of his apology "I will now step back and take...
banning people from public life is not a good method of punishment
Spare me this strawman bullshit. No one is saying that he should be banned from public life permanently.
The criticism of him is after he said as part of his apology "I will now step back and take a long time to listen". After 10 months, is there any indication that he's listened and grown? Showing up unannounced, which doesn't give anyone a chance to say "nah, I'd rather not see Louis". That's a common practice for normal well-known comics, but at this time Louis isn't exactly a normal well-known comic is he?
On that note, I wonder why he's not actually punished by law, because I think the actual scandal is that: why he has not been sued?
Maybe his accusers didn't want to subject themselves to further victim-blaming? Maybe they were waiting to see if Louis' reappearance in public life came as an interview talking about how much reflection he's done, rather than as an unannounced appearance where he tells more rape jokes?
Also, if Louis CK is denied a voice
Again, no one is saying deny him a voice. This "any criticism of anyone's speech means you're trying to duct-tape his mouth shut and burn the 1st amendment" bullshit has gotten real old. I am saying that the time and place where he speaks out indicates if he really has learned anything, or if he just took what amounts to a 10-month sabbatical and is now trying to come back like nothing ever happened.
Similarly, if Asia Argento appeared in a movie or TV show as an unannounced walk-on character, I'd be similarly critical. Especially if her character then went on to have a plotline where she seduces a teenage boy or something like that.
Before anything, I don't think your style is welcome here. You're offensive and you attack me ad-hominem with insulting words. This is not why I'm here, if I was looking for this, I already have...
Before anything, I don't think your style is welcome here. You're offensive and you attack me ad-hominem with insulting words. This is not why I'm here, if I was looking for this, I already have an account on Reddit.
What is the measure of how much he has reflected upon his behaviour? How do we know if he is remorseful or just silently fine with what he did? How do we know what is "any indication that he's listened and grown?" How do we know if 10 months is enough or not?
I'm not blaming any victims. But it's impossible to punish people effectively when their victims are silent. What is problematic is that when people are open enough to talk to media but lazy enought to not sue as well the situation of the sort of people like Louis CK is left on a limbo, and that some of the population does not like him is no punishment to him because I don't really think it'd matter for him if he can remain a media personality despite what happened. Accusations should have actual results, like they did for say Weinstein or else they basically get away with it, like we see in this case.
Declaring a person guilty of this sort of a misbehaviour, and especially a person of sorts, and then expecting them to come to their senses and be remorseful for their past is naive. Being angry that they did not suffer the consequencences that were never imposed upon them is so too. Us being critical of such a person or not is completely effectless and useless. What I'm arguing is that the sort of thing that we want the guy to be subject to is not only useless and inefficent, but also generall impossible. We should make sure that this sort of people are punished, albeit justly and aptly, and that the oncoming generation is better educated. Us letting him get away with no consequences except some roleplay that we expect from is a bad lesson to our kids. Add to that our supporting of victims remaining silent and subjugated under the name of "protecting themselves from victim-blaming", especially when such protection is completely absent given people have accused the person in question in public already. If anything, they should be encouraged to go ahead and sue, and the public should help them do that through relevant NGOs that fund their quest if necessary. Or else we're encouraging the silence of silent victims.
They called specific points "bullshit" a while into a conversation and didn't go any further than that. I don't think any show of emotion or vulgarity makes this into Reddit. You can be less than...
They called specific points "bullshit" a while into a conversation and didn't go any further than that. I don't think any show of emotion or vulgarity makes this into Reddit. You can be less than perfectly stoic and still carry on a decent conversation, which it seems like the other user has done a good job of.
It's not the same if they called it "wrong" or "mistaken" or even "deceiving". They called my words "bullshit" and thus the slur is directly addressed to me. So it's not "any show of emotion or...
It's not the same if they called it "wrong" or "mistaken" or even "deceiving". They called my words "bullshit" and thus the slur is directly addressed to me. So it's not "any show of emotion or vulgarity", it's a personal attack. I'm not otherwise picky about vulgar language all that much.
We don't need to lower our standards because what we're talking about is of lower standards. And it's me the addressee of the word. Frankly I don't mind it all that much but wanted to pronounce my...
We don't need to lower our standards because what we're talking about is of lower standards. And it's me the addressee of the word. Frankly I don't mind it all that much but wanted to pronounce my dislike of it, so that's not worth much discussion, which is off-topic anyways.
Also I haven't seen a comment defending the sexual assault (but maybe I missed them), I thought the topic was his reappearance and whether or not that was acceptable.
Re-read my post. I said your argument was bullshit. Specifically it's an example of the strawman fallacy by arguing against "banning people from public life" when no one in this thread has argued...
You're offensive and you attack me ad-hominem with insulting words.
Re-read my post. I said your argument was bullshit. Specifically it's an example of the strawman fallacy by arguing against "banning people from public life" when no one in this thread has argued for that. That's not an ad-hominem.
What is the measure of how much he has reflected upon his behaviour? How do we know if he is remorseful or just silently fine with what he did? How do we know what is "any indication that he's listened and grown?" How do we know if 10 months is enough or not?
There's no objective measure. But he sexually exposed himself non-consensually to women on multiple occasions over many years. Then he makes his re-appearance by exposing himself non-consensually (non-sexually this time, but still showing up without invitation and saying "I'm here, deal with it or it's up to you to leave"). That's not a great indication that he's really learned his lesson that the issue is not just the sexual conduct but the lack of consent.
I'm not blaming any victims.
I originally wasn't saying you're engaging in victim-blaming. I was saying that society in general will have that reaction.
However, I've been proven wrong, and you are engaging in victim-blaming (emphasis added):
when people are open enough to talk to media but lazy enought to not sue
One of the women who spoke on the record to the New York Times about Louis masturbating in front of her has received death threats. Calling it "laziness" to try to end those death threats by not pursuing legal action is absolutely a form of victim blaming.
Declaring a person guilty of this sort of a misbehaviour,
Are you still talking about Louis CK, or just talking generally about men accused of sexual misbehavior? No one "declared" him guilty. He admitted that they're true.
I'm not questioning the truth of the accusation and am aware about him admitting. Neither do I defend him. I'm indeed trying to draw more general thoughts from this case becase I do not think...
I'm not questioning the truth of the accusation and am aware about him admitting. Neither do I defend him. I'm indeed trying to draw more general thoughts from this case becase I do not think what's going on is entirely healthy and will not conduct us to where we want to arrive at.
Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them.
... says Wikipedia. I'm not blaming victims "for the harm that befell them". I am though criticising them for not taking concrete action against it, especially after publicising the facts. I don't want to see the victims be disproven, I want to see Louis CK and the like face actual consequences and taht those consequences in turn be useful to rehabilitate him and ameliorate the society.
I wonder if he is ever going to work in this whole metoo into his set, what he did and what the consequences where. It's going to be very telling with what tone he approaches the whole thing.
I wonder if he is ever going to work in this whole metoo into his set, what he did and what the consequences where.
It's going to be very telling with what tone he approaches the whole thing.
No, I think he has always done stuff like that, a little on the edge. It's very different if he talks about him self and it would be interesting to see what angle he takes: will he joke how crazy...
No, I think he has always done stuff like that, a little on the edge.
It's very different if he talks about him self and it would be interesting to see what angle he takes: will he joke how crazy women are to get offended at him masturbating, a more self-deprecating take where he ends up being the butt of the joke or probably somewhere in-between the two extremes. It would be quite telling of how he views what he did and where he though he went wrong.
Yeah for sure, but every comedian is different because of who they are. In a sense people come to see their (or at least the stage persona they create) react to funny situations and hear stories...
Yeah for sure, but every comedian is different because of who they are. In a sense people come to see their (or at least the stage persona they create) react to funny situations and hear stories surrounding that particular character and how they see the world.
Maybe this time Louis CK will actually be funny Sorry, he's really just not my taste. His observational humor seems to just be pointing out terrible things in society and then laughing, for some...
Maybe this time Louis CK will actually be funny
Sorry, he's really just not my taste. His observational humor seems to just be pointing out terrible things in society and then laughing, for some reason. His show Louis was so cringe-inducing it was almost unwatchable. His best work was the b+w sitcom set in a bar that he only sold from his website. It was raw in a way that nothing else has been.
While I’d agree that you can easily oversimplify these things (chances are I do!), I think the very fact that they’re considered “outrageous” qualifies them being a topic of comedy. I think...
While I’d agree that you can easily oversimplify these things (chances are I do!), I think the very fact that they’re considered “outrageous” qualifies them being a topic of comedy. I think Southpark does it in a much less intelligent way and gets away with it. But yea, I can see how his history can make this more complicated.
It’s just that I read the allegations and they’re essentially “he asked if he can do that, I said yes and then he actually did it”. If he actually got physical and/or blatantly black-mail-y, this would be a different situation, still.
Yeah, we can definitely agree to disagree on how humorous he is. It's to one's own taste. To be transparent, my dislike predates the allegations; I honestly find him not as funny as his fame would...
Yeah, we can definitely agree to disagree on how humorous he is. It's to one's own taste. To be transparent, my dislike predates the allegations; I honestly find him not as funny as his fame would seem to warrant.
It’s just that I read the allegations and they’re essentially “he asked if he can do that, I said yes and then he actually did it”. If he actually got physical and/or blatantly black-mail-y, this would be a different situation, still.
There is a balance of power issue there that is important. He was influential in these people's careers.
This is why, imo, the conversation on this shouldn't even get to the question of "do we forgive him?" or "how long after doing a bad thing until we can trust a person again?" While the details aren't really there and how bad a rape joke is can definitely be at different levels, if you have this kind of shit on you and you come back making jokes about sexual assault or rape or anything, you're just signalling that you don't give a shit and you aren't even willing to make an attempt at treating the situation with the weight it deserves.
I was more convinced than most by Louis CK's initial apology (though I still think what he did was awful), but at this point he's just unambiguously bad in my eyes. Sad too, I liked a lot of his comedy.
To the question of, “Has #MeToo gone too far?” In this case, no. Emphatically, no.
Add to this that he didn’t even book these sets, he literally just showed up and asked to be put on.
He is demonstrably still totally fine with flexing his privilege to get what he wants and the people around him are still totally fine with letting him.
I feel like you're reaching with this one. That's how these clubs work; the the owner even confirmed it. If it was Seinfeld or Silverman that showed up and bumped a lesser comedian off, would you call it "flexing their privilege"?
Actually, you might call it exactly that. But they would be flexing the privilege earned by getting famous at standup comedy (notice I said EARNED). Not some white/male/whatever privilege that you're insinuating here.
Its okay to be angry at him. But be angry at him for the right things.
Bumping less famous people because you are famous is a shitty thing to do.
He could have booked it under a pseudonym, but instead made it so the world bent to what he needed when he needed it. And he only did it because he’s famous. And I guess it’s fine because he’s famous.
I'm sorry, but you're digging your heels into an assumption in order to make a value judgement. For example: where did you see that someone was bumped? I can't see it in any of the articles linked here.
You're also shifting responsibility. He asked to be let on, and he was allowed to be on. Why are you not taking the people who allowed him to task? You're treating it as if he bullied his way on stage, or crashed the venue, when all the accounts seem to indicate that the entire affair was a polite surprise that only lasted 10 minutes.
This is also something that is very common in the standup industry. Look up any interview where a comedian talks about how they hone their craft and they'll always mention doing surprise gigs at clubs. That's generally how it goes in that scene when you reach a certain point in your career.
I make no judgement or claim on how anyone should feel about Louis performing comedy again, nor do I want to express an opinion on that. But changing the story to turn it into an ugly, snarling version is not a fair way to examine a situation.
But surely a case could be made for the other side of that.
If he smurfed the setlist then people would be writing posts about how he was too ashamed to book it under his real name. Or if he did book it under his real name, there would have been a whirlwind of publicity over it before it even started.
If I was in a position like that, i'm p sure I'd go about it just as casually as he did. The owners were cool with it and it's not totally unprecedented for comics to randomly show up before actually getting back in the swing of things, so I'm finding it hard to be outraged by it.
If Ronnie O'Sullivan swung into a snooker hall and took the place of some amateur for the nights competition, then it'd be "okay because he's famous" in potentially thousands of ways. The owner could have admired him so obviously made room for him. The owner could have wanted to use it for publicity, the owner could have just wanted to talk to the guy and be supportive of his interest in the sport.
I don't think he only did it because he's famous, but I'm not exactly sure what i think. I'm just not sure diving on him using being famous is the most sensible conclusion though, but it's not too outlandish either so what can you do.
Yeah, I feel like it deserves being reinforced that this type of moving aside for the big-names in comedy is industry standard. If a famous comedian is looking to try out a set, they walk in and ask for a time, and do it exactly the way Louis C.K. did. This part is a normal practice.
That doesn't mitigate his habitual behavior leading up to this or the rape whistle joke. Just because it's industry standard doesn't mean the audience has to great him warmly. I would fully expect him to be a controversial figure on the stage as well as off. That's part of the reason for this sort of standard. You get to see in real time how much staying power the controversy had. This one apparently has a bit.
Technically the things he did, he did years before they came to light. So it's been a while since he actually did the things, it just hasn't been that long since it was brought to light.
Like I said, I don't think the conversation should even get to that point. Also, that only makes it worse, with years in between where he got away with it.
No, it doesn't make it worse.
I would say getting away with it for years and not immediately coming clean with it like other people want to try and paint it to be does make it much worse. He had time to grow or learn or take responsibility for what he did, but he didn't.
If you don't think that is worse, I don't know what to tell you. Especially since you're not giving anything to work with for a conversation, and instead giving an empty "nah."
Wasn't he the guy who was whining about his wife jerking him off in their kids room?
Meh, let him come back. What he did was wrong but he was upfront about it immediately and never physically touched anyone.
Yeah, there are things people are ignoring. He never forced himself on anyone. He didn't understand the power balance and stopped. Years later people come forward. He admits he was wrong and apologized.
Now he wants to go on with his life and people are shouting priviledge. The thing is, this guy has been in the business what 20 years or more. He knows people. He going in and asking for a spot wasn't priviledge in the sense people are selling it. He is famous from working his way up the ladder, and he knows people. This is just an age old case of who you know more than anything. Of course he had pull when he asked to go on. His privilege is just being known in the business and being famous at this point and knowing people.
Drop-ins in the comedy business are normal, when a famous comedian goes to a smaller club and asks for a set time. A lot of big-name comedians do that to try out new material before taking it to the bigger stage. It also gives a stage to practice on and refine your set. None of this is structurally surprising to me, and people who are surprised about it probably don't know the industry that well.
I do think there's a meaningful difference between surprise for us the readers who weren't there and surprise for the audience members who came to the comedy club for different comedians' sets. I can see how some members of that audience might not have appreciated the drop-in from a controversial figure looking to try out jokes that touch lightly on the sore subject that saw him become that controversial figure.
He got standing ovations.
One person standing and clapping is a standing ovation. It is meaningful if half the room didn't even clap. You can see that sort of split if half the room is standing and roaring while the other half is stone silent.
Do you have a source for half the room staying silent? Or was that just an example? In this article, the quoted woman made it sound like there were only a few other people who seemed upset, and everyone else was very into it.
I don't. The article merely suggested that several women in the audience weren't particularly keen on reacting at all. I meant for that line to be a hypothetical that would let Louis and the stage hands gauge how controversial the set might be.
I typically don't trust anyone's eye-witness accounts with more than a grain of salt (as they're notoriously bias-laden in all sorts of weird ways; you can find Elizabeth Lothus' work on eye witness testimony if you want a research-driven approach to that skepticism), so I probably wouldn't even really be keen on making a clear statement on how warmly received he was unless there was video evidence. And that's just really rare in a club situation like this.
Then why did you make a statement on how warmly received he was?
I said “if” each time, no?
At least a few people weren’t having it. We don’t know how big that group was, but I’m pretty sure I kept to hypotheticals on the actual feel in the room after acknowledging some controversy. If I slipped somewhere, I meant to keep it hypothetical.
Look, maybe they weren’t visible at all from the stage. Maybe they were. A “standing ovation” doesn’t really say one way or another.
This has been mentioned in replies to other folks, but I think it bears repeating— he did force sexual scenarios onto people without their consent (or in situations where they felt unable to say no because of the power imbalance). Even with no physical touching, he still ignored (either deliberately or obliviously) that the act of asking wasn't the same as receiving actual consent. From some of the articles quoted in these comments, it sounds like he didn't even wait for a "yes." One person laughed because they thought he was joking, and he went ahead anyway.
I hesitate to talk about my personal experiences here because I have a few friends who know my screen name. Suffice to say that while I haven't had my consent completely ignored, I am familiar with genuine minor misunderstandings about consent. (As well as how they can be resolved successfully and with no residual harm or bad feelings.) But this, when you consider that he asked but didn't seem to care if the answer was actually "yes," doesn't feel like simply a misunderstanding to me.
Umm...no. He was upfront about it once it was clear he was backed into a corner.
Allegations about Louis CK masturbating in front of women without their consent go back at least as far as 2012.
In 2016 he responded to the allegations saying "No. I don’t care about that. That’s nothing to me. That’s not real."
I think your quote is disingenuously out of context. It's clear he's addressing the Horace and Pete stuff, not lying about the allegations. It seems like at worst he's sidestepping the topic and at best misunderstanding the question.
No, he's trying to steer the subject back to Horace and Pete (which they discussed earlier in the Vulture interview) as a way of distracting from the allegations about nonconsensual masturbation. It's a "let's stick to Rampart" type of comment. This is made clear if you hover over "Gawker items from last year" - a sidebar pops up that says
I'm disappointed they don't link to that Gawker piece, but it's easy to find - from May of 2015 (that Vulture interview was in June of 2016, so it's clearly what the "Gawker items from last year" is referring to):
Louis C.K. Will Call You Up to Talk About His Alleged Sexual Misconduct
Ctrl-f for "Horace" or "Pete" - not there, because the Gawker article wasn't about Horace & Pete, it was about the allegations of sexual misconduct.
He also denied the allegations more than a year later, in an interview with the New York Times:
As far as I know it was never non-consensual. Either he asked and they said yes and he did it, or they said no and he didn't.
Is it icky? Sure, but I don't think the guy's a predator as a lot of the reporting has painted it.
m'kay...so you call my argument disingenuous, I give additional sources to back it up, then you breeze right past it and on to a new topic? Who's being disingenuous, exactly?
He admitted in his own apology that asking "hey, can I masturbate in front of you?" in those situations isn't exactly consent:
And in one of the cases detailed by the NYT, they didn't say yes or no, they laughed because they thought he was joking:
I would advise against getting hung up on the semantics of what "predator" means and whether Louis is one or not...but can you link to an example of him being called a predator? I've read a lot of criticism of him and none of the pieces I've read have used that term.
To add to what @spit-evil-olive-tips pointed out, "never physically touched anyone" is absolutely not an excuse. Any grown adult (hell most teenagers) know it is absolutely not okay to start jacking off in front of someone who you don't know is okay with it. He's clearly morally compromised and he never even bothered to properly apologise or actually understand what he did wrong. Technically he has every "right" to come back but a lot of people are going to be very averse to him for good reason. Louis the Wanker is a gross person.
Meh? He denied it and make it unsafe for people to work around him. You can go to jail for pissing in public because it's obscene, what he did would be counted as sexual assault.
That's no meh, not even close.
Aziz? Fine. I didn't think the blowback he was getting was worth the very typically bad experience he set up for his date. His story was more an opportunity to talk about shitty behaviors and pressures that pervade the dating world than his specific behavior. He also scheduled his events, which is totally normal and fine.
But Louis C.K.? Nah, pass. The details of that particular abuse were so heinous that it'll be a much longer winter before I'm willing to forgive that and hear his material with open ears. A drop-in from him at this point is not great, especially if he's going to try out material to mitigate that very episode in front of unsuspecting audiences.
I don't think listening to him means forgiving him. Pirandello was a fascist, do I "forgive" him if I admire his work? Then there is a logician whose work was useful in type theory in functional languages, his name escapes me, but I recall that he was a Nazi; does our use of his theory means that we "forgive" him? The atom bombs ended the WWII, but do we "forgive" atom bombs? The point I want to reinforce via these examples is that we can hear him without forgiving him. I believe his approach in his shows is an important one to have, and not much comedians are as direct as him.
Also, I don't like thise approach of suppressing the entirety of someone's persona for a bad part thereof, and this newfangled way of lynching. It's bad for everybody. Fighting this guy and that other one is not that useful after all (note that I do not support just letting perpetrators of this sort of behaviour move on w/o consequences), we should be dealing with the abstract institutions that enable and empower predatory and violent behaviour. One thing that separates better places to live than the rest is the function of penitence: is it that of crushing the vilified guity individuals, or should it aim rehabilitation first and isolation from society if that's impossible. The second function is indicative of a higher level of civilisation.
There's definitely a place for the "separate the art from the artist" argument when it comes to industries like comedy. That's much harder to justify when the comedian's regular routine includes allusions to his outrageous behavior. While I normally would be inclined to separate an artist from their art, that's really hard to do with Louis CK, and I don't think I will any time soon. His behavior was predatory and prolonged, and he regularly (we know in retrospect) joked about it.
So no, I'm not going to change my mind on Louis CK specifically, even if I'm quite open to hearing just about anyone else who isn't a predatory prick who integrates that absurdity into his comedy set. And the other examples about people's academic work doesn't fly for me when we're talking about art.
I'd be for tackling the structures and incentives that make this sort of abuse go unspoken for years, absolutely. That's an effort that requires some sacrifices. Sacrifices like Louis CK seem appropriate.
Lynching involves death. I'm sure you know that. Louis CK did not die. Hell, we didn't even put him in prison. But given the nature of his offense, I'm not willing to go to any of his comedy or support it in any way just yet, especially since his 'public persona' appears to be remaining fairly similar to the worst excesses that got him in this position in the first place.
I can't object to any of that. TBH I don't know if I'll ever watch a video of him again myself, let alone going to a show of his. But "sacrificing" him is not necessary, because it's not useful. That'd be a bit like the global war on drugs, it's never been successful, it's destined to fail. Silencing him will not improve the society. It'll only imply to similar people that when they're caught they'll have a hard time, but we don't want that, we instead want to remove what causes people to become like this, and that's only going to happen through education and discussion and cultural evolution. Individuals like Louis CK are irrelevant, let courts deal with them. Otherwise the situation is not only unlawful, but also alienates the very people that we want to educate.
WRT lynching, certainly I do know the actual meaning of the word, but it's used often as an analogy for mob-like verbal attacks meaning to silence or suppress someone. Maybe that's not common in English, but one of the definitions in the lynch entry in Wordnik is as follows:
So it's "especially" death, but not necessarily.
I think you're making a really important point here, so don't let my skepticism take too much away from the truth that some people (mostly men, to be real) genuinely fear that situations like Louis CK could be spun to apply to them and they would be at risk of losing their jobs for no apparent reason. And these (mostly) men would have those fears amplified by situations like Wil Wheaton's where doing almost nothing to provoke a group of people gets you met with all sorts of harassment. We can table for now the recognition that the fame and notoriety of the people involved is a big part of why people are reacting the way they are; those fears would be coming from what seems to me to be a genuine and reasonable place.
That said, what is lawful and unlawful is not all there is when it comes to what behavior is acceptable. And people can and should be allowed to vote with their dollars/feet. The economic punishment of Louis CK bothers me very little, only because of that unique combination of his moral offense and his typical comedy routine. "Sacrifice" is probably the wrong word for this behavior. "Standard setting/reinforcing" is probably closer to the truth.
I definitely hear you on the lynching comment. It's likely that my understanding is too narrow. Someone talks of lynching to me, and I think first of black people, especially in the south and Midwest, strung up to trees for "touching" a white woman, consensual or not, or for daring to own property in what "should" be a whites only neighborhood. It leaves me with a much more visceral gut reaction than I think a lot of people typically have. History can be a bitch sometimes.
I see the point you make in the last paragraph, I'm from a country with similar problems with violence too (Turkey), and also, most English dictionaries do not include the secondary meaning I've attached to the word.
That's actually what I'm saying: let him appear, people will decide for themselves. And also, because at the end enough people can decide to vote "for" him, it might end up being that he practically gets away with all he did, so we must ensure that the behaviour is condemned officially. Another commenter puts forth the card of possible victim-blaming etc., but the situation is already public, and the fact that all the punishment he got is basically some gossip does not encourage victims in more vulnerable situations to seek help.
I'm often guilty of allowing my point to get lost in word soups, so, sorry for that.
WRT the first point you make, it's not that sort of fear I'm talking about. I was talking about attracting traditionalists towards what we think is the better way when it comes to flirting, consent, and sexual relations. This sort of vendetta and all the shenanigans surrounding it does not present our ideals ("us" in the sense that those who support gender equality and consensual relationships, and all the good things attached to these) as coherent and as having the intention of ameliorating the way things are. We won't be able to create a country and exclude "bad/ignorant" people, we'll instead have to live with them and are obliged to demonstrate that our ways are indeed "better" that what is traditionally the normal, like the assumption that no means yes-ish, among others.
I think your use of the term "lynching" is fair. When I think about it, I've heard it used that way plenty enough. It's just not the use that hits me in the gut, so sorry about that.
I hope it's clear I have no problem with that. I am just perfectly content if people choose against supporting him and his comedy (it is also fine, even if I disagree with doing so myself, for people to choose in favor of supporting him and his comedy). Unfortunately for my ideals, it seems clear that he'll pretty much always be guaranteed to have enough of a following to never be irrelevant, so I suspect he'll be doing just fine in a few months. Official action like what you're suggesting would be needed to make sure victims feel like the industry has their back if shit goes south, and I don't think the way this has been playing out affirms that very much for them.
Ah, so if I understand you right, you're saying that attacking Louis CK over this makes it part of the broader culture-war battlegrounds that is so difficult to change anyone's views over. That's a fair point too.
Glad we ended up agreeing!
Well for that to happen victims need to sue him, no? When I say that I'm accused of "victim-blaming", which is one of that taboo-ish "buzzwords" used to end conversations abruptly and without a chance of discussion. I despise the "victim-silencing" that's made unpenetrable via that sort of name-dropping. How is it less safe to go to court and sue someone, than to give public interviews accusing someone, non-pseudonymously? We want victims to come out (isn't that the whole point of #MeToo?), and then we think that the possible backlash justifies encouraging them to being afraid and keeping silent. That's deeply hypocritical.
In Turkey prosecutors can start court cases in the name of people especially for public offences or offences publicised like this, so in a similar case here he could've been prosecuted w/o the need for victims' initiative (just ignore the recent situation of Turkey, I'm talking about what's theoretically possible). Isn't there a similar mechanism in the US?
The big problem with victims coming forward and suing a big name like this is that it usually will cost them their careers. The big named comedian's fans don't want to know about what asshole behavior their man is doing behind closed doors, and there are far too many among any typical fanbase that would be willing to attack and harass an accuser for merely speaking out, using the legal system or not. It's already generally true in society at large, but it's especially true in the comedy industry where a lot of the big players know each other and are close, genuine friends.
I'm all for using the justice system to adjudicate the grossest matters of this sort, but I have to recognize the practical difficulties of bringing someone to court over something like this. The people who most commonly find themselves in the power dynamic where they can be vulnerable to this sort of behavior are the exact same who wouldn't be able to afford a decent lawyer to tell them what their options are. The legal support simply isn't there for struggling comedians to navigate these questions. It isn't like a typical office setting where you can go to your HR department and ask for advice. There's literally nothing in most of these cases. This is the part that explains why Louis CK's behavior went unchecked for so long. There is no mechanism in comedy that can intervene and try to get him to change his behavior before it would become a major, habitual problem.
In the absence of a judicial system that all classes of people can get meaningful access too, yeah, some of these cases are going to have to be tried by news media. It's really unfortunate. It sucks. It's the worst possible way we can try to seek justice and still have a hope of attaining it. But it's also, for many in these positions, the only realistic option they can see. And that, to me, is the biggest problem with this entire story and the comedy industry as a whole.
I hadn't heard of him, but apparently he died in 1936.
I think there's a huge gulf between looking back at someone decades after their death, and looking at their work in context with any of their flaws, compared to the current situation with Louis CK where his misbehavior came to light less than a year ago and he said as part of his apology "I will now step back and take a long time to listen". When he re-emerges into public life, I think evaluating if he's fulfilled that promise is entirely legitimate and not really comparable to a fascist who died 80 years ago.
I disagree. First of all, banning people from public life is not a good method of punishment. We can look the other way if we don't like him, but everybody has a right to exist in public. I don't think he was jailed. Secondly, it's not less bad when someone was able to get away with what they did before their death. If you think that it's possible that he repeats his misbehaviour, well, then banning him from public is no use, he can keep on and just not be on the public scene. We cannot ban him from existing. On that note, I wonder why he's not actually punished by law, because I think the actual scandal is that: why he has not been sued?
Also, if Louis CK is denied a voice, then so should be Asia Argento, as it's came to light that she's done quite a bit more than masturbating in front of people unwilling to watch it (not that I support this kind of view, but it'd be what coherence requires).
WRT Pirandello, well, I used that as an example to talk about my view.
Spare me this strawman bullshit. No one is saying that he should be banned from public life permanently.
The criticism of him is after he said as part of his apology "I will now step back and take a long time to listen". After 10 months, is there any indication that he's listened and grown? Showing up unannounced, which doesn't give anyone a chance to say "nah, I'd rather not see Louis". That's a common practice for normal well-known comics, but at this time Louis isn't exactly a normal well-known comic is he?
Maybe his accusers didn't want to subject themselves to further victim-blaming? Maybe they were waiting to see if Louis' reappearance in public life came as an interview talking about how much reflection he's done, rather than as an unannounced appearance where he tells more rape jokes?
Again, no one is saying deny him a voice. This "any criticism of anyone's speech means you're trying to duct-tape his mouth shut and burn the 1st amendment" bullshit has gotten real old. I am saying that the time and place where he speaks out indicates if he really has learned anything, or if he just took what amounts to a 10-month sabbatical and is now trying to come back like nothing ever happened.
Similarly, if Asia Argento appeared in a movie or TV show as an unannounced walk-on character, I'd be similarly critical. Especially if her character then went on to have a plotline where she seduces a teenage boy or something like that.
Before anything, I don't think your style is welcome here. You're offensive and you attack me ad-hominem with insulting words. This is not why I'm here, if I was looking for this, I already have an account on Reddit.
What is the measure of how much he has reflected upon his behaviour? How do we know if he is remorseful or just silently fine with what he did? How do we know what is "any indication that he's listened and grown?" How do we know if 10 months is enough or not?
I'm not blaming any victims. But it's impossible to punish people effectively when their victims are silent. What is problematic is that when people are open enough to talk to media but lazy enought to not sue as well the situation of the sort of people like Louis CK is left on a limbo, and that some of the population does not like him is no punishment to him because I don't really think it'd matter for him if he can remain a media personality despite what happened. Accusations should have actual results, like they did for say Weinstein or else they basically get away with it, like we see in this case.
Declaring a person guilty of this sort of a misbehaviour, and especially a person of sorts, and then expecting them to come to their senses and be remorseful for their past is naive. Being angry that they did not suffer the consequencences that were never imposed upon them is so too. Us being critical of such a person or not is completely effectless and useless. What I'm arguing is that the sort of thing that we want the guy to be subject to is not only useless and inefficent, but also generall impossible. We should make sure that this sort of people are punished, albeit justly and aptly, and that the oncoming generation is better educated. Us letting him get away with no consequences except some roleplay that we expect from is a bad lesson to our kids. Add to that our supporting of victims remaining silent and subjugated under the name of "protecting themselves from victim-blaming", especially when such protection is completely absent given people have accused the person in question in public already. If anything, they should be encouraged to go ahead and sue, and the public should help them do that through relevant NGOs that fund their quest if necessary. Or else we're encouraging the silence of silent victims.
They called specific points "bullshit" a while into a conversation and didn't go any further than that. I don't think any show of emotion or vulgarity makes this into Reddit. You can be less than perfectly stoic and still carry on a decent conversation, which it seems like the other user has done a good job of.
It's not the same if they called it "wrong" or "mistaken" or even "deceiving". They called my words "bullshit" and thus the slur is directly addressed to me. So it's not "any show of emotion or vulgarity", it's a personal attack. I'm not otherwise picky about vulgar language all that much.
We don't need to lower our standards because what we're talking about is of lower standards. And it's me the addressee of the word. Frankly I don't mind it all that much but wanted to pronounce my dislike of it, so that's not worth much discussion, which is off-topic anyways.
Also I haven't seen a comment defending the sexual assault (but maybe I missed them), I thought the topic was his reappearance and whether or not that was acceptable.
Re-read my post. I said your argument was bullshit. Specifically it's an example of the strawman fallacy by arguing against "banning people from public life" when no one in this thread has argued for that. That's not an ad-hominem.
There's no objective measure. But he sexually exposed himself non-consensually to women on multiple occasions over many years. Then he makes his re-appearance by exposing himself non-consensually (non-sexually this time, but still showing up without invitation and saying "I'm here, deal with it or it's up to you to leave"). That's not a great indication that he's really learned his lesson that the issue is not just the sexual conduct but the lack of consent.
I originally wasn't saying you're engaging in victim-blaming. I was saying that society in general will have that reaction.
However, I've been proven wrong, and you are engaging in victim-blaming (emphasis added):
One of the women who spoke on the record to the New York Times about Louis masturbating in front of her has received death threats. Calling it "laziness" to try to end those death threats by not pursuing legal action is absolutely a form of victim blaming.
Are you still talking about Louis CK, or just talking generally about men accused of sexual misbehavior? No one "declared" him guilty. He admitted that they're true.
I'm not questioning the truth of the accusation and am aware about him admitting. Neither do I defend him. I'm indeed trying to draw more general thoughts from this case becase I do not think what's going on is entirely healthy and will not conduct us to where we want to arrive at.
... says Wikipedia. I'm not blaming victims "for the harm that befell them". I am though criticising them for not taking concrete action against it, especially after publicising the facts. I don't want to see the victims be disproven, I want to see Louis CK and the like face actual consequences and taht those consequences in turn be useful to rehabilitate him and ameliorate the society.
His persona is that of a pervert and assaulter because that's what he is.
I wonder if he is ever going to work in this whole metoo into his set, what he did and what the consequences where.
It's going to be very telling with what tone he approaches the whole thing.
I mean, he’s already using rape in a punchline so... yes? I guess?
No, I think he has always done stuff like that, a little on the edge.
It's very different if he talks about him self and it would be interesting to see what angle he takes: will he joke how crazy women are to get offended at him masturbating, a more self-deprecating take where he ends up being the butt of the joke or probably somewhere in-between the two extremes. It would be quite telling of how he views what he did and where he though he went wrong.
Yeah for sure, but every comedian is different because of who they are. In a sense people come to see their (or at least the stage persona they create) react to funny situations and hear stories surrounding that particular character and how they see the world.
Maybe this time Louis CK will actually be funny
Sorry, he's really just not my taste. His observational humor seems to just be pointing out terrible things in society and then laughing, for some reason. His show Louis was so cringe-inducing it was almost unwatchable. His best work was the b+w sitcom set in a bar that he only sold from his website. It was raw in a way that nothing else has been.
Isn’t that kinda the point of comedy? Find something absurd we all know, that isn’t widely articulated, and saying it out loud?
Sure, that's true. My perception was that what Louis points out isn't really that absurd, just sad, and is already widely articulated.
While I’d agree that you can easily oversimplify these things (chances are I do!), I think the very fact that they’re considered “outrageous” qualifies them being a topic of comedy. I think Southpark does it in a much less intelligent way and gets away with it. But yea, I can see how his history can make this more complicated.
It’s just that I read the allegations and they’re essentially “he asked if he can do that, I said yes and then he actually did it”. If he actually got physical and/or blatantly black-mail-y, this would be a different situation, still.
Yeah, we can definitely agree to disagree on how humorous he is. It's to one's own taste. To be transparent, my dislike predates the allegations; I honestly find him not as funny as his fame would seem to warrant.
There is a balance of power issue there that is important. He was influential in these people's careers.
Why is a sex criminal now making rape jokes on stage? Life is so strange sometimes.
How is he a sex criminal? Was he ever charged and convicted?