Louis C.K. had it all. The television and movie deals, the critical acclaim and the sold-out shows. He filled the biggest venues like the Carnegie Hall or the Madison Square Garden. Millions of people watched his comedy specials . He’s won two Grammy awards and was about to release his self-directed movie I Love You, Daddy, that already thrilled critics and audiences at the Toronto Film Festival.
Then, at the height of the #Metoo movement, the New York Times published the story Louis C.K. Is Accused by 5 Women of Sexual Misconduct.
It turned out that Louis C.K. behaved inappropriately around women, both in- and outside of work. He repeatedly asked women if he could masturbate in front of them. Some agreed, some disagreed. Some women expressed the way his behavior made them feel uncomfortable afterwards.
After the article came out, many other comedians and companies he worked with, distanced themselves immediately. The release of the movie I Love You, Daddy was canceled, his upcoming shows were canceled, his appearances on Late Night shows were canceled, his Netflix deal was canceled. Louis C.K. essentially disappeared from the public eye.
What Louis C.K. did was wrong
What he did was wrong, there is no question about that. His immediate punishment for the sexual misconduct was that one of the most promising mainstream careers of a stand-up comedian basically ended, after the Times article was published.
Louis C.K. responded to the accusations with the open letter ‘These Stories Are True’. He opens the letter with the statement: „These stories are true. 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 almost nobody talks about that anymore. As soon as you are a #Metoo era sex offender in the eyes of the public, you can’t do anything right anymore. Louis C.K. is not a rapist. There has to be a line, where you separate the misconduct from the artist. At least, start by separating by the severity of the offense. Louis C.K. is not Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey or Bill Cosby.
He was not charged with a crime. He didn’t have to appear in court. He does not have to go to prison for what he did. He’s not previously convicted as a sex offender now.
This is not Whataboutism. This is comparing apples with apples. He is a guy with a disturbed sexuality and yes, there are women who suffered because of his illness. It seems fair to assume that Louis C.K. learned his lesson and won’t ask work colleagues or any woman outside of an appropriate setting anymore, if he could show them his penis and masturbate in front of them.
The Social Media pillory
One year later Louis C.K. appears in small comedy cellars in front of small crowds, trying to do his job like almost anybody would in his situation. The main difference is that Louis C.K. is famous and there are certain people who want to set a warning example on him. #Metoosoon is one of the hashtags that appeared, when Louis made his silent stage comeback at the comedy cellar in New York. His absence from comedy wasn’t long enough for some people.
The social media pillory is relentless. Angry and often times frustrated and ill-informed people seem to run the show. Whenever they see something that could upset or offend them, they spark outrage. This is what the world has become, a place where the loud minority runs the show.
Soon every major company hired social media experts to control the public outcry and the shitstorms that occur on a daily basis. Online, there is no guilty as charged. There is no absolution. When enough people create and post a trending hashtag about you, you’re done. Your career is over. It’s a merciless system, where the loud minority controls the destiny of politicians, actors and other public figures.
It’s the new power of social media. As soon as people found out that their public outcry could make a difference, nothing could stop them.
The leaked bootleg tape and the loud minority
Last week a bootleg audio leaked of a stand-up routine Louis performed at the Governor’s Comedy Club in Long Island and parts of the mainstream media immediately picked it up to design an artificial scandal about the jokes Louis C.K. made.
Let alone the fact that it is an unwritten rule in comedy, that bits of stand-up comedians they try in small venues, are not destined to be heard by the public. These bits are raw and unshaped and the comedian works on them. He tries some stuff to see what works and what doesn’t.
To judge and evaluate such raw material is unfair to the stand-up comedian. To take the material out of context, out of the setting where the artist performed his bits, is unjust and simply not right.
His jokes were no different to his previous comic routines. They were vulgar, politically incorrect and offensive. That has always been Louis’s thing. That’s what made people laugh and, if you listened to the tape instead of just hopping on the outrage train, still makes people laugh. His jokes work with audiences, liberal audiences, all audiences. The reason is very simple: Louis C.K. is one of the most talented stand-up comedians of all time.
„I like taking people to an area in their minds or in their culture that they’re afraid of and then getting them to laugh,“ – Louis C.K.
After just one week the leaked bootleg video has more than one million views on YouTube. Even though it never should have been published at all, the only good thing that comes from the video is analyzing the approval rating. When you look at the thumbs up/thumbs down rating of the video, there is an overwhelming approval by people who watched and rated the video.
Almost 32.000 thumbs up in relation to only 2.800 thumbs down. That means that more than 90 percent of the voters like the video. So we have a silent majority that not only thinks that the unfinished, unpolished and raw stand-up routine is funny, they even give it a thumbs up on YouTube to signal their approval.
Many people in the comment section express their wish to go and see a performance of Louis C.K and ask where they can see him and how they can support him.
The fatal misjudgment by the mainstream media
Unfortunately, what happened after the bootleg leaked, can only be described as the most irrational behavior and most fatal misjudgment I have ever witnessed in mainstream media. Article after article got published moving in a direction where the headline would say things like Louis C.K. mocked Parkland victims. Journalists wrote about how his new stand-up material doesn’t deserve to be called a comedy set, but a lengthy rant.
The most urgent question after these articles is: Have those journalists ever before listened to a stand-up routine of Louis C.K.?
Louis C.K. the right-wing Trump supporter?
Some journalists and fellow comedians go out of their way and say that Louis isn’t funny anymore or was never funny to begin with. His upcoming movie was trash, and he is obviously now leaning towards a right-wing fan base that he wants to please with his new material. He’s sort of the new Milo Yiannopoulos, and he is bitter. What he does on stage now is a reckoning with all his critiques and worst of all, he never really apologized.
He should go ahead and wear a MAGA-hat, because he is now clearly a Trump supporter and those are the only kinds of people that would still go to see his shows. Everybody else would feel so uncomfortable if they would sit in the audience, that they would immediately leave the premises where he appears.
It is almost impossible to try to understand the mind gymnastics one has to perform, to even remotely think that any of that nonsense is true.
During his lengthy and successful career, Louis C.K. made a joke about how all kids with allergies somehow deserved to die and people laughed. He made a joke about masturbating on 9/11 in between the two towers were going down and people laughed. He made a hilarious joke „to take it a notch down“ on pedophiles in order to „at least get your kid back alive“ and people laughed.
Now he made a joke about the Parkland survivors and people in the audience laughed. He also made a joke about gender identity and people laughed. Then Louis made a joke about the (now) swearword retarded and how we can’t use it anymore to address intellectually challenged people, because healthy people used it to insult each other. Makes you think, doesn’t it?
His style has not changed one bit after his career went down the hill. The hypocritical attitude of wannabe-outraged people has changed.
Ricky Gervais tweeted about the outcry: “There is no subject out of bounds. People often get offended when they mistake the subject of a joke with the actual target. It all depends on the joke.” That’s all there really is to say about comedy.
Wait, there’s some more. Listen to Jonathan Pie (alter ego of comedian Tom Walker) summarizing in five minutes, what comedy is about and why the world has somehow turned upside down in light of recent developments.
„You know what woke comedy is? Woke comedy is the establishment. It’s the Puritans with power, telling everyone else how to think, what to laugh at…“ – Jonathan Pie
Maybe, let the public decide, if Louis C.K. deserves a second chance and stop acting retarded!
Grober Unfug 