From me to Louis C.K.: You can fuck off and die now

The BBQ Pit
1

I was almost completely unaware of Louis C.K. back in the 1990s, even though I had Comedy Central on around the clock. Going back for old clips, I do recognize a few of his bits, but none of them made a big impression on me.

Then he burst onto my radar in 2010 with his anthology/comedy/drama show on
FX, Louie. I loved this show and it made Louis C.K. a comedy hero of mine. My wife and I would watch it together, enthusiastically singing along to the theme song “Brother Louie,” anticipating an episode of humor, introspection, drama, and humanity.

Louis and I are almost exactly the same age. He spoke truths about being a man that I identified with. And he did them in a way that seemed to be on a path of self-examination and self-betterment. I felt a kind of pride in seeing him sincerely struggle to be a better person, and to do it in a funny way.

After the accusations of sexual improprieties came out against him, I liked his initial response that he would take time to listen.

However, since then he’s been disappointing me, and his late December show was vile.

He mocked Parkland survivors. He made jokes about race and penis size. He mocked trans people. He used a bit whose premise were that “Asian men are actually women.”

When someone called him out on it, he complained that his life was over. Apparently this justified racism, sexism, and plain being a vile shithead.

And no mention of the women he victimized, the women whose careers he sabotaged. Did you do anything to make restitution to them?

You broke my heart Louis. You’re still a rich motherfucker. Why don’t you just go live in that hidden world where rich assholes go to get away from the rest of us?

Oh, and I also loved Janeane Garofalo’s stand-up starting in the early 1990s to. I admired her turn to liberal activism. I didn’t always agree with everything she said, but she could still be funny, even though it seemed she was increasingly becoming weird and alienated.

Now, apparently, she just wants everyone to leave Louis alone, because no one can truly understand what Louis is going through.

The pain Louis feels!!! Fuck you, Janeane Garofalo.

2

And add to that list Aziz Ansari.

This is an even bigger heartbreaker to me, because Aziz made me laugh so much harder than Louis, and he’s an Indian-American, a guy like me who is doing so well. I foolishly felt so much pride regarding him.

Aziz also had a #MeToo moment, one much less serious than Louis’s, but still a serious one. He could easily have used that moment to grow and change and make amends.

In fact, I liked the Aziz situation even better, because it was an opportunity to change society expectations about how men and women interact. To finally show that, no, persistence on the part of men is not something that should be valued. “No” not only means “no,” but also means “don’t ask a second time.”

So, Aziz is performing again now, and a large part of his act is complaining about how just anyone can comment on his behavior now.

Shit, can’t you just be a human, Aziz?

3

Please. He had a bad date. That one was a big fuss over nothing.

4

The fuss was proportional. It was a smaller issue, and the fuss was smaller.

I disagree it was over nothing. It was a good lesson for men in our society to learn. You don’t push. You wait for enthusiastic consent.

5

The fuss should’ve been non-existent. Aziz Ansari did nothing wrong.

6

If it came to my attention that someone in my life behaved the way Aziz did, then I would tell him to stop being an asshole. If he told me he thought he did nothing wrong and he wasn’t going to change, I would stop being his friend. Either way, I would warn women in my life of his behavior.

So, I guess that in my view, he did do something wrong. And provided that everything stated in the Babe article was true – I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life – then he deserved the degree of humiliation he got.

7

I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. Louis CK had great incites into adulthood and parenthood, and it’s really a shame that he doesn’t have a voice that should be listened to anymore.

I initially thought his apology was pretty good, though my opinion on that doesn’t really count. But then he went and didn’t follow through with showing he had learned and grown. I was actually looking forward to his comeback, where he would talk about how he understood what he did was wrong, and how it hurt people, but was funny and showed he had grown as a person. Oh well.

I’m going to paraphrase this wrong, and also miss attribute it, but I think Chris Rock said something along of the lines of: “Bill Cosby was a great comedian who broke down barriers and was a role model to so many. To bad he’s dead now.” Sorry to see Louis CK might be headed down the same path.

8

For me it’s the opposite. I’ve never found Aziz Ansari to be very funny, but thought his supposed offense was way overblown (and if you didn’t read the entire thing, that Mother Jones article you cited is actually pretty sympathetic toward him.) Louis CK, whom I am a fan of, was a massive creep, and it’s disheartening if he is falling back on self-pity and what sound like some pretty lame, malformed attempts at humor.

Why couldn’t it have been the other way around?

9

I just hope people aren’t saying what they THINK they’re supposed to say according to “social media”

Like usual, people go after nothing-burgers instead of the true oppressors.

10

I endorse the OP. I was a huge fan of Louis CK and my wife and I had seen him live 3 times or more. I thought his initial apology was not great, but still better than most, which isn’t saying much. But now he seems to have devolved into self-pity, and perhaps much worse, at least based on his most recent jokes, seems to be flirting with right-wing nonsense, since those are probably the only assholes who seem to welcome abuse and abusers with open arms.

11

It’s weird how people keep repeating this fake nonsense that he’s some right-wing or alt right comic now or something. He’s the guy that was always fuck Trump and all this stuff, where did this narrative come from all of the sudden? Because of offensive material, umm he’s been doing that for years.

I still like Louis C.K.'s material, he did some uncool shit but it doesn’t affect my enjoyment of his material, I’d pay to see him today if he was touring near me.

Aziz Anzari has made me chuckle from time to time but I find him mostly unfunny, I believe the outrage over his fate gone wrong or whatever, was complete bullshit from what I’ve read of the encounter.

12

Yeah I’m really disappointed in Louis C. K. He had some really funny insights, loved his TV series. His offense was disappointing to say the least, but I thought he was self-aware and woke enough to actually make amends and a sincere comeback. I thought he was capable and his fans and maybe even his victims would have gone for it.

Guess that shows what I know.

I feel the same about Aziz too. I think he actually got a bad rap on that, but whatever, public opinion is what it is. He could have embraced the moment and made a sincere comeback but he’s decided to play the aggrieved political correctness shtick.

13

Yeah, you’re not even trying to understand why people are angry. It has nothing to do with being anti-Trump.

Your uses of the words “offensive” and “uncool” reflect your need to think more deeply.

14

Social media has told me to tell you to go jump in a lake, you threadshitting asshole. People can “go after” more than one thing – should we open 20 more Trump threads and then a few on that Brazilian guy? Why can’t we discuss those things AND this?

Anyway, I didn’t listen to the audio because I’m already so disappointed with him. I loved his stuff! But, then the weird shit he did came out and it had a backwards effect of making some of his old material just creepy instead of funny. Hearing about his new racist stuff was enough to turn me off forever.

15

I’m not talking about people being angered by his actions, Im talking about how in several threads and other online sources people are calling him right-wing or an alt right comic now, where did that come from? His leaked recent material? He was always offensive in his act.

16

What does “offensive” have to do with right-wing? Yeah, he always used bad language and talked about taboo topics. But that’s not the same thing as right-wing at all. Based on the leaked recordings and other descriptions, a significant part of his new shtick seems to be based on demeaning minorities and transgender people. That’s a new thing for him, and reasonably characterized as alt-right or right-wing.

17

[quote=“pool, post:11, topic:827900”]

It’s weird how people keep

Try to be a better man than you are. It isn’t as hard as you are afraid of

18

Yes, because it’s punching down.

Louis C.K. didn’t used to punch down. Now he does. That’s ugly. (And, yeah, it’s a right-wing kind of ugliness.)

19

Really the guy who said nigger in his act and talked about how great it is to be white and how slavery was the greatest thing ever invented, that Asian babies were horrible things, jokes that Jews needed to leave his show, you didn’t pick up on any of this before? Well you might say he was making a greater social point or something if you look at the full context of his routines and bits. But he’s made many one-off offensive statements in his jokes over the years.

Did you listen to the entirety of his recent leaked material or just read isolated quotations? Oh and it’s easy to find plenty more offensive things he’s said about trannies, minorities, all kinds of offensive things he’s said out there on the web.

I guess my point would be to argue that either you were unaware of all the stuff he has said or you changed your opinion based on his actions against women but you can’t have it both ways.
I’ll have to disagree with you that he has changed his act in some way to become an “alt-right” comic whatever that is, he hasn’t really changed from the old days.

20

I very clearly remember the many routines he did mocking white privilege, racism, white supremacism, misogyny, etc, using bad language and seemingly taboo (but almost always subversively progressive) language. Like how being a white man is so awesome – everyone treats him so wonderfully, and he could take a time machine and go back to any point in history and be treated well (unlike, say, a black person, who wouldn’t want to go back to any time before the 80s). A very funny routine that subversively mocks the domination that white supremacism has held over western society for many centuries.

I don’t recall any routines prior to the recent leaks in which he was mocking and demeaning ethnic minorities or trans people.