Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby NathanLoiselle » Sat Jan 05, 2019 10:28 pm

I just wanted to say that I've never liked Louis C.K. He's never been funny and he's not worth discussing.
iMURDAu wrote:It started as me saying there's no reason to throw an outrage fit over a comedian telling jokes at a comedy club.

Louis is like that band or singer we all liked for a while then they went away (usually not for his reason) and when they came back they were a shell of themselves and kind of sucked but still had an adoring audience. I may not enjoy it as I did previously but I'm not outraged that a tiger has stripes when there's blood on it's fangs.

That was all I was trying to get across.


You mean like KISS?
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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby iMURDAu » Sat Jan 05, 2019 11:11 pm

gisambards wrote:That is incorrect. Saying "It started as me saying there's no reason to throw an outrage fit over a comedian telling jokes at a comedy club" implies that the person you are arguing against believes there is a reason to "throw an outrage fit", but I do not and I've made that clear.


Who was I arguing with when I made my original post on this leaked set? I said:

All of you that are perturbed by his set better never listen to his older stuff.


And used generic terms like "everyone" and "people". Yes I referenced one thing that Gis said but it was to specifically counter that one thing and not specifically to Gis but to anyone who might not know Louis CK's work and think he's not someone who punches down.

@Nathan, I was thinking more along the lines of Guns N Roses.
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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby gisambards » Sat Jan 05, 2019 11:21 pm

That's not when the argument in question started. In fact, it started just after that when I said I disagreed that his older stuff was comparable to this new stuff, and that seemed to really upset you. Regardless, the post you've raised doesn't consist of you saying "there's no reason to throw an outrage fit over a comedian telling jokes at a comedy club" as you claim, it consists of you saying that the set in question is par for the course for Louis CK, which I still disagree with.
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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby IamNotCreepy » Mon Jan 07, 2019 1:56 pm

Let's be honest: there are way more "offensive" jokes here at TCS than anything CK said. We are not really in a position to criticize him for making offensive jokes. So why can we get away with it, and he can't?

There could be several reasons for this. I think the most obvious is that he misbehaved, so people are upset that he is not trying harder to be a good boy and make amends for his misdeeds. This is useful from a image-rehabilitation standpoint, but not much use otherwise.

The main problem, as I've said before, is that the jokes are not funny and are lazy. He's reaching out and grabbing some low-hanging fruit in front of an audience that may or may not be receptive to it. And isn't that what got him into trouble in the first place?
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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby cmsellers » Tue Jan 08, 2019 12:25 am

My rule is that a joke can be offensive as long is it is at least as funny as it is offensive. Sort of the hot/crazy scale applied to comedy.

Obviously this is subjective, though I allow some wiggle room to take into account duds, and everyone else saying something I find painfully unfunny is hilarious.

And obviously and a lot of people would disagree with the premise. Many people on both left and right have a tendency and think that certain topics should be simply off limits, generally when it undermines what they consider a vitally important moral. It's why the right tends to dislike sexual, blasphemous, and unpatriotic humor, while the left tends to object to punching down.

However here, I think the issue gis and other critics have isn't the content of the jokes so much as that they seem to signal Louis CK saying "you don't think my apology is enough? Then fuck all of you, I'm going to play to audiences who have no problem with sexual harassment." Whether he's actually doing that is unclear to me at this point, though.
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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby gisambards » Tue Jan 08, 2019 1:24 am

cmsellers wrote:However here, I think the issue gis and other critics have isn't the content of the jokes so much as that they seem to signal Louis CK saying "you don't think my apology is enough? Then fuck all of you, I'm going to play to audiences who have no problem with sexual harassment." Whether he's actually doing that is unclear to me at this point, though.

Whilst I think that what you describe there is a valid interpretation - simply because I think he's a good enough comedian that the possibility can hardly be dismissed that such a lowering of tone is intentional, and what you describe is the only obvious motivation if that's the case - and I think that that interpretation would be a valid defence for making a fuss about the set, honestly for me my only issue is how Creepy described the jokes' content:
The main problem, as I've said before, is that the jokes are not funny and are lazy. He's reaching out and grabbing some low-hanging fruit in front of an audience that may or may not be receptive to it.

As I've said, I really don't think it's worth kicking up a fuss over myself, but I believe that the content of the jokes is lazily offensive - the laziness of the jokes being key to what makes it indefensible as far as I'm concerned.

IamNotCreepy wrote:Let's be honest: there are way more "offensive" jokes here at TCS than anything CK said. We are not really in a position to criticize him for making offensive jokes. So why can we get away with it, and he can't?

I think that thread actually highlights the argument I've been trying to make:
Of note is the reaction to the OP in that thread. There you have a lot of people reacting negatively to something a lot of us perceived as offensive without being funny enough to justify that offensiveness. And I think throughout that thread you can usually see through a relative low level of thumbs that there are jokes that are perceived to be balanced too much towards offensiveness over funniness.
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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby NathanLoiselle » Tue Jan 08, 2019 2:03 am

People, people. Can we all just agree that C.K. stands for CocK?
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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby Pedgerow » Tue Jan 08, 2019 2:07 am

One thing that might be worth considering is that for plenty of people, me included, this is the first we've heard of Louis CK since the scandal came out, and he's just carrying on like nothing has happened. Maybe he's incorporated it into his act at some other point, but that point is the point we ought to hear to fully trust that he really is sorry about his incredibly, unimaginably prolific wanking (and to head you off before you say it first: yes, that really is saying something coming from me).

UK comedian Jimmy Carr is a close enough analogue to Louis CK in terms of popularity and offensiveness, and he too had a scandal. It wasn't a sex scandal, but he employed creative accountants to magically find out that he only needed to pay about 1% tax on his massive earnings. This news came out when Jimmy Carr was in the middle of a tour, and once it was out, he would start each show with a question: "I can talk about the news and my taxes, or I can do the regular show. By way of applause, which one would you rather hear?" Similarly, here he is hosting his regular panel show and taking the abuse from all the other comedians. Also, long before that, the host of comedy panel show Have I Got News For You, Angus Deayton, was found to have committed some Hugh Grant-style shenanigans, and he took the mockery from his fellow comedians as well on the episode after the news broke.

So really, I think that's what I would like to hear from Louis CK. When you're a celebrity, part of your job is to be the person people expect you to be. If you're a sex pest, then I for one will expect you to incorporate that into your public persona and acknowledge it instead of just sweeping it under the rug and pretending I don't know that about you. If you don't want to acknowledge it, then you'd better stop being a public figure who wants to be respected, because you are taking the coward's way out and you should be ashamed. (You should also be ashamed of being a sex pest, but in Louis CK's case, you seemingly are, so there's no point in discussing things from that angle now). No respect for you until I hear you telling jokes about what you've done, which simultaneously manage to both be funny and convince me that you really are sorry. Using your admittedly funny style to repeat the sort of opinions that normally appear on Facebook in Comic Sans over a picture of a flag or an eagle or something is just plain wimpy. Even if it's funny, I'm not indulging you until you tell jokes about how sorry you are instead.

By the way, my favourite old Louis CK routine is the one about how deer suck. It represents him very well, in my opinion, because it incorporates extreme offensiveness and increasingly un-PC language in an interesting and enjoyable way. The leaked material wasn't as good as the deer routine, obviously, but neither is any of his other old material, so it's not really a fair comparison. It's the comedy equivalent of saying music was better in the 1980s because the '80s music you like was around then. Sure it was, but so was the awful '80s music that you've stopped listening to now, and I'd be damn impressed if this week's charts had as many good songs in them as any entire 10-year period.

NathanLoiselle posted while I was writing wrote:People, people. Can we all just agree that C.K. stands for CocK?

Fun fact: according to Wikipedia, he is of Hungarian heritage and his real surname is Szekely, which is pronounced like C.K., and that's where the letters came from.
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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby NathanLoiselle » Tue Jan 08, 2019 5:36 pm

So...

Szekely is Hungarian for cock?
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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby iMURDAu » Wed Jan 09, 2019 1:35 am

What are we your google assistant now?

It turns out that no, no it does not mean cock.

Pedgerow you seem to be calling for Louis to joke about himself like he's Pryor joking about setting himself on fire but in an apologetic way. That would be incredibly awkward considering he didn't dodge taxes or get reeeeally high.

I read an article today on Jezebel about how a club owner in Denver turned down a spot by Louis who is apparently trying to book different dates to tour the country. She made that decision after speaking with one of his his victims.

I think he should stay home at The Cellar (provided they'll continue to have him there) and if he's good enough one day to branch out to clubs that are willing to host him then so be it. Boop, career reset button. Work the door and apologize to everyone walking past, get people inside to watch the other, maybe lesser known comics. It'll never happen though because greed will make him a headliner at least in the near term. I don't enjoy putting people in boxes but show me something Louis hasn't made a mess of if you give him time so you'd be booking him at your own risk imo.
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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby NathanLoiselle » Wed Jan 09, 2019 2:55 am

What do you want from me? Of course I need you to be my google assistant. Now get off my lawn!
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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby Aquila89 » Wed Jan 09, 2019 8:42 pm

Pedgerow wrote:Fun fact: according to Wikipedia, he is of Hungarian heritage and his real surname is Szekely, which is pronounced like C.K., and that's where the letters came from.


As a Hungarian; "Székely" isn't pronounced as "C.K.", only somewhat like that.
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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby NathanLoiselle » Thu Jan 10, 2019 12:11 am

You know. Considering my feelings on Louis it's surprising how often I post in this thread.
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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby cmsellers » Thu Jan 10, 2019 12:59 am

NathanLoiselle wrote:You know. Considering my feelings on Louis it's surprising how often I post in this thread.

Considering your feelings for Louis, it's surprising you don't post more.
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Re: Louis CK sexual harassment "rumors"

Postby Kivutar » Fri Jan 11, 2019 3:47 am

Image

I mean, at least he looks pretty funny.
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