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.