Well, I haven’t said anything about money yet. That’s really complicated and I honestly don’t know what to think. Arguably, he never should have been as famous as he got. He was the first to say so.
I know that I’d be against any network or streaming platform jumping back into business with him any time soon. I don’t see that happening. As delirium mentioned, he’s built a strong, direct-to-audience distribution platform which he’ll probably stick with for the foreseeable future. I’d pay the $5 or $15 for a new hour of stand up.
I personally put tremendous value on his contribution to the #metoo discussion but that’s just hypothetical at this point. I believe he would be a positive voice in confronting it head on but he did live with it for years in the hopes that it wouldn’t get out. So who knows. Of course, positive social change did not come slow and steady but more like an earthquake. As I said earlier, if he doesn’t reckon with it and chooses to ignore it, then yuck, game over. I wouldn’t pay money to support his work in that case.
Walla, obviously you’re free to say fuck him 'til the cows come home but it seems clear enough that there’s a significant distinction to be drawn between the severity of Louis CK and Cosby’s crimes. I don’t know why I feel the urge to point that out except for the idea that this kind of lumping together does more harm than good.
Obviously. Cosby deserves a life sentence for what he did. CK deserves probation and to be on the sex offender registry.
But I’m not a lawyer or judge I’m just a guy on the internet.
Thanks for the sincerity! I don’t disagree with much of that except for the part that claims we’re in disagreement.
I keep wondering if he could somehow find a way to include his victims’ voices in whatever comes next. I wouldn’t put it past him.
Avtar
3132
Oh, I didn’t mean like a big disagreement in general. I just mean in the sense that I really don’t care what he has to say at this point or about his future perspectives on the #metoo movement.
Fair enough. I hope he surprises you and others who feel the same.
I’m in the crowd that thinks this is way too soon. 9 months is nothing. That’s not even time enough for counseling to do any work with the severity of his issues.
I loved Louis CK’s stand-up. I thought he had some terrifically funny and often brave bits about himself. That doesn’t change the fact that he had a hidden sick side that was ruining the lives and careers of people in his sphere of influence. He’s an asshole, and 9 months of radio silence and lost revenue isn’t close to what he should do to make amends.
I won’t be giving him any of my money any time soon that’s for sure.
rowe33
3135
But not in a locked room with his penis, if possible!
I loved his show, thought his stand up specials were great, etc, but won’t be supporting him anymore. I don’t look down on anyone that does, just have no interest in rewarding him for surviving the fallout for what he’s done.
I did some shoplifting when I was a teenager and I was cured of it the second the security guard at Kmart grabbed my arm in the parking lot. I’m not drawing a comparison except to say that severe shame may be all the counseling one needs. It’s not rocket science. He knew it was wrong: don’t do that ever again. And try to make up for it, for fuck’s sake! I believe he’s a fundamentally good person who acted on sick impulses. Boners in hotel rooms create all kinds of problems for the world. Maybe the counseling will happen publicly, somehow.
LOL!
Did he ever feel shame? I’d say that’s an open question. Getting up in front of a live crowd to tell jokes for money is kind of a counter indicator, isn’t it?
Scuzz
3138
While CK was never “charged” or found guilty of anything I kind of agree with where you are going.
I think the basic thing is this. Should anyone accused (and probably guilty at least in the court of public opinion) be allowed to have a public life again? Should they be allowed to return to work and earn a living at whatever they were doing before? An athlete screws up and they get suspended without pay for some length of time and then are allowed to return to work.
Should someone like CK just have to disappear forever, or wait 5 years or some length of time in order to show their contrition?
Good lord, of course he did! I guess I’m making an assumption but it’s based in some pretty deep understanding of his essential nature as revealed in his work. Sometimes after I, shall we say, spend some quality time with myself, I think of his bit about how you can’t go outside too soon and you need time to process the shame afterwards. If he felt the shame to make that joke, I think we can assume he felt proportionally more shame last November. And, undoubtedly, for years before that when it was a dark secret. I believe he tried to make things right on a personal level long before the news broke.
And like I said to Nesrie, I think “telling jokes for money” is unfairly reductive. Did Jackson Pollock just spray paint around on a canvas? Did the Beatles just play their instruments in front of a bunch of people?
Yes, you are. If you’re going to guess based on his past behavior, don’t exclude his shameless acts in that calculation. If he was capable of being shamed, why wasn’t he shamed by the reaction of the women he assaulted?
I literally didn’t exclude his shameless acts in that calculation. I believe he felt shame and self-loathing in the moment, for years afterward, and then severely once it came out in public as it needed to.
In general, I’m a pretty non-judgmental and forgiving person. Part of that is seeing the dumb animal instincts that sometimes displace the better angels of mans’ nature. It’s just zany that mother nature wired so many humans to find eroticism in the taboo.
I don’t know. I think at this point I’ve forgiven Mel Gibson, but I’m not jewish, or a woman, so what is my forgiveness worth? However, he seems to have genuinely taken time to reflect on his behavior and is trying to make amends.
I guess people deserve second chances. We should be able to forgive. That’s what Jesus taught us, and I’m not being a sarcastic dick in saying that. I really like that part of my ex-religion. But it’s hard, especially when the crimes are heinous.
This is a great point too, what is broken in his head that he doesn’t feel ashamed of assaulting someone like this? Where was his empathy, and did he suddenly find it in 6 months?
Forgiveness does not imply forgetfulness nor freedom from consequences.
Agreed, Rep!
That Atlantic link finally worked… it was broken for hours. I agree fully with this section and was pleased to read it since Endigm chose other quotes:
Of course #MeToo comebacks are possible in the middle ground; of course notions of restorative justice—which are nuanced, and holistically empathetic, and focus their energies on victims as well as perpetrators—should be part of the calculus when it comes to conversations about forgiveness and responsibility and the long arc of a professional and moral career.
But I’m frustrated that Ansari is even part of the article or comeback discussion. That’s a whole other debate, but I don’t believe he belongs grouped in with the rest.
Maybe, but not so much that he didn’t keep doing it for something like ten years. And that’s what we know about. This is not evidence that he felt shame or that the shame he felt would alter his behavior for the better.
In light if that, it seems unlikely to me that shame is going to be a major factor in improving his character in what amounts to less than a year of having to keep a low profile. I get that you see it differently, I just can’t grasp why.
Well, in spite of the shame, the boner and primal urge for another orgasm when the opportunity presents itself would occasionally, unfortunately, win out. So you lie to yourself and say one more time is okay and it’s not that bad and nobody will find out. Then you do it and, yuck, you went and did it again.
I’ve tried to articulate what his work means to me and I don’t think I’m alone. If you boil it down, there’s not much distinction between stand up comedians and great orators. I am fundamentally suspicious of church and organized religion because it sweeps sexual impulses and other sins under the rug. That’s why I’m drawn to a guy like Louis because it’s a more honest accounting, warts and all, of what it means to be alive. So it’s not just jokes, I swear!
Enidigm
3148
Without going too in depth (mostly because i’m on a tight schedule at work), and not singling you out or whatever, but this attitude of “including victim’s voices” implies, fundamentally, the right to ask their victims to participate in the rehabilitation of their culprits, either directly or by co-opting their public statements. I think you’ll find most people feel that to be unacceptable.
He didn’t (according to the article) address his actions at all.
Your quote above
was followed by i think the more relevant part of her argument
What’s less tenable, though, is the widespread notion that the comebacks should be treated as all-or-nothing, black-or-white events. What’s less palatable is the insistent lack of nuance that tends to characterize discussions about comebacks, be it C.K.’s or Ansari’s or Lauer’s or Charlie Rose’s or Mario Batali’s or Garrison Keillor’s. Make his return entirely on his own terms—in a surprise set at the Comedy Cellar, in a series of shows in Milwaukee—or be banished; come back in precisely the way he wants, or be canceled. Those, it is so often assumed, are the options.
What results from that extreme thinking are discussions of comebacks—and the mechanics of them, in C.K.’s and Ansari’s case—that hew uncomfortably to the logic that made the comebacks necessary in the first place. So many of these stories of return revolve, still, around the desires of the men in question, to the evident exclusion of the interests of anyone who has the misfortune not to be famous or wealthy or powerful or male. In the story of his return, C.K.’s desire—now his desire to return to performing, and to the world as it was before—comes to supersede everything else.
