Louie (Louis C.K.'s show on FX)

it's not perfect but it's probably the best thing I've heard or read from a male comedian

though frankly at least part of my reaction was maybe dreading Maron's inevitable take on the thing

It was interesting to hear Maron say he knew about the rumors, had asked Louie about them, and Louie lied to him.

yeah was good to hear him address that, felt like he ended up being overly easy on CK but he seemed to focus more on his own behavior and complicity in the larger comedy scene which I isn't necessarily a bad thing I guess

seemed to get pretty genuinely upset there, towards the end when we was saying LCK is still his friend after everything.

Here's a transcript of the first part:

This is the first part of what @marcmaron had to say on @wtfpod about his friend, Louis C.K. Every word is worth the read: pic.twitter.com/WXyUZIzrg1

— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) November 13, 2017

It hasn't happened yet, but I would assume that - kind of like with Harvey W. and Toback - there will be a follow-up article with a new set of women on the record.

in the meantime, let's slide all of our chips over to the marc maron marker. nothing could go wrong over there.

Louis CK. The words you wrote are a shitshow of narcissistic cock soup.

— lena headey (@IAMLenaHeadey) November 11, 2017

Burr's response was predictably idiotic

narcissistic cocks make the best soup

haven't listened to maron in a long time but i listened to his comments and i thought they were pretty on point. bill burr was sloppy & stupid

For what it's worth every woman I've talked to about this has called b.s. on the story from Aspen in 2002. It's not just men saying they could have left. They were adult women who gave him enough time to ask (and supposedly facetiously giving him the thumbs up), take his clothes off, begin masturbating, and finish. That's not an insignificant amount of time. I think they were amused by it. But in light of the other stories of him asking women if he could masturbate in front of them, it became a whole different thing.The story is so vivid—far more vivid than the other allegations, which is why it has been so powerful in bringing him down.

But I just don't see it as traumatizing. He was a no-name comic (or at least not a household name wielding power like everyone has suggested), it was late at night in a hotel room, and they were all doing drugs. I've seen pretty creepy shit in those circumstances, among men and women. Louis might be a creepy, douchey, pervert, but he's not a predator. I save that designation for Weinsten, Spacey, and the dude from Brand New.

you're retarded. he got his dick out while they were still wearing parkas. they weren't like all chilling doing blow getting naked. they were industry colleagues in town for an industry event. as for louis being a noname in 2002? he wrote for conan, had a bunch of tv credits, had just directed a 7 mil film with chris rock in it distributed by paramount, comedy central special, a man with industry connections.

every woman I've talked to about this

So grateful you've been able to ask a number of women about this and can now pass on their views to us.

Stating that women shouldn't feel traumatized because you (presumably a man) don't personally see any reason why they should feel traumatized is a large part of the reason why these these issues exist.

hey Benjamin you don't get to decide what is traumatizing or not in this case.

my definition of "predator" (as opposed to good natured swinger) includes doing shit multiple times and also doing everything in your power to cover it up. this guy nailed both of that, he's a repeat offender and he categorically denied this shit all while making a movie branding himself as this honest self analyzing thinker when in reality it's another piece of cover to keep doing his bullshit.

not surprised assholes think there's nothing wrong w this those, neither did Louis CK. judging by the comments in the stories posted above neither did a lot of other assholes.

fwiw the whole "they were just swinging singles doing drugs and everyone consented" narrative is so bullshit that relies on you placing trust that this guy who lied about this to everyone for a decade yet you act like now what he is saying really is the truth. like are u really that gullible or just bad faithing on an MRA kick?

i take his cue of lying about this to friends and co workers while continuing to do so for a decade as evidence that his best case scenario outlined in his "apology" is probably the honey coated version of a piece of shit. like why would this guy stop lying and manipulating now?

Also, the whole "You clearly admire me, do you mind if I..."

dylannn otm. I haven't followed the comedy world closely in the last 20 years but i knew who LCK ever since his writing gig w/ Conan and Pootie Tang.

Even if he looked serious when he was asking these women to watch him jerk off, there's a good chance you'd think it was leading into a joke. Even if he kept assuring you the question was genuine you might not believe it.

the assumptions you'd have to have, to go there, i can't even

like you're not that cool. no one is that cool. pharrell's not that cool. you think professional colleagues are just waiting for you to bless them?going to melt at the sight of you? be yours? or not even, just indulge you? louis has a bit in one of his standup specials, one of his most shitty bits, about girls in bars who dress a certain way, how they stand there "in order for men to fuck me". and it's like he thinks he's one of these women! that people will just want to fuck him, or watch him, or whatever! no! that literally "works" for no one!

esp with people who push other people's buttons on purpose for larfs, there's also the overwhelming need to seem "cool" -- when someone starts doing something and you're like "is this really happening? did i just show up to xyz place and wind up in abc situation?" the only thing to do in that situation is just sit there, be cool, and hope nothing weird goes down. and then it does!

"they could have gotten up and walked away" pretends that these dynamics don't exist and that's disingenuous

no one is that cool

Absolutely, but I suspect his line of persuasion was not "you're blessed to be witnessing this because I'm so cool," rather more "Ah, gawd, do me a solid here, it'll just take a minute. I just can't help it and I know it's disgusting but it's the bad hand I've been dealt by merciless fate (shrug). What can I do?"

In various bits he presents himself very much as a disgusted prisoner of his urges, and wishes he could be rid of them. It's awful, he tells us, and he hates it, and he's sick of it. Women are tourists in the land of perversions; he's a POW: "You're Jane Fonda sitting on the tank; I'm John McCain in the hut."

The self-loathing excuse-making posture does _not_ make it better, n.b.

no appeal to pity is going to save this dude

He'll be back. He'll have to keep his head down for a while, get back into people's good graces via Pamela Adlon or some other woman (like Mel Gibson tried to do through Jodie Foster). It might take him a while - it took Mel Gibson ten years - but he'll talk his way out of it eventually.

I keep picturing him writing copy/gags for Rock, Seinfeld and co on the sly, silent partner style. A little off-the-record script polishing, that sorta thing. If you've seen Mad Men, when Don pays Freddy Rumsen to come up with ideas etc.. that vibe.

Hi benjamin you are wrong, go away

the other massive assumption of course being that he whatever price he'd have to pay was acceptable, that if called out, he'd be able to wiggle free, exactly the way he did, by calling the women liars, and all the consequences for them that entails. not that those assumptions were meticulously thought through, but they formed, had to form, whatever shit-head calculus brought him to this pass. like ragu, the callous sexism, IT'S IN THERE, and like louis is so fond of saying about other people, yes that makes him a shitty person.

I think he'll be back but I'm not sure about standup.

I predict that no official celebrity apology will garner universal praise, and that's ok

"Universal praise" for a self-confessed sex-offender.

i'm saying all these confessions will be derided as disingenuous/narcissistic/tone-deaf & there's no way to do it "right" and that's okay.

aren't all confessions self-confessions? can somebody else confess for me? that could be useful. for small mistakes. not this kind of stuff.

there's the crime and then there's the cover-up, the latter of which is tremendously destructive career-wise for the women involved. has louis apologised for dismissing their accurate accounts as "rumours" and smearing their credibility? afaik he has not?

if you are looking for where the trauma happens, it's right there ^^
this happened
then the violator denied that it happened
but the people who it happened to know that it happened and no one believes them
they have to live with that
ugh

I think he'll be back but I'm not sure about standup.

Maybe not the huge venues he was playing on his most recent tours, but I could see him creeping back into the clubs. He'll test the waters, his celebrity will open the door for him. Getting to be on stage will be, hey, another illicit thrill for him. Something he shouldn't be doing.

My guess is that in the long term, though, he would end up having to go full MRA hero in order to have a viable career in big-venue standup, and I can't see him wanting to do that; I don't think he's that bad. He's going to get a huge book deal out of this, though.

it's so fucked up to realize that during the years i first got into him, "chewed up", etc, he had already done this stuff. like cosby. he had already done it, and was doing it. and i was laughing along, even with the shitty jokes about the women in bars who only exist to be fucked, he had gained my trust enough for me to sort of anxiously wave the joke away ("surely he must be sort of poking fun at himself too for thinking that haha")

With so many people being accused in the wake of Weinstein, I've been wondering whether the splitting of attention might save some of their careers. It's probably not as bad for someone's career to be thought of as part of a systemic problem than to be thought of as an isolated case.

how has Sizemore continued to work? an absolute monster. I even know someone personally who was sexually violated by him

he had already done it, and was doing it. and i was laughing along, even with the shitty jokes about the women in bars who only exist to be fucked, he had gained my trust enough for me to sort of anxiously wave the joke away ("surely he must be sort of poking fun at himself too for thinking that haha")

I once ran after him in the courtyard of a venue in Edinburgh just to say hi. I feel like a fucking moron now.

I wonder how he and the audience would deal with heckles about his sex offenses, by the time he comes back.

Even friends like Ricky Gervais, who's used to making jokes about screwed up celebrities and now he's friends with them. How would he deal with people making jokes about Louis and Depp?

louis ck before he became a gruff male feminist woke auteur obama guy, he built a career in the same arena as nick dipaolo and rich vos and his fanbase is made up of a lot of dudes that heard him talking about this actual incident (told on o&a as an abortive threesome with "hot lesbian chicks," set in montreal) and knew he was jerking it in front of women and didn't care. he is a full mra hero already (and not just to actual dirtbags but also lowkey for trt midwest reddit dads and just like very man on the internet that resents their wife).

All these conversations about critics getting caught up in this man's insane, self-absorbed, hypocritical "struggling genius" phase could have been avoided if everyone just believed me when I said Pootie Tang was good

I'd wager most of his fans came aboard during the gruff woke auteur phase, not before. xp

i could never get completely onboard w/CK even though i liked a lot of his show. something about his wise man talk show appearances put me off, goth high school notebook shit conveyed by a bummed out dad. the plastic bag from american beauty turns into a man and starts telling sad irony of life jokes to conan.

I see Jon Stewart is finally talking.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jon-stewart-stunned-by-louis-ck-scandal-1057972

Benjamin needs to read this: http://www.katykatikate.com/2017/11/pro-tip-louis-fucking-ck.html

no one needs to read that

i could never get completely onboard w/CK even though i liked a lot of his show. something about his wise man talk show appearances put me off, goth high school notebook shit conveyed by a bummed out dad. the plastic bag from american beauty turns into a man and starts telling sad irony of life jokes to conan.