Louis CK Is a Sex Predator
The New York Times argues that CK's recent work is underexamined. Sure, but so are his sex offenses.
In his statement responding to the 2017 New York Times report exposing his proclivity for forcing women to watch or listen to him masturbate, Louis CK said the stories were true. I have always taken this to mean not only that they were true in the broad sense, e.g. he was a serial masturbator who abused his female colleagues, but also that they were true in their more granular details, for instance this specific recollection by Rebecca Corry:
In 2015, a few months before the now-defunct website Defamer circulated rumors of Louis C.K.’s alleged sexual misconduct, Ms. Corry also received an email from Louis C.K., which was obtained by The Times, saying he owed her a “very very very late apology.” When he phoned her, he said he was sorry for shoving her in a bathroom. Ms. Corry replied that he had never done that, but had instead asked to masturbate in front of her. Responding in a shaky voice, he acknowledged it and said, “I used to misread people back then,” she recalled.
The call confounded her, Ms. Corry said: not only had he misremembered the incident, which made her think there were other moments of misconduct, he also implied she had done something to invite his behavior. “It is unfair he’s put me or anyone else in this position,” Ms. Corry said.
The widespread acceptance of Louis CK’s return to the public stage more than a half-decade ago is plenty bad enough, and it is made much worse by the common sentiment that he has somehow atoned or even made up for offenses that in reality he has not fully accounted for. It is a plain fact affirmed by CK himself that there is a sixth woman, unidentified by the New York Times, whom he abused at some point in the decades leading up to the exposé. Remember that the time frame covered by the report is quite large: the earliest incident described is in the late '90s and the latest in 2005; he apologized to Abby Schachner in 2009 and Rebecca Corry in 2015; Tig Notaro speculated that he produced her 2012 album “to cover his tracks” and said she learned of his reputation when she sold One Mississippi to Amazon a few years later. Louis CK was privately running cover as late as 2015 and denying the rumors to Vulture in 2016. It may well be the case that there is only one more woman he mistreated, but it is nonetheless an open question that deserves an answer.
Here is Jason Zinoman in the Times a few days ago:
Louis C.K., 58, is not making a comeback. He’s been here. In the seven years since he admitted to sexual misconduct, the comedian has produced four different hours of comedy. It’s a large, underexamined, formally audacious body of work that represents a break from the past, but also continuity.
What an interesting choice of word: “underexamined.” I suppose it is technically true that Louis CK’s post-2017 work has not received deep critical attention. (It has, however, received two Grammy nominations and one win). I might suggest that this is because he is a sexual predator who spent the height of his career effectively confessing his sins over and over again to adoring critical acclaim. More impressive than this massive fraud is the way he made critics unwitting participants in the coverup of his crimes. Now, as he promotes his first novel and sits for media appearances he otherwise spent the last seven years avoiding, like interviews with Bill Maher and the Wall Street Journal, it seems clear he’s setting out to start the con all over again.
Apparently it’s working. Here’s the end of Zinoman’s piece:
What began at the Borscht Belt shifted into a Kenneth Lonergan drama. And that was only the start of the joke. It could easily have bombed. It killed partly because of the surprise that came from setting up an expectation, then subverting it. But it’s also in the way he sold the bit, precisely playing the notes of the music of traditional comedy.
There was something about the melancholy here that made me laugh longer. Without the release of a punchline, the tension just sat there, until he pushed and pushed and it burst open. Life is filled with comedy and tragedy, and they don’t always exist apart. That makes this joke both absurd and true. Here Louis C.K. showed us the upside of living a long time. It meant that he could not only develop his craft but also the confidence of taking a risk and pulling it off.
I have no doubt that Louis CK’s new hour is technically good: he is a skilled craftsman with a funny point of view. At the same time, I don’t care if his work is good, because he's a sex predator and a liar who uses his work to distract audiences from his abuses, or even to earn forgiveness for them. This entire Times piece represents a capitulation to CK’s wish that he be treated as a subject of aesthetic inquiry—that his art be taken seriously on its own merits—rather than a real and ongoing threat to the safety of his peers. Sure, his recent body of work is underexamined; so are his sex abuses. Maybe the latter deserve a little more attention than the former.
I will leave you with this exchange between CK and Tom Segura in today’s episode of Segura’s podcast 2 Bears 1 Cave.
CK: So I remember back when people were saying this thing a lot, that comedy should never punch down. So everyone just said, "Comedy should never punch down, so you did it wrong." Well, no, no, that's not true that it shouldn't never punch down.
Segura: Yeah.
CK: You don't like comedy, or you're pretending you don't like comedy, that punches down.
Segura: Exactly, yes.
CK: But it's the funniest. So I was explaining this to somebody once who didn't understand what it meant, and I said, "Well, the idea with 'don't punch down' with comedy is this: if you have a maid or a cleaning lady in an office building who has five jobs, and she sees the boss walk by, who's a billionaire, and she says, 'Fuck that guy.' You're like, 'Yeah!' But if a billionaire goes up to a little cleaning lady and spills coffee on her head and goes, 'Ha ha,'" I was telling this person, "That's not funny." But of course it's a trillion times funnier.
Segura: So much funnier.
CK: It's way funnier than somebody—
Segura: Of course.
CK: Punching up is crusading and it's like—
Segura: Yes.
CK: Punching down is horrible—
Segura: And funny.
CK: —and it's hysterically funny.
Segura: I've had this exact conversation with someone, who one time they were talking about a special that had come out and then they would go, "You did this and you did that. But ultimately it's like—" He's like, as far as like going over the rules of comedy, he's like, "But don't be a dick, right?" And I go, "No."
CK: Are you nuts?
Segura: I go, "What do you mean?"
CK: Yeah.
Segura: And he's like, "Well, you know." It was like basically "don't punch down." And I go, "But being a dick can be the funniest thing."
CK: Yes, of course.
Segura: Dickheads are funny. And saying something smarmy and shitty to someone might be the funniest fucking thing.
CK: Yes.
Segura: It's not polite and it's not nice, but it's still funny.
CK: Of course it is.
Seth Simons
