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Why Louis?
According to Kyle Smith at NRO, Louis C.K.’s film I Love You, Daddy is pretty good. It has, nonetheless, been dumped in the aftermath of the comedian’s admission that he did some disgusting sexual stuff to/for/at insufficiently-empowered women.
“…HBO announced it was removing his standup-comedy specials and his series ‘Lucky Louie’ from its on-demand service. I’m not aware of anything like this kind of burn-the-evidence tactic being previously deployed in modern times, nor is it obvious why C.K. should be treated as a uniquely malign transgressor…”
Why is Louis C.K. being un-personed? Perhaps it was this. Louis C.K. recently spoke in public about abortion in a way that did not support the party line.
As an essayist in Vogue put it, “C.K. of course has the right to say whatever he wants, and the right to tie himself up in knots just to prove that he can untie them. But even so: Are women’s reproductive rights really the best arena, at this particular moment, for a male comedian to show off that particular skill?”
Apparently not. As Smith writes, “The films of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Roman Polanski remain ubiquitous. Hollywood history is rife with personalities who have done much worse things than C.K. and whose films have not been subsequently suppressed.”
And of course, it’s not just Hollywood. “The widespread liberal response to the sex crime accusations against Bill Clinton found their natural consequence 20 years later in the behavior of Harvey Weinstein: Stay loudly and publicly and extravagantly on the side of signal leftist cause” and your aggressive, even criminal behavior will be overlooked, denied, forgotten.
But not just any leftist cause, but a “signal” one: As Nina Burleigh put it, “I would be happy to give [Clinton] a [sex act] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.”
Perhaps it is because of the visibility of Louis in his work and much of his work is very personal. However, they are doing the same thing to Kevin Spacey probably because him and Louis are actually visible in their work. Roman Polanski was the director. and Weinstein is a producer so not seen in any of their films so it isn’t necessary to remove them.
I still think this is a ridiculous hysterial reaction. To remove these guys from already completed works is like the De- Stalinazation in Russia. Perhaps, it is harder these days to remove the artist from the art especially for those on the left because entertainers and artsy types agreed with them. It is a weird reaction, IMHO, to what has been a consistant problem in Hollywood.
I don’t know a lot about Louis C.K. There was a clip of him on late night TV making the rounds a few years ago where he joked people should be more amazed traveling in aircraft. Your theory is interesting and one I hadn’t heard yet. The party of Moloch can’t have any heretics. They must be figuratively burned at the stake.
Something I’ve read is that his projects are self-financed. Maybe he is seen as easier to go after by not having a company with deep pockets to defend him.
There are a few Lefty sacred cows. Abortion is one. The victimology of racial minorities is another. Bill Cosby had the temerity to tell young black men to pull up their pants and take responsibility for their own lives. Louis, get in line behind Mr. Cosby, your unpersoning will be completed shortly.
The whole film is a nightmare in the current climate. It’s about a writer with a 17-year old daughter who is tempted to look away when an older, pervy director played by John Malkovich becomes interested in her because he could buy his screenplay.
One character even says to Glen (Louis C.K.’s character) as he gets queasy about the relationship because she’s only 17, “Come on, Glen. It’s a number. A person isn’t a number.”
And there’s also a 45-second scene of faux masturbation.
And isn’t that interesting, given the etymology of the italicized word?
I had never even heard of this guy, Louis. I guess I’ve had some success removing myself from the circle these people inhabit. I’m thankful for that.
What Louis C.K. did was disgusting but not in a league with Weinstein (rape), Polanski (statutory rape), or the next tier down, Kevin Spacey and Roy Moore (coming on to a 14 year old in the 1980s). My guess is that unlike the others, C.K. will recover his career. For one thing, his, uh, proclivity is completely consistent with his established stand up routine. This isn’t to let him off the hook.
That’s likely why I never heard of him.
Actually, Stalin did a lot of photo airbrushing, too. It is not so much De-Stalinization as it is Sovietization.
Regardless, this makes their punishment deliciously and ironically appropriate. Live by social justice; die by social justice. Get thrown into the void. Call up powers of witchcraft (or should we say whichcraft, in the name of intersectionality) and don’t be surprised if the Salem Witch Trials result.
Seawriter
I tend to agree, at least pro tem.
I am pondering the question of how anyone can reasonably judge sexual behavior anymore, given that the boundaries keep shifting and judgement is, in any case, verboten…until it isn’t.
Wasn’t there a time when a man would generally know that asking a random woman to stand there while he masturbates is… creepy and stupid? Wouldn’t a civilized, normal man feel ridiculous even uttering the suggestion aloud, back then? And does the present arrangement —all you need is consent—- (Cue the Beatles) strike anyone as an improvement?
And consent isn’t really consent, because the coat-check girl who agrees, for some reason best known to herself, that it would be delightful to watch Louis C.K. choke the ol’ chicken might later decide that it wasn’t delightful at all, but rather kind of yucky and depressing. Also, humiliating, which means that on some level she’s pissed off even if she’s not sure she’s entitled to be.
Why on earth did women go along with a sexual revolution that made sex so dreary, boring and embarrassing?
I don’t have a clue. Then again, I am just a guy, and every woman I know believes guys are clueless. Gals, it is your turn in the batter’s box on that one.
Seawriter
I’m sorry, Kate. I have to disagree here. I have never in my life found sex to be dreary, boring, or embarrassing.
I know what you are saying that many of these guys probably did their fair share of lefty moral preening and I don’t really bad for them. My concern is the aftermath of this hysteria and how many innocent people will be thrown to the wolves. I see a kind of Victorian backlash to this. In my opinion.
Same here.
Yeah, but if you read the accounts women offer, either of their victimization or of the activity that leads to their abortions, the conclusion is inescapable: sex is dreary, boring, embarrassing…and given how high are the stakes for women, you’d think that they’d at least want to be able to say they had fun?
I am so happy that (most) of my children are happily settled in relationships and on track to get married. That’s awesome. Being Louis C.K.’s walky-talky porn mag du jour does not compare.
Lol. I’ll ask my wife.
There have been rumors about Louis CK doing this for years, so my guess is that the sweep of #metoo just meant that the time was ripe to start naming names. I’m hesitant to link his abortion bit to this – I was at the taping of that special where he did the extended abortion routine in DC, and the overwhelmingly liberal audience loved it. Applause, shouts of laughter, etc. This is in part because Louis CK was adamantly anti-Trump, and everyone knows he’s a good, proper lefty, so they can give him some leeway to make light knowing that his heart (and vote) are in the right place.
Well, at least now we know the answer to something Ive been wondering about: what if the belatedly-accused looked the cameras in the eye and said, “Yeah. It’s true.” ?
Not much difference, it turns out.
I think this started even before Bill, with Clarence Thomas. ‘Course, that was just about dirty talk. Just a warmup.
Say it out loud? I can’t keep it on the rails through the ideation.
”Yeah, I could do that … or I could go home, get drunk, and watch cartoons.”
Here’s the question I asked my husband: If we concede that Louis C.K. should have known better (surely the bottom line for establishing mens rea) what should he have known better? What principle exists that would guide his actions as a presumably normal heterosexual male in 21st century America?
“At the time, I said to myself that what I did was O.K. because I never showed a woman my dick without asking first, which is also true. But what I learned later in life, too late, is that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick isn’t a question. It’s a predicament for them. The power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly. I have been remorseful of my actions. And I’ve tried to learn from them.”
So is the principle that it’s okay to ask a woman if you can show her your genitals if you have, by some extant rubric, determined that the power differential between you is not excessive? What about the difference in size and strength? Emotional and physiological vulnerability? Wasn’t there a time (or could there someday be a time) in which the principle was simply “D’uh: women and men are different when it comes to sex?”
Good to know. Although it does seem as though there was some pre-Weinstein pushback from feminists, especially since there were pro-lifers who took the schtick to be an affirmation (or at least acknowledgement) of their views. Which couldn’t help but tarnish his image as the all-in lefty whose misbehaviors can be safely (!) defended or ignored.
Heterosexual behavior is being marginalized and criminalized. (Oh yeah, I know, Spacey went down too, but that’s only because people couldn’t resolve the cognitive dissonance, caused by a gay -i.e., societal victim–turning aggressor, in time to save him.)
Now, some may be going to say: exhibitionism is not any part of the spectrum of normal heterosexual behavior!
Then how come we see women displaying their barely clad, pulchritudinous charms everywhere, all over myriad billboards and magazine covers? How come we all dress as appealingly, as seductively, as as we think we can get away with? No, we aren’t “asking for ” rape. But we are hoping for the secondary sexual gratification of admiration.
As I said on my other thread, please stop saying “creepy” to describe any kind of heterosexual attraction. Thank you!
This is a whole other post (and one I’m not sure I’m qualified to write) but we’re simply reaping what we’ve sown.
Ask most militant, liberal feminists if they believe in God or evolution and they’ll choose the latter. I mean, Party of Science™, right? So all of these male traits that have been baked into the cake over the millennia – aggressiveness, being territorial, the urge to procreate early and often (and occasionally late) – all that is considered “toxic masculinity” is now going to be bred out or completely altered and/or reined in over a few postwar generations?
All that man has created to channel these traits into productiveness – marriage and being the family provider – are being feminized or eliminated. We’re creating generations of men that have the same urges but are socially lost. They’re not just masturbating and sending “dick pics,” it’s become some sort of primal and animalistic preening mating dance. Let’s just whip it out and see who’s interested.
That’s the problem when you set out on a road to alter the societal order. The destination is never quite the utopian paradise you had in mind.
Is this rampant sexual harassment* a sign of gender equality, and the reaction to it a sign that feminists no longer believe in that goal?
I can understand how female comics would be appalled by the sort of behavior of which Louis CK is accused; I would be appalled by it. But in some ways, in a world where dick picks and free public discussion of the grottiest sexual details are now common (especially in comedy), this seems to be a sign that women are being fully accepted and treated as equals — albeit by men, who it turns out, are disgusting. Maybe what some women are experiencing as “abuse” is actually a milepost of the progress they’ve been seeking. Men of a certain type communicate in large part via the sexual humiliation of other men, and now women are invited.
According to CK’s confession letter, his mistake was assuming that women could assent (to a gross request) of their own volition. He discovered, contrarily, that women don’t think of themselves as equals, but assume themselves to be on the wrong side of a power imbalance, so any negotiation between men and women is a case of oppressors manipulating victims.
Although women have been demanding equality for decades, they are actually more committed to declaring their victimhood. Maybe this is the new injection of intersectionality into feminism, or maybe it’s always been this way, but these sexual abuse scandlas have been revelatory in this regard: women have highlighted their powerlessness again and again, by default ceding all power to men in terms of the issues of sexual consent, employment opportunity, and law enforcement in these matters, with little to no resistance.
A very left-leaning female podcaster to whom I listen (out of habit) went a screed a few weeks ago about how it’s insanely unfair that women are being asked to play a part in correcting the environment in which male sexual abusers operate. Her point seemed to be that men created this horrible world, and men should fix it. What was completely missing from a diatribe that she no doubt thought was deeply feminist was the role that women should play, that women should assume roles of power of influence and help determine the course of the future in such matters, that women should actually prove that they are and act like the equals that they’ve been claiming to be for decades.
(* just this kind of Louis CK behavior, like gross come-ons (I guess that term now has two meanings. ick.), not Weinsteining or actually assaulting someone, obviously.)
Fine. You know what we men will need to fix this horrible world?
Sammiches. Go make some.
And peace and quiet, so we can digest our sammiches and think.
Little Big Man, “Be quiet. I’m digesting.”
A couple of points on the Louis C.K. thing. It has been drummed into our heads that men and women are equal. Should be treated as equal. No special treatment at all. Women in the sexual world are on Tinder, Plenty Of Fish, etc. Showing they are just as slutty as any man, maybe more so. Meaningless one night stands for everybody. Female comics like Amy Schumer are every bit as raunchy and disgusting as any man. Talking about their sexual conquests and genitalia with every joke. So why in this world is it wrong what Louis did? I am pretty sure that Louis and many men would not have any issue if these female comedians invited him back to his room and decided to drop trousers and wack off. Even if he did, he would have just left, no harm no foul. If he complained about it later the world would just laugh at him for a fool or ridicule him for not embracing these women’s power and right to express their sexuality. Seems this world has been created where anything a male does is wrong.
Well, exactly! What was the well-known rule that Louis broke? I can see why, if he’s the teacher and she’s a student, or he’s the President and she’s an intern, there’s an obvious in loco parentis thing going on, but why was Louis supposed to consider the female talent and/or staff in his vicinity, who presumably were behaving as if they were competent, capable adults, to be…well, in effect, unequal to the task of managing what is, apparently, normal social intercourse.
We could condemn Louis C.K.. We could remove women from the workplace for their own protection, since at least some of those with power over them might be, y’know, male. Or we could remove men from the workplace for the women’s protection, have a Day Without Men, and when the world comes crashing down around our ears, start over from scratch.
Or—now this is really radical—we could decide that mindless hook-up culture is not actually a good idea. That sexuality has no real “natural” boundaries and thus boundaries must be created and enforced so as to protect women, who pay a higher price physiologically and (I would argue) emotionally in a culture of promiscuity; to protect children and, by the way, to protect men from doing things that will later make them feel low, ashamed or silly.
I have not really kept up on the Louis thing but one of the early episodes said the female comedians went back to his hotel room after a late night show. Louis asked if he could take his penis out / get naked and they did not object then HE REALLY DID IT. Hello, I am trying to figure out what else he needed to do to be acceptable on this. Did he need a notarized letter from their attorney? Because if going back to a man’s hotel room in the small hours of the morning and not objecting when he asked about getting naked is not consent then what exactly is?
I think the sexual revolutionaries managed to create this incoherence by mistaking the behavior of people living in an “artificially” ordered society for natural behavior. Because most ordinary people were managing to confine their sexual behavior to marriage, it was imagined that sexual continence was natural.
So you could remove the boundary that said “only in marriage” and the discomfort and deprivation experienced by those who were not yet married could be relieved without causing any social harm. “Only in marriage” became “or when you are truly in love.” (That was the rule I got from my mother, BTW).
But of course, it is incredibly easy to mistake mere lust for love and, with birth control (and abortion) available, where’s the harm in indulging a little innocent lust as long as you really like, care about and respect your sexual partner? Human sexuality is naturally good!
And so on.