Why don't guys like Louis CK and Harvey Weinstein just go into comics? Then they can harass whoever they want and no one will care.

No doubt about that, whatsoever. The Louis thing is endlessly fascinating and maddening and crazy-making to me, though.   The things I find interesting with Louis are

(a) I bet there are a lot of people already ready to forgive him.  I know where I draw the line between gross and deeply-wrong, and Louis’s well into deeply-wrong territory for me, but I really don’t know if that’s where other people draw it– I don’t know why anyone would assume that.  His confession letter is a fucking shitty sham, it’s complete shit, but I just… I got a feeling if anyone survives this year’s whatever-this-is, whatever we’re calling this thing we’re all living through post-Weinstein (give it a name…), it’ll be Louis… I mean, Conan O’Brien’s not going to give him a chance to make good with the American public?  Conan and him go back.  Louis had friends– he was at Patton’s wedding, and there’s zero zilch chance Patton hadn’t heard what everybody else had, so… A bunch of people already forgave him and just aren’t saying so out loud, you know?  So: who has a comeback first– him or Kevin Spacey?  If I had to bet between the two, I’d bet Louis… Not saying it’s right, but the world’s still the world.  Maybe.  Or maybe it isn’t.  Maybe things are different now…?  I mean: who the fuck knows???  Answer: Mel Gibson– I asked and he says nothing’s different– then he started doing a shitty Three Stooges impression in front of me.  

(b) he created his own distribution system– if Netflix doesn’t want to put out his next special, he’s literally the guy who figured out he could do it on his own before anyone else– it’s like a bomb dropped, but on a doomsday prepper. Does that play into things?  It shouldn’t be on anyone’s mind, the people brave enough to speak out should be, or people like Tig and her wife who were really heroic in this whole thing (I mean, I don’t know what kind of person didn’t love Tig before, but if they still don’t like her after how bravely she handled all this, there’s something deeply fucking wrong with them)… but I can’t say I’m not weirdly curious… 

© all that being said– do you think he has money saved up?  With the way he works and the way he’s talked about money in the past, I really, really wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t have much in savings, especially after Horace & Pete or the new movie… I know that’s not really on the top of anyone’s head, or it shouldn’t be, but… yeah, I’m a bad person– put me down for wondering about Louis’s finances…

(d) it’s been weird watching him since the Gawker thing, I didn’t really doubt that article much when it hit– it sounded pretty real back then (so the fact he was denying shit until September 2017 is ugly as hell, and to me, so fucking cruel to the people he hurt that if he should be thrown into a bonfire for anything, it’s that)… But if he put out a special about all this, I’d definitely want to hear it…?  I know that makes me a bad person, but there’s a level at which this is an opportunity (?) to hear something truly unique, if that makes any sense. And I mean… look, I still think he was an interesting artist, despite it all– I think that weird thing you see where people on the internet are like “I never liked him actually” is so bizarre and self-serving and pompous– everyone on the internet’s so fucking desperate to perform their goodness at each other, in such a pathetic way… I don’t know.  He did terrible shit, but those episodes he did with Parker Posey are still really exceptional – that was career best shit from Posey…

 (e) there’s still a certain level of stand-up where I’d think he could ply his craft.  I don’t know if he’d have a hard time getting corporate gigs, but… if he went to the Comedy Store, would they turn him away?  I’m not entirely sure I even know what I would want a place like that to do– I kinda think I wouldn’t want them to.  “We can’t let you perform at the Store– Bobby Lee’s here tonight, and we can’t let you tarnish Bobby Lee’s delicate equilibrium.”  (I fucking like Bobby Lee a lot and I don’t know what his position on things are, but I mean, if Bobby Lee was like mortally offended by Louis, there would be nothing on earth I’d want to hear about more than that.)  Like… I don’t know.  The thing I like about comedy clubs, when I think about them, is the idea they give people a mike, you know?  I think that’s an incredibly underrated thing.  But I don’t suspect that idea is shared by people on the internet… And I’m not even sure they’re wrong there but… 

(f) Mostly I just want to see Dave Becky go down.  Even though i didn’t know that dude’s name a week ago.  Louis being like “I hope none of you judge my manager” in his apology is fucking … Yeah, no, I think I shall do precisely that, jerkoff.  Louis should stick to jerking himself off, instead of Dave Becky… Becky gotta go!

(g) And then just predictably, the people on the internet who hate “offensive humor” or just basically have terrible senses of humor but refuse to admit it, for whom this Louis thing is obviously a heyday.  They don’t understand that if you’ve got a loneliness or a darkness inside of you, how … I know for myself, that feeling of not being alone that good stand-up, especially hearing stuff that’s got a darkness to it– that shit seriously kept me feeling sane there for some bad years. For them, they satiate that with twitter, America’s #1 message board for nazis (the fact America somehow got its most sanctimonious, worst sense of humor, moral prudes using America’s #1 message board for nazis is endlessly fucking amusing to me – that’s like the end of at least 5 different John Hughes movies, but). But… comedy leaves me feeling self-deprecating and making fun of myself for taking myself so seriously and sort of seeing the “we’re all just trying to muddle through” of it all, whereas as far as I can tell, social media just leaves people feeling angry and sanctimonious and lonelier than whatever dark place they started, just the opposite of all that.  So seeing these tweets like “his jokes were crime scenes and you refused to listen”… I would rather be at an actual crime scene, with blood and piss and severed shit everywhere, than at that kind of person’s house on Thanksgiving…

(h) mostly, I’m happy I can go back to watching Garfunkel and Oates and not having to think about Louis jerking off in the back of my head– I thought they were the comedy duo he’d done that to this whole time!   

(i) a million, million other things.  I don’t know.  It’s just interesting…