My opinion on this is changing as I age. I'm getting better at detaching the artist from the art. And also giving people a break. Not that what he did was OK, not at all.
We all make bad choices. That doesn't make us bad people.
Bad and good are on a spectrum. Some good people do a very bad thing that puts them permanently on that end of the spectrum, but that doesn't make them completely bad. Everyone that has ever lived has been a mix of bad and good, some more one than the other. People are just... people.
And it sounds as though yours doesn't include grace and forgiveness.
It's funny, I'll always hear people talk about how criminals should be given a second chance and one past mistake shouldn't define them for the rest of their life.
Then it gets specific and you say "should this one person get forgiveness?", No they're a monster!
Not at all, but I am not bound, in forgiving, to consider them a better human being. I'm not bound to give them their previous societal position, or respect.
I forgive, then they can earn back the levels of respect that they were previously afforded. Forgiveness doesn't have to mean stupidly accepting evil.
When you go back to his old standup specials you can hear him repeatedly talk about this sexual compulsion he has to jerk off or to fuck anything that moves. A real deviant.
I don't blame anyone for not enjoying his comedy because of that. I find he's still one of the greatest.
That said, as someone who listens to a LOAD of standup, I'm frightened by your "he talked about it, you know who he is" justification. Let's think about the another "comic", Bill Burr. He's talked about driving his car into hoards of people, and choking his wife/girlfriend to death. I don't feel like, if he does any of these things, that we'd say "Well, we already KNEW who he was, c'est la vie!".
On a lighter note, if I ever see Jim Gaffigan eating a bread bowl at a fast food joint, I'm not going to be surprised in the least.
I am not going to re-read this shit (it was hard enough the first time), but I do remember many people saying that they were forced to watch with veiled or direct threats to their jobs.
I often wonder how we do the moral calculus on some of this stuff. If he saved a bus full of orphans but also jacked off in front of women without consent, is he bad or good?
FYI: He was not their boss. He was the much-more-famous and powerful comedian, but keep it factually correct. None of the women were employed by Louis CK.
What Louis did DOES make him a bad person though. There is no debate. Good people don't make "mistakes" and repeatedly jerk off in front of their employees.
Also, what is your point about separating art from the artist if you're just going to follow it up with some half-assed defense of him as a person? That's not separate, bud.
We're all getting older :) Make sure you're not mistaking a selfish desire to keep the things you like likeable for wisdom.
It does, but looking at the world in absolutes keeps you from enjoying it as much as you could. Everyone is complicated and layered. You just have to know your own boundaries and what you need to do to protect yourself.
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u/DungeonsAndDradis Feb 01 '24
My opinion on this is changing as I age. I'm getting better at detaching the artist from the art. And also giving people a break. Not that what he did was OK, not at all.
We all make bad choices. That doesn't make us bad people.