Thread by @JuliusGoat

If your reaction to people like Brett Kavanaugh or Louis CK or Woody Allen is "well where do we draw the LINE?" you are definitely telling us something about yourself and lines.

The answer is, much further back.

We draw the the line so much further back than that.

If your first reaction is "well but how do we separate the artist from the art?" I think I'd say this:

It's an interesting question, but it's not the first question.

The first question is "why have we allowed art to enable abuse?"

Next: "How do we separate THOSE two things?"

This is such a desperate, lazy take.

1) false equivalence between what people say and what they do

2) Yes, we won’t listen. That’s the thing that ruins their career, get it?

3) Edgy comedians aren’t owed anyone’s laughter, they must earn it

https://twitter.com/todays_entry/status/1079727357622050818?s=21

Anyone is free to tell edgy jokes.

If the jokes make people laugh, then the comedian has succeeded.

If the people stop laughing, then the comedian has failed.

An audience that doesn’t laugh—for whatever reason—isn’t the audience’s fault.

Allow me to suggest that when a professional comedian does something that makes him hard to laugh at anymore, he’s ended his own career.

People keep bringing up Jeselnik.

OK, let’s talk about Jeselnik.

He’s funny, but he has chosen to do a very specific thing, and it’s a VERY tricky line to ride. I suspect the difficulty is part of the attraction for him.

BUT...

1) He isn’t OWED an audience. Some people with good senses of humor won’t find what he does funny. That’s not something that’s been done TO him. It’s just part of it.

2) Finding his stuff funny relies on understanding a meta-narrative in which he isn’t what he pretends.

If news broke that he, say, abuses women, or kids, how could anyone laugh at any of it anymore?

Why would they want to?

There are plenty of comedians I love who tell edgy jokes. I follow many of them.

I think they all agree that they earned my laughter, but they’re not owed it.

That’s just how it works.

And by the way, you can still find Louis C.K. funny. Nobody can stop you.

However, it will mean you are a person who finds such things funny, even with new awareness. You may want to think about why that is.

Others will think about why that is. Nobody can stop them, either.

For example, for me, transgressive CK bits relied on an expertly deployed meta-narrative that, even as he was uncovering less savory human impulses, he understood that these impulses are interesting to name but harmful to indulge. That at the core was a kindness

That’s gone now.

And, since it’s gone, none of it works anymore. It’s all turned to ash.

Like all parents, I’ve been frustrated with my kids’ inherent selfishness.

So, when the presumed kindness was there, it was cathartic to hear Louis C.K. call his 2 yo daughter an asshole.

Now? Nope.

The conclusion I have to reach about someone who still finds Louis CK funny, now that its no longer reasonable to presume that underlying kindness, is that that person someone didn’t need ever the meta-narrative to find these things funny.

That’s just how this works.

I write this as someone who listened to the audio and heard the laughter. I acknowledge repeatedly that CK can still find an audience, and of what kind.

I don’t think you’ve understood the points being made.

https://twitter.com/onlythepersons/status/1079775375796961281?s=21

This is actually exactly backward. People left Louis CK because he engaged habitual sexual menace and harassment.

So now he’s telling jokes to appeal to the sort of people whose politics suggests they’re comfortable with, or even broadly supportive of, such things.

And that’s where we come back around to Brett Kavanaugh, who is not a comedian, but who enjoyed vigorous and angry support from people, not despite the fact that he was accused of assaulting a woman, but because of it.

There’s a market that finds abusiveness good and funny.