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While Harvey Weinstein Is on Trial, Louis C.K. Is on Tour
Who really faces consequences in a post-#MeToo world?
This past weekend, comedian and nonconsensual exhibitionist Louis C.K. performed a stand-up set in Akron, Ohio. Apparently his performance, held at the 1,458-seat Goodyear Theater, went fine. Next week he’ll be in Reading, Pennsylvania. Then Alabama. Tickets to see him perform run between $37 and $112.
Akron didn’t sell out, but the show in Reading has. There haven’t been any big, news-making protests outside of his shows yet. There might not ever be. He’s carefully selected cities where he believes he won’t face a harsh backlash, places very unlike New York, where he lives. In a recent appearance, he said he’d rather perform in Auschwitz than New York.
I’m not surprised C.K. still has fans in Akron or Reading, or anywhere, really. #MeToo happened, then the backlash happened, then the backlash to the backlash. In the end, people ended up believing whichever accusations they found easiest to believe, right up until they were confronted by misconduct that they found impossible to accept. Then, they declared this whole movement had gone too far. Sometime later, the accused all came back out of the woodwork, with new TV shows, stand-up sets, and media properties for their devoted fans to consume.
Several female comedians came forward in 2017, accusing Louis C.K. of cornering them in hotel rooms and coercing them into watching him masturbate. He joked in his comedy routines about his own masturbatory habits for years before these allegations came to light; realizing that his jokes were covert admissions of guilt has been jarring for many of his former fans, myself included.
However, for some fans, the Louis C.K. accusations represented a step too far. Those supporters didn’t want to part with this particular pop-culture security blanket. They didn’t want to wonder if they had ever left somebody feeling cornered and scared. All of that feels really bad. We’re all just trying like hell to feel reasonably okay these days.
Louis C.K. is fresh off the heels of a European tour. It went pretty well. In Rome, he got a standing ovation. During that set, he described how his victims tended to react when he masturbated in front…
