So, apparently, for reasons that are frankly opaque, Louis CK was invited to perform as the emcee for a Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner. For reasons that are even more unfathomable, or unfathomabler, whichever usage you prefer, he agreed to do it.
Thank Christ fucking a bicycle we will be spared this comic abortion.
I appreciate that this was not the Big Giant White House Correspondents Player-Lovers' Ball, the bigger one, the one that the president actually attends -- for reasons that I can never quite grasp. It was a smaller one, that even the vice-president can't always be spared for, which is kind of embarrassing all by itself.
But even so, no comedian thinking of anything but a paycheck should ever accept one of these invitations to perform at Official Media slash Political Establishment Rally circuses.
Unless you're going to go in like Colbert did and throw bombs, it's humiliating and degrading. The whole point of being a comic is that you have some odd licence to stand outside the conventional apparatus of reward and punishment, and to just say shit that kind of seems right.
Yes, that's right. One of the best standup comedians of all time, known for his hilariously brutal honesty, was about to entertain us for an hour calling out politicians left and right.
There's a bit of doxa there. If LCK were to have done the gig, he would have had to have "called out politicians left and right." That's at least a tacit admission that there would have been a censorship effect on what he said. He would have felt a need to be "balanced."
That's a pull on his autonomy.
Also notice this, from one of his defenders (and someone on my side whose blog I like, BTW):
It is what they say AT the event in question*, and nobody with half a brain believes that Louis C.K. will do any of the raunchier parts of his act with the President and First Lady present.
What the fuck is the point of watching LCK hold back on what he's really thinking?
The reason LCK is not just funny but worth paying attention to is that he is so nakedly honest about the worst parts of himself. He's not a rimshot comedian. He doesn't even quite have an "act" -- it's not really schtick. It's not... showbiz.
What the Correspondents want is a peppy comedy emcee. What they need is to be shot, because journalism shouldn't be this cosy nightclub happy sexy partytime with politicians and celebrities. But that's a separate issue.
Greta van Susteren, that great horrible idiot, has saved Louis CK from making a truly epic blunder, and that is the only nice thing I will ever say about her.
NOTE. That scene in the first series of Louie where a gay comic gives LCK a smackdown for using "faggot" in his routine would seem a propos.
NOTES. Some context of what LCK said about Palin here. Just saying, when I go after someone, I provide the links upfront....