National Post (National Edition)
Rumours and sudden denials
WHAT’S THE STORY WITH THE SEXUAL ASSAULT ALLEGATIONS AGAINST LOUIS C.K.?
Louis C.K. is the current king of comedians: he sells out arenas, he makes movies that première at prestigious film festivals and he’s got enough stand-up specials that his mug is impossible to escape on a Netflix recommends list. In almost every way, he enjoys positive public perception, largely for being a no-nonsense personality and one that has no problem calling others out for their questionable behaviour.
But the tables turned a bit back in 2012, when rumours began to spread that C.K. has an alleged habit of sexually assaulting women by masturbating in front of them. This began when Gawker posted a blind item saying as much — but without naming names. Then, in 2015, comedian Jen Kirkman made comments in a now deleted episode of her podcast I Seem Fun that seemed to echo the blind item. She also did not name C.K., though her hints to whom she was referring were certainly implicative.
Kirkman said, in a full transcript via Death & Taxes: “And then I had another guy who is a very famous comic. He is probably at Cosby level at this point. He is lauded as a genius. He is basically a French filmmaker at this point. You know, new material every year. He’s a known perv. And there’s a lockdown on talking about him. His guy friends are standing by him, and you cannot say a bad thing about him. And I’ve been told by people ‘Well then say it then. Say it if it’s true.’ If I say it, my career is over. My manager and my agent have told me that. They didn’t threaten it. They just said to me ‘You know what Jen, it’s not worth it because you’ll be torn apart. Look at the Cosby women.’ And this guy didn’t rape me, but he made a certain difficult decision to go on tour with him really hard. Because I knew if I did, I would get more of the same weird treatment I’d been getting from him. And it was really f---ed up, and this person was married. So it was not good, and so I hold a lot of resentment.”
At the time, these rumours about C.K. had been actively spreading in the comedy community for several years. After Kirkman’s comments, they began to make headlines, with many speculating that the figure to which she was referring was undeniably C.K.
Cut to this summer, when comedian Tig Notaro, who was once great friends with C.K. (who actually serves as an executive producer on her Amazon show One Mississippi), seemed to imply the very same thing. In episode 5 on the current season of her show, one particular plot-line seems to be a tip of the hat to the C.K. rumours: it follows a woman who is forced to be in the presence of a masturbating male boss while at work.
When asked if this narrative has anything to do with C.K., Notaro has only said that she hopes he will one day address the allegations against him, a sentiment Roseanne Barr has also shared. Yet, again, no one has come forward directly naming C.K., who responded to Notaro’s comments last week at TIFF, insisting they’re “only rumours,” adding, “If you actually participate in a rumour, you make it bigger and you make it real.”
This week, in response to Notaro’s comments and two years after neither denying nor confirming the culprit, Kirkman said she was never actually referring to C.K. after all. In the Village Voice, while promoting her new comedy tour, Kirkman said, “There are rumours out there that Louis takes his dick out at women. He has never done that to me. I never said he did, I never implied that he did. What I said was, when you hear rumours about someone, and they ask you to go on the road with them, this is what being a woman in comedy is like — imagine if there’s always a chance of rain over your head but men, there isn’t. So you go, ‘Should I leave the house with an umbrella, or not?’ ... Sometimes there’s nothing there. I think this might be a case of there’s nothing there. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, and if any women want to come forward and say what he’s done, I’ll totally back them, because I believe women. But I just don’t know any.”
Kirkman added, “I don’t know why Tig is talking about this stuff.”
After the story was published, Kirkman reiterated on Twitter that she is not only still friends with C.K., but also Notaro. However, the tweets have since been deleted.
It’s difficult to surmise much of anything from all this without jumping to conclusions and leaning on several presumptions. Of course, it could be totally coincidental that the person Gawker was referring to in 2012 and that Kirkman mentioned three years later is also an A-list comedian who happens to fit C.K.’s description in every other way as well.
But perhaps the surest takeaway from this confusing timeline of innuendo, unnamed allegations and blind items is that it’s never easy stepping forward as a sexual assault victim — whether or not the alleged assaulter is a headlining comedian with fans the world over.