Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/05/advice-column-question-a-no.html
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All I can say is “WTF?!”
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He’s ‘woke,’ challenges people like Louis C.K.,
I have found some of the most outspoken against creeps are, in fact, creeps themselves. (Obviously not everyone…)
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OK, might as well start laying down bets now. Who’s the famous comedian we currently like but will soon be disgusted to learn is a horrible monster?
I’ll start with “Lewis Black” (though I hope not since, as noted, I currently like him).
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Mark, he sounds like a complete jerk, but I don’t think she’s accusing him of attempting to rape her. She says that “I eventually broke off contact after I was nearly raped and Jake told me I deserved it”. Although the language is a little unclear, I think she’s saying that someone else almost raped her, and he said that she was to blame. If he had tried to rape her, I’m guessing she would have been more direct.
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I think you are right! I’ll update the post. Thanks.
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I don’t think it would be Black. He has zero energy for other human beings, so it doesn’t really fit.
List of candidates that would make more sense to me: Maher, Rogan, Burr, Chappelle, Seinfeld, Gaffigan, Ron White, Gervais.
Again only thinking about big names, who are doing tours, and actively speak out as “woke” voices.
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Oh Maher is DEFINITELY high on the list. I didn’t even consider him because I don’t think of him as “woke” so much as “an A-list asshole who occasionally says things I agree with.”
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I personally like Maher for that reason…he often says things that I agree with and he definitely takes a middle road that usually pisses everyone off on either side of the aisle…I may or may not take gleeful joy in that.
If I had to handicap the above list…he’d be pretty far off odds IMO, but that’s not really worth much. Best odds to me would be Seinfeld, Chappelle, White, or Gervais.
Seinfeld and Chapelle have both gone on anti-PC-police rants lately though. Not that that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t speak up for harassed women, but I’d be surprised if that’s who a person would list as particularly notably “woke.” And Gervais and “woke” parted ways long ago…
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That is kind of why I handicap them as better bets. They are more likely to have been in the “were you asking for it” mode.
Its tabloid speculation on our part regardless…it could be anyone.
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FWIW, Chappelle and Gervais are both good friends with CK, have actively defended him, and most definitely are not in the “woke” phase of their careers as much as they are steering into the “why’s everyone so sensitive and can’t take a joke!?” middle aged rich man phase.
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@anon61833566 @Brainspore - I like y’all very much, but also Bill Maher is a pretty harmful person and extremely un-“woke”. He supports the vaccine-Autism connection, supported the Vietnam War, praised George W for “creating a country” in Iraq.
Or, you know, just hot racist, misogynist, sociopathic garbage like this:
Burr, Chapelle, Seinfeld - these are all people who are pretty adverse to most things I think the general public would consider “woke” - like women’s rights, racial bias, labor rights, pro-consent, etc. All things that those people like to pick apart or undermine. Burr and Chapelle have, within the last year, ardently defended pretty despicable people for fairly un-“woke” behavior. We gotta have better role models.
Here’s a recent, fairly in-depth dive about how gross Maher is, presented by one of the better Breadtube voices:
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I don’t think any of the people on that list are “woke”. Or they may be in one sense, but not others. Some are definitely more assholey than others, but I think all of those on that list have pushed back against the super “woke” culture that wants to sanitize humor.
But - it is kind of pointless to speculate, because there are probably more comics touring right now than ever before in history. It could be one of dozens of people.
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Pretty much all of them. For people who are all about free speech and nothing being off limits and pulling the “oh it was just a joke” card every time they get called out on anything, they are (un)surprisingly thin-skinned.
This fits with what other people have told me about him. His on-stage persona is all an act.
These people are “woke”"
Not that it would surprise me in the least if they were capable of that.
I knew him nearly 20 years ago, when he was on hiatus, and at the time he was happily married with two kids. He seemed creepy to me in a way I couldn’t really articulate, but also like a genuinely good person.
Who he?
Yeah, he’s not relevant now, but if this were 20 years earlier, I’d completely believe it was him.
Seems not the type at all. Catholic, raising five kids, married to his writing partner. I say “married to his writing partner” because I’m convinced that she is the brains behind his operation, at least partly.
If someone were to tell me either one of these were complete assholes in real life, I’d shrug it off and say “yeah, so?”
Pretty much like Bill Burr and Joe Rogan, but those are people who actually have followings.
I’d go further and say he’s not so much “woke” as a sycophant who can play the part of “woke” occasionally, until the “woke” crowd decides they’re done with him. At that point, he’ll do a full-on Dennis Miller.
Speaking of which, how is Dennis Miller not on this list?
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Based on the stories I heard from a friend who was on an early season of Fear Factor, my money is on Rogan.
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I think Dennis Miller has been pretty firmly in the anti-woke side of the spectrum since at least the mid-90s.
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Yet Bill Burr, Seinfeld, and Tater Salad are on this list somehow.
May as well put Tosh and Dane Cook on it too.
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God damn it, you keep saying that name and he’s going to make some come back tour!
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I have cursed us all
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