Bedeviled.

 

This is found art — wordplay that appears by chance.

I was doing a word search in the OED, looking up "bedevil," because it had come up in an article I just blogged. The NYT writer crafted this sentence: "Was [Trump] upset that [Melania] had single-handedly thrust this story that had so bedeviled him back onto front pages around the globe?" (Don't get me started on "thrust" and "globe.")

That blog post ends with a quote from Lord Byron, and I see the OED entry for "bedevil" also has a quote from Lord Byron — worrying about critics of "my poor, gentle, unresisting Muse, whom they have already so be-deviled with their ungodly ribaldry."

I like the word bedevil. It's vivid, perhaps too vivid. Are we to picture devils? Does anyone think of Jeffrey Epstein as literally The Devil? I know JD Vance seems to think the UFOs are devils — "I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons anyway, but that’s a longer discussion."

Have I been casually summoning up The Devil over the years by using this word that I like? Checking the 22-year blog archive, I see I've quoted it a few times and I've used it twice. Both times came in 2014. Once, in July, on the topic of ObamaCare:

"[Theo] Von introduced C.K. to Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, where he began working to address his addiction..."

"... to masturbation. He practiced abstinence—it was, he said, a 'crazy idea to me. . . . Don’t have sexual release for several months in a row'—but, eventually, he 'got out of the cycle.' His emotions started coming back. 'I saw everything really differently,' he said. 'I saw that everything that had happened with me was because of me. And, by the way, that’s great news, because that means you could do something about it.'... [And] this is what enabled him to write his book. He recently finished a second one. 'I’m writing novels because I don’t jerk off every fifteen minutes,' he said. 'It’s really all it is.'"

Writes Tyler Foggatt in "Louis C.K.’s Next Chapter/In a new standup special, and a début novel, the comedian navigates murky, post-#MeToo terrain: not quite exiled, not quite welcomed back" (The New Yorker).

That reminded me of the old after-sex punchline. Attributed to Balzac: « Là… encore un roman de perdu ! » (“There… another novel lost!”). There's a line in "Annie Hall": “I read a thing about Balzac. He used to, uh, after he’d have sex he’d go, ‘Oh, there goes another novel.’”

"The blizzard struck on Friday evening, coinciding with China’s eight-day National Day holiday, a peak season for hiking and tourism in the area."

"Trekkers had flocked to the Karma Valley, a high-altitude trail at over 4,900 metres (16,000 feet) that leads to the Kangshung Face, Everest’s eastern approach, making rescue efforts particularly challenging."

From "Blizzard traps nearly 1,000 hikers on slopes of Mount Everest/Rescue effort under way for trekkers stranded on mountain following sudden snowstorm" (The Telegraph).

I read this headline out loud to Meade whose response exemplified what human minds can do that A.I. will never do. He said that Hillary Clinton should get herself in shape and climb Mount Everest. I knew where that came from and said we need to write a political satire in which Hillary Clinton, returning to her "Politics of Meaning" roots, gets in touch with the spirit of Sir Edmund Hillary, her (supposed) namesake, and trains to climb Mount Everest.

Normally, I would give this post my "unwritten books" tag and move on, ever onward and upward, but I yielded to the temptation to prompt Grok to outline the book.

"A campaign has been constructed around a mood, rather than the other way around. The mood is Obamacore..."

"... the outburst of brightness and positivity that took over pop culture upon the election of our first Black president in 2008, and that continued until the wheels fell off eight years later. This was the age of Glee, Taylor Swift’s 1989, and Hamilton, seemingly disparate art born out of the same impulse: the feeling of a new dawn, a generational shift, a national redemption.... ... Obamacore positioned itself as sensitive, non-threatening, and relatable. It was Aziz Ansari writing a book on modern dating alongside a Berkeley-trained sociologist, porn star James Deen talking about bacon, Louis C.K. playing a cop on Parks and Recreation.... The fandom that had sprung up around Obama’s presidential campaign expanded to embrace New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and later, Hillary Clinton. For a moment, bodies as hidebound as the Supreme Court and the papacy looked as if they might be rehabbed into vehicles for social justice.... This summer’s sudden reappearance of hope and positivity has spurred split reactions. Do you embrace your inner cringe, or try to tamp it down?... The optimistic case is that, against all odds, we seem to have heeded the lessons of Obamacore. Generation Z is willingly climbing the coconut tree."

Writes Nate Jones, in "That Feeling You Recognize? Obamacore. The 2008 election sparked a surge of positivity across pop culture. Now hindsight (and cringe) is setting in" (NY Magazine).

See also "100 Pieces of Pop Culture That Defined Obamacore/You know them when you see them — whether they were genius or, well, not," by Nate Jones (in NY Magazine). Just to select one:

"Women are hurting and feel like they're crazy because everyone is letting all these predators back."

The trailer has been around for 4 weeks, but the documentary is out today. I'm noticing because there's a NYT article, "'Sorry/Not Sorry’ Review: Does Louis C.K. Get the Last Laugh? Cara Mones and Caroline Suh’s earnest and frustrating documentary, produced by The New York Times, has a bitter punchline."

The article is by Amy Nicholson, who calls the movie "earnest and frustrating."

After his status as a revered truth teller was revoked and his show “Louie” was pulled from streaming, Louis C.K has since rebranded as a renegade (and won a Grammy). Depending on the talking head, his moderate marginalization is either excessive punishment or an unearned pardon.

ADDED:  About that quote chosen for the post title: What makes people think they have the power to decide whether a free man is "let back"? Let back where? Into the mix of speech that each of us, individually, has the power to listen to or not? 

"I feel like the only solution is pretty clear... In the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass 'seppuku' of the elderly?"

Said Yale economics professor Yusuke Narita, quoted in "A Yale Professor Suggested Mass Suicide for Old People in Japan. What Did He Mean? Yusuke Narita says he is mainly addressing a growing effort to revamp Japan’s age-based hierarchies. Still, he has pushed the country’s hottest button" (NYT).

Dr. Narita, 37, said that his statements had been “taken out of context,” and that he was mainly addressing a growing effort to push the most senior people out of leadership positions in business and politics — to make room for younger generations....

The Louis CK argument for open borders: "It shouldn't be so great here."

I’m afraid the Christians Against Immigrants Caucus is a little upset… https://t.co/HN44XmvLpv

— Louis CK (@NotlouisCk) January 27, 2023

"There are many ways for a person to be questionable... and men found every single one this year. There were the men with an unbearable lack of self-awareness, screaming..."

"... 'cancel culture' to an audience of millions. There were the men whose long history of abuse allegations did nothing to dissuade people from coming to their defense or giving them MTV VMA cameos. Did you know Louis C.K. won a Grammy this year?... It was a particularly embarrassing year for men with too much money. Over the summer, Jeff Bezos reportedly wanted to pay to disassemble and reassemble a bridge in the Netherlands so his big stupid boat could pass through.... [F]or reasons unbeknownst to humankind, Musk tweeted a picture of his bedside table.... ... Drake decided his collaborative album with 21 Savage was a good time to claim that Megan Thee Stallion lied about being shot by Tory Lanez....  [There] were the cringey men — men who embodied 'the ick.'... There was the Try Guy cheating scandal that validated our cultural suspicion of Wife Guys.... [There were] Whiny Little Baby-Men. These are the men who had to overcome such adversity as omelets and pens.... [T]here are men who are still making hypermasculinity their whole thing. These range from supplement-scamming Liver Kings to men who proudly embrace the title 'King of Toxic Masculinity.'... Then there are the truly sinister men.... They have either been a guest on Alex Jones’s podcast or are Alex Jones himself..... [There are] Ricky Gervais, Matt Gaetz, Brad Pitt, Tom Brady...."

Writes Mia Mercado in "The Year Men Flopped" (The Cut).

I love the way she got through all that without naming Trump. We really have moved on! And now, 2022 is about to expire, and we can move on from all the scoundrels she did name. Let's move on once again, to the — hopefully — much better masculinity of 2023.

Louis CK won a Grammy, undoubtedly because his comedy album was clearly the best comedy album, and mainstream media responds by reading Twitter for us.

I'm just reading NPR and the NYT:

NPR: "Louis C.K. cancels his cancellation, wins a Grammy and triggers a backlash." This just quotes some tweets, e.g., "The Grammys are a great reminder that 'cancel culture' doesn't exist and no white dude has ever been successfully cancelled for anything terrible that they do."

NYT: "Louis C.K.’s Grammy, After ‘Global Amounts of Trouble,’ Draws Backlash/Some comedians are questioning how the Recording Academy saw fit to bestow an award to someone who had admitted to sexual misconduct." We're told "his name trended on Twitter" and given examples, e.g.:

“Every woman who has been harassed and abused in the comedy business, I hear you and see you and I am so, so angry,” the podcast host Jesse Thorn, who interviews comedians, wrote, followed by several expletives.

"The way C.K.’s flirtations with the offensive and the taboo work, at least historically, is by making himself a temporary stand-in for the bad guy."

"He ventriloquizes everything a pedophile might be thinking in exceptional detail, for instance. Or take the bit in Sorry about a Black woman picking out bananas....The success of such a joke depends heavily on the audience trusting that the comic beneath the 'creep' persona isn’t horrible. That by so precisely articulating such a perspective, it’s implicitly a critique. That meta layer is the safety net I’m talking about: For most of C.K.’s career, the 'real' Louis C.K.—a genuinely good guy troubled by demons but with a compassionate and decent core—has functioned as an authorizing alibi of sorts for the special’s boundary-violating experiments.... The Real Louis C.K. was the hapless, kind of dirty, but conscientious guy who bought a Girls Gone Wild DVD after his divorce but couldn’t jack off to it because he kept—as a dad—getting mad at the girls for making stupid choices. The revelations have made it harder to believe in that version of him; to a lot of his former fans, one horrifying thing about the allegations was that he turned out to be the very creep we thought he was lampooning. The joke we thought we were laughing at wasn’t a joke at all."

Writes Lili Loofbourow, in "What Louis C.K. Has Really Lost" (Slate), about Louis C.K.'s new special "Sorry" (which you can pay $25 to watch at his website). [Only $10 to watch the one special.]

This is a very well written essay, and it shows that Louis C.K. has a new foundation for humor. Loofbourow notes that before the scandal, he was having difficulty playing the part of the "loser," which had been his original comedy persona: "by no longer being an underdog, he’d lost something he needed to really make his act work. Well, he has again what he was missing then. Abjection is Louis C.K.’s medium; it suits him, and he thrives in it." 

We're seeing how he works from this new position — without the ability to retreat to the safe place of being the loser. He'd already lost loserdom before the scandal, so what has he "really lost"? He's gained! I think the headline writer didn't understand the essay... or the editorial position of Slate is that you've got to perpetually kick Louis C.K. around.

The Grammys nominated Louis CK!

 The Week reports:

The nominations were unveiled on Tuesday, and C.K. earned a nod in the category of Best Comedy Album for Sincerely Louis CK. This was the comedian's first stand-up special since his career was derailed in 2017 after multiple women came forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct. He admitted at the time that stories of him masturbating in front of women or asking to do so "are true."

The nomination prompted me to look for the album on Spotify, and it's there, not canceled, completely accessible. I listened to the whole thing right after I saw the nomination. It was great! 

And he talks about the "stories," at least some aspects of the stories. He doesn't concede that everything they're saying about him is true. Is there anything about the problem of a man using his power within the entertainment industry to gain consent from women who don't really want the sex he's offering but might be hoping for other advantages? Not overtly, but he does say that he knows that a woman may give consent and then, without saying so become unconsenting, so you have to keep "checking in." At least.  In the end, he says that if you ask a woman if you can masturbate in front of them — which everyone knows is his thing — and she says yes, ask again, and then don't do it. 

Of course, you have to listen to how he says it. He's a comedian. To write out the "ideas" as I've done is to drain out the comedy. His comedy depends a lot on shifting from cruelty to sensitivity, and he's brilliant drawing the audience into cruelty and then turning on them. To see what I mean, listen to the track "Wheelchairs and Legs and Retarded People":

Cue the jokes about feminist comedy.

I'm reading this in the Wisconsin State Journal:

A local feminist organization plans to protest comedian Louis C.K.’s performances at Comedy on State next week, while seven female comics are offering counter-programming at Bos Meadery on Madison’s Near East Side.

C.K. faced public shaming in 2017, at the height of the #MeToo movement, after he admitted to masturbating in front of five female comedians after years of denying rumors about that behavior.

“Join us in the streets outside the venue July 25-27th during Louis C.K.’s performances to let Comedy on State know he’s not welcome here!” the Socialist Feminist Working Group of the Madison Area Democratic Socialists of America said in a social media post.

That is, you have 2 choices, not including actually getting in to see Louis, whose shows all sold out quickly. You can join the socialism feminists in the street outside the the comedy club, downtown. Or you can head out to the "meadery" on East Washington for the alternative comedy show, which I see is called "Babe-apalooza" (not to be confused with babesiosis). 

Is it good feminism these days to use the word "babe"? 

"Masturbating in front of five female comedians"... There were five of them? At the same time? Or is that just how the newspaper prose makes it sound? If he was really masturbating in front of five female comedians, you'd think they'd have destroyed him with their comedy powers right then and there.

"Louis C.K. tickets sell out in Madison despite comedian's sexual misconduct."

 The Wisconsin State Journal reports.

Four of C.K.'s Madison show were sold out by Monday afternoon, shortly after a Wisconsin State Journal story was posted online. A fifth show was listed as "tickets currently not available." Tickets were $30 before fees.

That's in Madison, so I infer that Louis C.K. can do his show anywhere in America. I'd say he's been punished enough. He's a comic genius and plenty of people obviously want him back. 

Here's the discussion at the subreddit r/madisonwi. Sample chitchat:

Don’t like him? Don’t go. I don’t care for him but it’s a free country and if he wants to do a show and people want to pay for it that’s their business as consenting adults. Quit being the hall monitor. Adults can do as they wish. 

Did you just ask Madison, Wisconsin to actually let people live their lives?

How to write a book.

 

Photographed by me, just now, from a book that appears in my earliest childhood memories. I've never read the book, but I saw it and played with it before I could read, and when I could read, I read and puzzled over the title. I knew my parents loved the author, a radio comedian who died, too young, in 1956. The book is ©1956. 

I kept the book for my own library after my parents were gone, and I knew exactly where to find it in my disorganized shelves when the author's name came up in conversation here at Meadhouse. The conversation began with a report of something funny that had happened outside in the snow, and a confession of mine about being too concerned about embarrassment when I was a child, which led Meade to engage in a type of transgressive humor that I associated with Louis CK, whom Meade contrasted to Red Skelton, a sweet, gentle comedian we both remember loving back in 1950s TV. 

I guessed — for no reason other than his on-screen niceness — that Red Skelton might have been a terrible person in real life. I went looking for dirt on his Wikipedia page. I didn't read every word, and I didn't find any dirt, but I got interested in the subject, so timely today, of censorship:

On April 22, 1947, Skelton was censored by NBC two minutes into his radio show. When he and his announcer Rod O'Connor began talking about Fred Allen being censored the previous week, they were silenced for 15 seconds; comedian Bob Hope was given the same treatment once he began referring to the censoring of Allen. 

[FOOTNOTE] Fred Allen was censored when he referred to an imaginary NBC vice-president who was "in charge of program ends". He went on to explain to his audience that this vice-president saved these hours, minutes and seconds that radio programs ran over their allotted time until he had two weeks' worth of them and then used the time for a two-week vacation.

And then I was reading the Wikipedia article on Fred Allen, whose book I played with when I was a child and have kept all these years but never read:

Louis C.K. is back with a comedy special.

You have to pay $8 and buy it straight from his website. He's on his own now, the big pariah. If you think that might be funny, you're perfectly free to buy his show.

Sample material (copied from this article, at the Independent):

“I like jerking off, I don’t like being alone, that’s all I can tell you. I get lonely, it’s just sad. I like company. I like to share. I’m good at it, too. If you’re good at juggling, you wouldn’t do it alone in the dark. You’d gather folks and amaze them.... If you want to do it with someone else, you need to ask first. But if they say yes, you still don’t get to go, ‘Woo!’ and charge ahead. You need to check in often, I guess that’s what I’d say.... It’s not always clear how people feel. Men are taught to make sure the woman is okay. The thing is, women know how to seem okay when they’re not okay.... It’s kind of like a Negro spiritual.... It’s sort of similar. So to assume that she likes it is like if they heard slaves singing in the field and you’re like, ‘Hey, they’re having a good time out there.'”

If you're in the never-ever-ever-compare-anything-to-slavery set, you'll have to stay away. Also if comparisons to juggling squick you out.

"Eventually, he asked the audience, 'So, do you want to talk about the thing?' He was referring, of course, to the accusations against him."

"The audience cheered. Somewhat wearily, he said, 'I like to jerk off, and I don’t like to be alone.' More laughter. 'So what can I tell you? I can offer you some advice. If you ask, "Can I jerk off in front of you?"—don’t do it! And if they say O.K., don’t do it!' The warnings weren’t exactly sobering or remorseful; they gestured at his actions without really acknowledging what he’d done or to whom or, more important, why. It was a nod in the direction of his troubles, but with no hard look at what those troubles meant. 'Everybody has their thing sexually,' he said. 'But when everyone knows what your thing is . . . now Obama knows what my thing is. Oh, God.'... As the show went on, I began to want to feed C.K., telepathically, the different forms of storytelling he brought to his work when he was at the top of his game and unafraid of losing out on being loved. What if he were to turn his shame into a story? What if he imagined how his dick looked to a woman he had horrified? Couldn’t he go there, Richard Pryor style, and talk from the vantage point of his disgraced penis? Instead, he let his better stories trail off, fearing perhaps the existential ramifications of doing what he used to do, digging and dancing in the minefields of our collective unconscious."

In "Can Louis C.K. Spin His Troubles Into Art?/Touring for the first time since his sexual-misconduct scandal, the comedian gestured at his actions without really acknowledging what he’d done," The New Yorker's Hilton Als gives the genius-idiot comedian some advice on how to do comedy. Why not?

You probably won't read the whole thing because you probably don't have a subscription to The New Yorker, so I've got to tell you that much of the essay is about black people. It's too much trouble to explain why, so I'll just gesture at it: He begins by talking about the Norman Mailer essay "The White Negro," drags in a conversation between Louis C.K. and Chris Rock (with lots of "n-word"), refers to Pigmeat Markham and Big Mama Thornton, has some stuff about a black character on the "Louis" TV show, quotes Louis saying it would be "hot" if your mother told you she once had sex with "a black guy," and said it would be "hot" if Louis, in his new show, "became his mother, teetering toward that black consort, in love with the American forbidden?"

To absorb this you probably need to know if Hilton Als is black. If you don't already know, examine your thoughts first picturing him as white and then picturing him as black. Are they different? I think they they are!

ADDED: "Now Obama knows what my thing is. Oh, God." I like the "Oh, God," because, essentially, Obama has taken the place of God. He sees and He knows and His knowing that you have fallen short is a heavy burden for which you know you must atone.

AND: Here's Wikipedia on "The White Negro":

"I’d rather be in Auschwitz than New York City." Pause. "I mean now, not when it was open."

Said Louis C.K., quoted in "Louis C.K. tells Israeli crowd ‘I’d rather be in Auschwitz than New York City.'"

The funnyman reportedly conceded in Israel that he had masturbated in front of female fans, which he admitted was wrong, and doesn’t recommend doing.

"If they say ‘yes,’ then still don’t do it, because it’s not popular,” he joked....

"Those looking for any apologetic notes or reckoning with the damage he has done will be disappointed. He is not aiming for redemption onstage."

"If anything, he’s doubling down on the comedic value of saying the wrong thing. 'That’s the point of this,' he said, motioning to himself onstage. He didn’t repeat the now cliché comedian complaints about generational sensitivities or snowflakes, but the central theme of the night was the cathartic release of transgression. His subjects (Sept. 11, slavery, pedophilia, the Holocaust) made the case. He turned his new reputation in the #MeToo era into a springboard for jokes. 'Wait until they find those pictures of me in blackface,' he said. The audience, which gave him standing ovations, roared. Then he pushed further, saying he has done blackface for years. 'I didn’t do it to be funny,' he added. 'I liked it. Felt good. I do it for bedtime.'"

From "Louis C.K. Doubles Down on the Value of Saying the Wrong Thing/On his first tour since admitting misconduct, the comedian’s theme was the cathartic release of transgression as he delivered bits about his mother’s death and religion" (NYT), by Jason Zinoman, who laughed a lot and also found the show "uncomfortable." The discomfort seemed to be something Louis was "in control of" and also not in control of." Zinoman also credits himself with "a high tolerance for enjoying art from morally suspect places."

"Chappelle retains his killer timing and raconteur’s charms, but... he seems more interested in seeking the clapter of like-minded patrons than anything else."

"The comedian sells his self-centered worldview, hard: [Michael] Jackson didn’t molest any kids, because the singer didn’t target a prime candidate like Macaulay Culkin. [Louis] C.K. didn’t do anything wrong, because exposing himself to female colleagues isn’t a crime worthy of reporting to the police. The opioid crisis makes him understand how white people felt during the crack epidemic, because 'I don’t care, either.'"

From "Dave Chappelle’s Sticks & Stones Fights for the Rights of the Already-Powerful/In his new Netflix special, Chappelle rushes to the defense of the people who need it most: celebrities" by Inkoo Kang (in Slate).

"Clapter" is not a typo. In the text at Slate, the word is linked to "The Rise of 'Clapter' Comedy" (at Vulture). That's from January 2018, and you'll see Chapelle's name comes up:

[T]his portmanteau [of clapping and laughter]—evidently coined by Seth Meyers over a decade ago— to bemoan an identifiable strain of message-driven comedy that inadvertently prioritizes political pandering above comedic merit....

Monologue segments have turned into a series of repetitive jokes, middling impressions, and verbatim tweet recitals, but they nonetheless continue to elicit enthusiastic reactions from crowds, who can relate broadly to the overarching sentiment of “Holy shit, our president is bad.”

It’s telling, then, that one of the highest-profile examples of this phenomenon took place during Dave Chappelle’s SNL monologue the weekend immediately following Trump’s election. “America has done it; we’ve actually elected an internet troll as our president,” Chappelle said, parroting a well-wrought observation that had been made thousands of times leading up to the election. Even accounting for his comedy chops, it was a tepid and unoriginal joke that had every reason to fall flat. The crowd nonetheless laughed heartily, evidently looking for anything to latch their very palpable Trump resentment onto....

"Whether the speaker is a drawling Spacey in character as a secretly homicidal sociopath or a comedian who styled himself as a postmillennial cross between John Cassavetes and Alan Alda..."

"... while he was whipping it out every chance he got, a horrible truth still emerges. These types of guys thrive on attention, and if they can’t get the positive kind, they’ll settle for the negative. 'Oh, sure, they’ve tried to separate us,' Spaceywood said, inadvertently speaking for Louis C.K. as he emerged from his alt-right chrysalis and flapped his moth wings in Levittown. 'But what we have is too strong. It’s too powerful.' Unless it isn’t. This concludes the last thing I’ll ever write about Kevin Spacey or Louis C.K., until they’re sentenced in courts of law, or I have to write their obituaries."

Writes Matt Zoller Seitz in "The Real Louis C.K. Is Finally Standing Up" (The Vulture). So he's saying that even if there are court proceedings, including trials with witness testimony and announcements of jury verdicts, he won't write a word? He'll wait for the sentencing stage?

The idea is that Spacey and C.K. just want attention, so don't feed them, or you're part of the problem. I remember when I tried that with Trump. But silence is not like yelling. One person's silence only enhances the speech opportunities of other people. Yelling, you might drown other people out, but shutting up doesn't work like that.