The View returned from its extended holiday break on Wednesday morning just in time to weigh in on the leaked Louis C.K. stand-up set that hit the internet in the final hours of 2018.
“Louis C.K. has been popping up in comedy clubs and he’s getting his behind kicked on social media,” Whoopi Goldberg began the segment. “Especially after a performance where he mocked Parkland shooting survivors, Asian men and the LGBT community. I didn’t see it but some people were offended and some were not.”
Others at the table had listened to the nearly hour-long audio in which Louis C.K., who has been slowly mounting his comeback over the past year after admitting to masturbating in front of female comics, makes fun of everything from gender-neutral pronouns to the student activists who survived the Parkland shooting. A bit about Asian men having “small dicks” has received less attention, though The View’s Meghan McCain noted that it was “ridiculous and tone deaf” for Louis C.K. to “talk about penises in any way” given his transgressions.
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On one side of the debate, co-host Sunny Hostin said she was personally not offended by the jokes. “It seemed to me he was testing out material, right?” she said, adding that if anyone is “offended” by Louis C.K. then they should “speak with their dollar” and not pay to see him live.
Then there was comedian Joy Behar, who felt a bit differently. “Here’s the thing I think about Louis C.K.,” she said. “He needs a therapist badly. The guy did something stupid, heinous in many people’s eyes, even though we say he got permission from these girls or whatever. I don’t even know what the truth of that is. But he’s out there punching down, as we call it in the comedy world.”
“There’s so many targets to punch up to,” she continued. “There’s Trump, there’s everything going on in the world, there’s Brexit if you want to go there. There’s a million things to go after. Why would you pick kids who are suffering because of gun violence? Pick the NRA, don’t go after the victim. Although maybe he sees himself as a victim so he identifies with the victimhood. But it’s pathetic to see a comedian pity himself, not learn from his mistakes.”
“Somebody as brilliant as Louis C.K. should know better,” Behar said. “He needs to find out what’s funny about what he did and turn himself in and stop punching down! That is my advice to him.”
As Goldberg, who admittedly had not listened to the audio, began to defend Louis C.K. as someone who has “always been edgy and done the humor that some people like, some people don’t,” Behar shook her head in disgust.
“To me, I think he’s just in a pathetic place,” Behar concluded.
