Comedian Louis C.K. managed to wring out more than a few uncomfortable laughs with a super-awkward (and “mildly” racist?) opening monologue on Saturday Night Live last night… but he wants us to think it’s all OK because he’s a child of the ’70s.
Umm, no.
Listen, I understand that Louis C.K. is not a mild-mannered comedian. I am actually a big fan of his hilarious irreverence and ability to say what many of us are too embarrassed to admit we’re thinking — but I just can’t get behind the comments he made in his opening monologue on SNL.
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Louis kicked things off by admitting that he’s a little bit racist or, as he put it, “I have mild racism,” he said. “It’s benign. It’s not aggressive.” He gave examples of what this looks like: being happy if his doctor is Indian, being nervous if a black man wearing a hoodie goes into the same gas station as him at night. I mean, in Louis’s delivery, he was smiling, but I’m pretty sure the only other people in the audience who were outright laughing are other white people thinking, “I do that too!”
Which isn’t to say that Louis C.K. commenting on white privilege (and owning up to it for laughs) is new for the comedian. But Louis wasn’t done yet. He went on to call Pakistan and Israel “selfish little bitches” and pontificate on why child molesters are willing to risk their freedom and reputation just to satisfy their sexual urges.
“My kids are like Israel and Palestine and I’m like America. The little one’s like Palestine because she always gets screwed. She gets the worst deal,” Louis began. “The older one is like Israel. She comes up to me like, ‘She burnt all my dolls!’ I’m like, ‘Look, I can’t do anything about it right now. Your sister is crazy. Please don’t make me talk to her. I’ll work it out, you and me. I’ll buy you a really cool missile and whatever you do with it is totally up to you.'”
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But the worst really was comparing child molesters’ love of molesting children to his own love of Mounds bars.
“Child molesters are very tenacious people,” he said. “It’s so crazy, because when you consider the risk in being a child molester… there is no worse life available to a human than being a caught child molester. And yet they still do it. Which from that you can only really surmise that it must be really good.”
When the audience let out a groan, Louis quickly tried to clarify: “From their point of view! Not ours! From their point of view, it must be amazing for them to risk so much.”
He then continued with his Mounds bar analogy, commenting that he loves the candy bars because “they are delicious, and yet if somebody said to me, ‘If you eat another Mounds bar you’ll go to jail and everybody will hate you,’ I’d stop eating them. Because they do taste delicious, but they don’t taste as good as a young boy does — and shouldn’t — to a child molester. Not to me. Not to us, because we’re all awesome.”
And while he had his comedian smile on, and he acknowledged the risky nature of what he was saying with a throwaway line about this maybe being his last SNL appearance as a result of the sensitive material (yeah, right), I just can’t help but feel grossed out and unamused by the set. Pedophilia just isn’t funny, Louis!
And it was made even less funny by the first sketch of the night, in which Louis played an old shoe cobbler with tiny little sex-starved elves that asked to be spanked.
(sigh)
Not a great way to close the season, SNL.
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