Comedian Louis C.K. ’s new comedy trial balloon might change how his fellow stand-ups earn a living. The comic released a new comedy special, “Louis C.K.: Live at the Beacon Theater,” via his personal web site on Saturday.

No middle men. No one to slurp up any profits. Just his stand-up act ready to be downloaded at the consumer’s convenience.

The comedian started selling the special on Saturday, and four days later it sold $500,000 worth of downloads at $5 a pop.

In the very recent past, comedians would team up with Comedy Central or HBO to set up their hour-long specials. Stand-up comics relied on such partnerships to expand their name recognition and launch them into the proverbial big time. Now, if a name act has a web site and some entrepreneurial pluck, he or she can take on the assignment themselves.

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Louis C.K. will tell you he doesn’t have an anti-gay thought in his head. But the red-headed comic says the culture lost a teachable moment when Tracy Morgan went on an apology tour for his hateful rant against homosexuals.

C.K., currently promoting his self-financed comedy special, told Nightline that he wished MorganGate had gone down much differently than it did.

But C.K. also feels that Morgan’s critics did themselves a disservice by being quick to attack Morgan instead of opening up a dialogue about the subject.

“The opportunity that was lost was for the gay community to ask Tracy, ‘Why did you say that? What was your dad like? What is being a man like to you?’ It could have been the starting point of a conversation that might have actually made a difference in the way people feel about homophobia,” C.K. said.

“But to say, you can’t say that, and that’s hate speech, and to go on a ’sorry’ tour, that’s a waste of time to me. I think it was a wasted opportunity.”

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To understand if a person or group is on the left or the right, look no further than what outrages them.  If you’re offended by how much tax revenue is squandered year after year, you’re probably on the right; if you are ticked off at the “rich” for not paying their “fair share,” you lean left.  If you have a strong urge to kill or capture evildoers around the world, you’re likely conservative; but if you’re irate that detainees might be water-boarded, safe money is you’re lefty.  If you drive home in your Toyota Prius to pop a Big Pharma-produced Lexapro that gives you just enough vitality to take your ungrateful kids to the Starbucks for a Java Chip Frappuccino®… only to lecture them on the evils of the corporations once you get there, there’s a good chance you’re left-wing.  But if you love capitalism… you get my point.

What inspires your ire tips your hand–politically speaking–and a sanctimonious editorial on Tracy Morgan in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times tells you all you need to know about the staff of SoCal’s leading paper.

For those of you who dropped out of society for the past week, the synopsis is that during a stand-up comedy routine in Nashville, Morgan, of “SNL” and “30 Rock” fame, joked that he would stab his son if he used a “gay voice.”  Word got out and all hell broke loose.  The twitterverse was outraged, celebrities clamored to condemn the comment, and Morgan eventually delivered the obligatory pandering over-apology replete with a commitment to partner with America’s most ironically named advocacy organization: GLAAD.

The story is a social justice cliché.

The courageous editors at the Los Angeles Times joined the fray yesterday, unloading a bold op-ed stating Morgan had crossed the line: (more…)

I am well able to separate artists from their art.  In the entertainment world you have to, otherwise you’d deny yourself some quality product pumped out of the liberal asylum.  And so I must exercise this discipline with one of my favorite television shows.  Although I’m not sure exactly what’s going on with Louis C.K. and his vile statements about Sarah Palin via Twitter (assuming they are indeed his), I nonetheless have been a big fan of his stand-up comedy for many years (with one complaint:  an obsession with the “f-bomb” diminishes his act).  As such, I was disappointed back in 2006 when HBO cancelled his sitcom Lucky Louie after airing only twelve episodes. Now the irreverent comedian is back, this time on the FX channel, starring in the eponymous Louie.  

The last time C.K. was on the air his life was decidedly different as reflected by both the premise and format of the short-lived Lucky Louie.  His first show centered around Louie as a late-thirties, solidly middle-class husband and father of a little girl, whose wife was the primary breadwinner. HBO presented a classic three-camera sitcom in the style of Norman Lear and MTM, complete with a studio audience, and tried to take the format to more daring levels in content and subject matter. But it still tackled that oft-lampooned place in most marriages where the day-to-day hassles of life and familial responsibility have tempered the bliss of love and promise once shared at the altar; yet there still remains a partnership of soul-mates who grapple with issues together. Lucky Louie, for all its cable-liberating blue language, bluntly realistic portrayal of married life, and sometimes seedy topics, was nevertheless generally upbeat.

Since 2006, much has changed in Louis C.K.’s personal life and this spills into his new show simply called Louie ( no“Lucky” this time around). The comedian is now a recently divorced father of two with whom he shares joint custody with his ex-wife. Louie in turn follows the rather glum life of a recently divorced middle-aged (he is 42) father trying to pick up the pieces and live on his own again in a hostile and gritty New York City.  He’s alone in a town of millions. But fear not as this show is not a downer.  Interspersed are snippets of his outstanding comedy routines which often break up the moroseness of his day-to-day life through which the camera follows him around like a voyeur.  It is, in fact, difficult to tell where the character of “Louie” ends, and the real man who created him begins… if there is a dividing line at all. (more…)

Remember when American comedians went after the powerful in an effort to bring them down to earth with the sharp satire of accountability? Today, they appear to only protect the powerful. Well, unless the powerful aren’t liberal enough. As things stand now you have the likes of David Letterman and Louis C.K. savaging Sarah Palin’s family, SNL terrified to rip Obama with any real zeal, cartoonists proclaiming President Teleprompter too cool to mock, and Will Ferrell films flaking for corrupt public unions, all in an effort to protect the corrupted leftist elitists currently holding power.

It’s like we now live in an alternate universe you might call … North Korea.

In desperate Hail Mary moves to protect Obama and Democrats from what’s looking like a November rout, three of the left’s most beloved Palace Guards have just upped their game considerably. Bill Maher’s now openly blackmailing Delaware Republican Senate Candidate Christine O’Donnell, threatening a weekly drip-drip-drip of videos he thinks will ruin her candidacy unless she agrees to appear on his show – which is where he’ll really pull out the stops to finally win that Emmy by attempting to destroy her:

ABC News:

On Friday, Maher released on his new HBO show, “Real Time,” an unaired clip of O’Donnell admitting to a brief dalliance with witchcraft.

“I dabbled into witchcraft — I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do,” she said.

“One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that,” she said. “We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar.”

O’Donnell appeared on the political talk show on 22 different episodes, and Maher has said he will air a clip of O’Donnell every week until she agrees to appear on his show.

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UPDATE: Gawker also wonders if Jay Leno was in on the “joke”:

After Louis C.K.’s drunken ‘twitter rampage’ in which he called Sarah Palin a “C*nt-Face Jazzy Wonder Girl”, we were surprised at the little amount of fanfare that erupted when Louis and Bristol Palin appeared together on the Tonight Show Friday.

Personally I like to imagine Leno was in the know and he’s just far more of a sociopath than anyone expected—making then perform together for his own sadistic pleasures[.]

It’s no secret in show business comedy circles or to anyone with access to Twitter that comedian and television star Louis C.K. is crudely and sexually obsessed with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin — so much so that he sends her direct tweets calling her the vilest of names [NSFW screen shot below]. The star of the FX series “Louie” not only savages the former Governor in such a way that I’m forced to publish the evidence below the fold with a strong warning, but his breathtakingly vicious attack on Trig Palin is quite popular on YouTube.

Louis C.K.

So infamous is Louis C.K. for this cruel and misogynistic (a word I don’t use lightly) behavior towards all things Palin, that a good number of his fans didn’t miss the “joke” when he appeared with Bristol Palin on Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” last week. Gawker sure enjoyed it. Therefore, there’s little doubt in my mind that the decision to book Louis C.K. and Bristol Palin — to have them sit next to each other on  the “Tonight Show,” was an intentionally smug inside joke in order to allow a bunch of elitist show-biz and journo types to chuckle behind Bristol’s back as she was unknowingly humiliated on national television in front of all of Hollywood.

If we’ve learned anything about some show-bizzers since Governor Palin stepped into the national spotlight, it’s that they are a bottomless pit of dark-hearted hate and cruelty. To intentionally humiliate a politician’s family, especially her children, is so far beyond the pale… But to go after a child with Down Syndrome. I’m simply speechless.

And never did I think I’d see the day — but here we have Johnny Carson’s storied “Tonight Show” brought to an all-time low where, apparently, it’s in on the joke:

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WARNING: What you’re about to read and watch below would win the Gold Medal at the Degenerate Olympics. Also, although Twitter hasn’t verified Louis C.K.’s account, we have done so through two separate sources — both of whom love his Palin-hate.

Poor Andrew Dice Clay. He might still be a superstar had Sarah Palin been around in his day to turn what he said into a Hollywood Resume’ Enhancer.

Without further comment: (more…)

So Laura Schlessinger is quitting radio, in order to regain her First Amendment Rights. This, after using the N-word repeatedly while arguing with a black woman on her show. Schlessinger apologized, but now says she’s leaving.

Now I don’t get this. How can someone who made millions speaking her mind, now say she’s quitting, so she can speak her mind? Bottom line: you can’t get a better gig for exercising your freedom of speech – than getting a fat check every time you exercise it! For me, it’s like getting paid to shop for unicorn figurines!

So that’s kinda stupid.

But I will say this – she’s getting heat for doing what others do -who suffer no consequences. (more…)

Stand-up comedy is the least respected of all the performing arts. As if being a stand-up comic weren’t hard enough; the years of being judged by every person who owns a liquor license and a microphone, driving six hours to a non-existent gig, begging moronic agents and managers who are looking for a “new, original and exciting” talent to come out to see your show only to be asked why you aren’t more “Seinfeld-ish.” On top of that it takes years to develop an act and find your voice on stage. There are child actors, child musicians, tiny dancers and even I would guess a few very young working writers, but no child comics. Why? Because stand-up comedy is the only experiential-based art form. Kids can tell “jokes” but they can’t do stand-up. Stand-up comedy, really good stand-up comedy has evolved from joke telling into a personal narrative dialogue with the audience.

Still, every now and then some elitist hack with a degree from the right college and the proper connections gets a job at a failing weekly magazine and decides to take a shot at you and your profession, feeling they are qualified to judge this art form because they know how to laugh and talk. This is rarely if ever done with other art forms. Seriously folks, when is the last time you saw an article about actors who can’t act, dancers who can’t dance, painters who can’t paint or pointless “performance artists.” Yet, about every six months some “critic” declares a number of famous comics “not funny.”    (more…)