Louis CK, Kevin Spacey are bullying their way back into limelight — with awful 'comedy' and creepy videos

Turns out, comedy is not like cycling. It’s entirely possible to forget how to be funny, even if you’ve been doing it for almost 35 years. Ask Louis CK, if you’re not convinced. CK’s latest litany of uncouth, crass, cringeworthy, and just plain unfunny jokes at a comedy club, the audio of which was leaked online a few days ago, have made one thing very clear — the days of him saying every thought that tumbles through his too-cool-to-please-people mind are well and truly over. The chip on his shoulder was ground to dust the day the world found out about his disgusting propensity for sexually harassing female colleagues he outranked substantially, by whipping out his penis and masturbating in front of their unwilling selves. [caption id=“attachment_4203115” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Louis CK. Image courtesy: Facebook[/caption] In his bootlegged set, CK mocked kids who survived mass school shootings and their activism for gun-control, made racist jokes about Asians, used 9-year-old girls as the butt of a sexually coloured joke, sneered at the political correctness of having to call people by their preferred pronouns and not being allowed to use the word retarded. And, of course, he made a couple of feeble wisecracks about the “millions and millions of dollars” he lost following the New York Times investigation on his sexual misconduct. “You’re not interesting because you went to a high school where kids got shot… You didn’t get shot, you pushed some fat kid in the way, and now I gotta listen to you talking?” “You should address me as ‘they/them’ because I identify as gender-neutral.” Okay. You should address me as “there” because I identify as a location, and the location is your mother’s c*nt.” “You know why Asian guys have small d*cks? Cause they’re women, they’re not dudes… And they have big cl*ts, really big cl*ts, and when they have sex they just stick their cl*ts in each other’s p*ss**s, and then they procreate using math. I can’t prove this, by the way, but I don’t have to.” It’s awful to hear a once-celebrated entertainer spew venom at children and already marginalised groups of people as an outlet for all the pent up anger over his entirely self-orchestrated annihilation of career. And there’s nothing more embarrassing — and morbidly fascinating — as a has-been star clinging to his celebrity, desperately trying to be relevant, while in reality he’s just making the people around him uncomfortable with his bitterness. Speaking of sexual predators bullying their way back into the limelight, Louis CK was not the only fallen star who tried to stage a crude comeback after spending some time in exile. Kevin Spacey, or House of Card’s Frank Underwood, the lionised Netflix villain we’ve come to identify him as in recent times, dropped a Christmas video on Youtube that was so breathtakingly cocky, self-absorbed, and remorseless that it would be funny of wasn’t so vile. [caption id=“attachment_4429227” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  File image of Kevin Spacey. Twitter[/caption] The video, titled ’ Let Me Be Frank’, has Spacey boldly saying , “I know what you want… Oh sure, they may have tried to separate us, but what we have is too strong, too powerful… So we’re not done, no matter what anyone says… I know what you want. You want me back… You wouldn’t rush to judgments without facts, would you? All this presumption made for such an unsatisfying ending… We’re not afraid — not of what we said, not of what we did and we’re still not afraid. Because I can promise you this: If I didn’t pay the price of what we both know I did do, I’m certainly not going to pay the price for the things I didn’t do.” And so he prattles on with smug abandon.

There’s something eerily similar in both Spacey and CK’s pathetic comeback attempts. Despite their hemming and hawing about self-reflection and learning from their mistakes, there is an unmissable undertone of victimisation in their latest public appearances.

Spacey is convinced he’s not done, and that despite allegations from 30 — not one or two or half a dozen but T-H-I-R-T-Y separate individuals about sexual impropriety that ranged from harassment to attempted rape — and that despite what anyone says, we, the audience, want him back. If Spacey is arrogant, Louis CK is abrasive about his downfall. “F*ck it. What, are you going to take away my birthday? My life is over, I don’t give a shit. You can be offended, it’s okay. You can get mad at me,” he says in the set, which, ironically, was recorded without his consent. Karma really is a boomeranging b*tch. But let’s backtrack for a second. Believing that their lives are over might allow them to wallow in their misery and blame the world for treating them harshly, but CK and Spacey’s lives are far from over. Spacey spent a large portion of his exile in a Meadows Clinic in Arizona that provides moneyed monsters a quiet, serene, forest-y experience (but with all the comforts of modern living and electricity) for the princely sum of $2,000 a night. CK owns a multi-million dollar estate on Shelter Island, close to New York. His exile was little more than a forced vacation, given that he spent it travelling around small towns and in France. So no, misters, your lives are anything but over. And yelling at the audience onstage or from behind the camera to feel sorry for you is a lot like a werewolf howling at the moon — it won’t make one jot of a difference. What it does do instead is tell us exactly how sorry you really aren’t. And you need to fire your talent managers if they’re telling you that’s sound comeback strategy. Here’s some advice: next time you flee to a secluded resort in the mountains or are soul searching while strolling around the Champs Elysees, try to remember that you’re not the victim, and it’s pathetic, not witty, funny, or edgy, when you try to paint yourself as one. Instead, drum up some originality, punch up instead of punching down, and use the platforms and audiences that are still so easily available to you to do some good, before the few remaining open doors slam shut permanently.