Though Louis C.K. has fallen under scrutiny for sexual misconduct and more recently, his mockery of survivors of the Parkland High School massacre, fellow comedian Janeane Garofalo is telling the public to back off.
In an interview released Friday on “Poptarts,” BUST Magazine’s bi-weekly podcast, Garofalo called for sympathy for the disgraced comic.
“Leave Louis C.K. alone,” she said. “Enough with that. And again, there are so many issues we gotta be motivated on. He’s been my friend ― and I stand by that ― he’s been my friend since 1985, and I think he has suffered.”
Continuing her defense of C.K., Garofalo asked that critics consider his family.
“And when he performs at the Comedy Cellar and people get all irate, if nothing else, care about his daughters. If nothing else ― if you can find no compassion for him, which I think you should ― think about how his daughters, who hear all of this stuff, feel. Why don’t you leave him alone for them if you’re so women-empowering?”
Garafalo said the misconduct allegations against C.K. were not the fight of all women, but solely of the women who had accused him.
That’s when the podcast’s interviewer voiced her audible discomfort with the remarks, wondering why anyone should feel sympathy for the comedian just because he’s a father.
“Because you don’t understand what it is like to be a public pariah because it’s not happened to you,” Garafalo argued.
“He chose to be a public person and then he chose to take advantage of that,” the interviewer shot back.
Still, that failed to shake Garafaro’s stance, as she described “the pushback” on her position as “so unjust.”
Doubling down on her demands for better treatment of C.K., Garafalo added, “I do think there is a point where somebody stops kicking people when they’re down.”
In November 2017, The New York Times published allegations from five women who claimed to have been the target of C.K.’s sexual advances. Soon after their stories went public, he told HuffPost they were telling the truth.
He has since attempted to return to his work as a comedian, yet has continued to face serious questions over whether he’s changed.
Last month. C.K. bashed mass shooting victims in leaked audio of his standup set at Governor’s Comedy Club in Long Island.
“You’re not interesting because you went to a high school where kids got shot,” he can be heard saying. “Why does that mean I have to listen to you? How does that make you interesting? You didn’t get shot, you pushed some fat kid in the way and now I need to listen to you talking?”
In the tirade that turned sexually explicit, the comic then suggested millennials ought to be “finger-fucking each other and doing Jell-O shots” rather than focusing on political activism.