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“You’re hilarious. If you ever apologize to a heckler again I will rape you.” Louis C.K.: “Your show makes me laugh every time I watch it. And you have pretty eyes” --except that he wrote it after watching Tosh on TV, but before he learned about the Laugh Factory incident. Nevertheless, he was excoriated and accused of being a “rape apologist.” But C.K. himself is no stranger to sexual-assault jokes. Onstage, he has said that he’s against rape-- “unless you have a reason, like you wanna fuck someone and they won’t let you, in which case what other option do you have?”

Conversely, in an episode of his TV series, Louie, he reversed such roles. After leaving a bar with an especially aggressive woman, Laurie (played by Melissa Leo), that he had inadvertently met earlier, she performs fellatio on him in her pickup truck, then insists that he in turn perform cunnilingus on her. And he refuses. So, she attacks him physically with unabashed viciousness, mounts him, and he gives in to her demand. In other words, Laurie rapes Louie. No joke. To watch this scene was positively jaw-dropping. It served as a reminder of how often comedians--and their jaded audiences--find prison-rape jokes not only to be funny, but also, as in the case of pedophile Jerry Sandusky, an act of delayed justice resulting in laughter that morphs into applause. A N.Y. Post headline about pedophile Subway pitchman: “Enjoy a foot long in jail.”

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