On his cable show, he staged an infamous gag in which he encouraged men to secretly videotape women while the men snuck up on them and “lightly touch their stomachs”.

http://jezebel.com/lightly-touching-womans-belly/

Yes – he encouraged men to literally physically assault women by surprise and post videos of it. Dozens of them did so, because he told them to (and, obviously, because they were at least as big a misogynist asshole as him). Here, illegal physical assault – unwanted touching – is part of his act. He explicitly told people to do it, for real, and then enabled them by featuring the videos on his show. In the comedy club, he only told people to think about assaulting a woman, but apparently for him the line between viciously traumatizing a woman by threat and actually assaulting a woman physically is just something he chooses for comedic effect.

Ultimately, of course, Tosh’s comedy is pretty crappy art, and doesn’t mean much of anything. That’s why nobody makes a fuss 99 times out of 100 when he makes a rape joke. I explained what’s different about this 100th time in my post.

John, Coach: Have a nice day.

this is also why i think it was hilarious when activist groups were protesting eminem’s albums and howard stern’s show. its exactly what they wanted to happen. bigger ratings and more album sales just make the protesters look stupid…

That said, art is fully of horrifying things. As a Jew, watching a Holocaust movie can make me sick. A rape victim seeing “The Accused” might be horrified. And so forth. Daniel Tosh is not a rapist. I’m sure we all agree that Daniel Tosh is not in favor of rape, does not think rape is a good thing, does not think rape is actually funny, etc. but when he’s onstage, he’s not Daniel Tosh, reasonably sane and moral being, he’s “Daniel Tosh”, the legendary asshole trying to be as offensive as possible. He’s giving an artistic performance (and let’s not debate the quality of it, whether he’s a true artist or hack, etc., as that’s besides the point) that is not designed to showcase how he really feels and thinks about things, but rather he uses humor (again, whether you think it’s funny or not…it’s at least attempted humor) to express something. Condemning him for makign rape jokes is like condemning an actor for playing a rapist or an author for writing a novel about a rapist.

People watch horror movies because they want to get scared. People go to see insult or edgy comics because they want to have boundaries pushed. If she wandered into a horror movie mistakenly thinking it was a comedy and got scared, then that’s unfortunate, but it’s not the movie’s fault. And if she didn’t know what Tosh’s act was like and got offended, then that’s unfortunate, but it’s not his fault. And by stepping out of line and attacking him for doing what it is he was supposed to be doing, what the other people there were paying and expecting him to do…how’s he supposed to react to that? Maybe like less of an asshole, of course. saying “it would be funny if you got raped” was a dumb thing to say and i’m sure he regrets it. but in that context, do you expect much different?

I think CK is wrong. You think I’m wrong. Fine. But I’d far rather talk about the substance of your disagreements with me than about whether the fact that I express opinions on CK’s wrongness makes me a prick. Because that’s not a conversation that’s going anywhere ever.