Worst Take of the Week: Giles Coren vs People Defending Louis CK

Welcome to Angus Take House – a weekly column in which I will be pitting two of the wildest takes the world’s great thinkers have rustled up against each other. This is your one-stop shop for the meatiest verdicts and saltiest angles on the world’s happenings. Go and grab a napkin – these juicy hot takes are fresh from the griddle.

TAKE #1:

What’s the story? Louis CK, Bill Hicks for Bernie Bros, has been accused of sexual misconduct by five women.

Reasonable take: Even if I liked his TV shows, I’m sure I – a man – will manage without him. I’m sure the sun will continue to rise and bless my face with its rays. I’m sure the moon will dip and anoint my nights with untroubled sleep.

Take and Ale Pie: But… I like Louis CK.

We go live now to your boyfriend: brow furrowed, desperately scrolling through his timeline in search of a counter-argument, a tenuous shred of evidence, anything that might absolve his hero. He’s tried the “deeply troubled” line, he’s dabbled in calling it a “witch hunt” – hell, he’s even tried the genuinely outrageous suggestion that CK should have employed sex workers instead of doing what he did to… real people?

Look, I’m not claiming superiority here. I’m not going to try and hover above the Louis CK-likers of this world. I was a self-important student in 2013. We all thought Louie was some sort of neo-realist Curb Your Enthusiasm. However, there comes a time when you have to take stock. If your reflexive desire in this situation is to talk about your own sadness at the situation, or worse still to try to defend him, probably best to stay off Twitter for the moment.

I know you’re upset, but the “this one really hurts” line isn’t doing you any favours. This hasn’t happened to you; this hasn’t happened to Louis CK; it has happened to the women who spoke out. Your “surprise” and “hurt” is part of the web that enables this sort of shit to carry on – men like CK use their work, their influence and their success to cover for them. So sack off a couple of Netflix specials and show some solidarity. Without you stanning over him in YouTube comments, Louis CK is just a gross bloke wanking in a hotel room.

TAKE #2:

What’s the story? Potentially having an overweight son.

Reasonable take: The bigger the son, the bigger the legend!

Low Fat Take Alternative: Hey fatty boom boom, have another cream cake! I have no son.

Giles Coren here – pictured above cowering in fear as his 20-ton son hurtles towards him like a projectile walrus – steps up to crown a week of terrible news and horrid opinions with, and I don’t say this lightly, the wildest take of the year. That take being: I hope my son doesn’t grow up to be a disgusting fat person. Which is: a bit much really, innit?

In his searing takedown of… his own children, Coren manages to insult no less than: overweight people, the mentally ill, Vanessa Feltz, James Corden, Diane Abbott, Christopher Biggins, Russell Grant, Paul Hollywood, Wagner, the middle-class, the working-class, the entire LGBTQI community, God, Americans, nuclear physicists and his son. His poor son.

Giles Coren is a sort of met-set Rod Liddle for rich people – the arse-end aristocratic spawn of generation shock-jock. You know when you read about Tories who have been caught setting fire to money in front of homeless people, or fox hunters who have told animal-rights activists they’d like to shag them? Coren is from that school of entitlement. People who play with dark thoughts about the disadvantaged like they’re bored millionaires kicking leather footballs around empty mansions.

He basically gets paid to swill scotch around a glass and say the most fucked up thing he can think of, which is a pretty good job for a cunt I suppose.

Prime cut: Coren. See you in therapy, dad!

@a_n_g_u_s