Louis C.K. Explains Why He Pulled Out Of Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner Hosting Duties

A few weeks ago during the great “There Are Sexist People Who Aren’t Rush Limbaugh, No Seriously, Please Stop Talking About Rush Limbaugh” Quest of 2012, the mighty Crosshairs of Outrage somehow found their way past Bill Maher and onto comedian and tv star/writer/director/everything Louis C.K.. C.K. had been asked to host the Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner when some people remembered, “Hey, didn’t he once say something mean about Sarah Palin?” and Greta van Susteren called for a boycott. C.K. then dropped out of the gig. He’s now explained his reasoning.

While at a presentation party for his show Louie‘s next season, C.K. spoke to The Wrap about why he felt the need to pull out. After saying that he found silencing anyone no matter their political beliefs “silly and reactionary,” he explained that he just couldn’t care enough to fight for the position.

From The Wrap:

“C.K. (an abbreviation of his last name, Szekely) is talking about who should talk – everyone, is his basic answer – in response to a question about Greta Van Susteren. Earlier this month, at the height of the outrage over Rush Limbaugh calling a college student a slut, Susteren trotted out six-month old tweets from C.K. in which he said ridiculously filthy and over-the-top things about Sarah Palin. Van Susteren was appalled, just appalled, that this ‘pig’ – C.K. – was the host of the upcoming Radio and Television Correspondents’ Assn. Dinner in Washington.

C.K. shrugged it off, and the dinner, too. He didn’t much care about the gig, and didn’t want a fight. So he just bailed out, never mentioned Susteren by name or the reason for his exit.

‘I wasn’t going to stand there and defend something I din’t really feel like doing anyway,’ he told TheWrap. ‘I wasn’t that excited about it, I didn’t want to cause them problems, I didn’t think it was what they invited when they hired me. And I didn’t think about it much. It was like one morning I woke up, I heard there was static. I’m in production, so I have no reason to be in conflict with anybody right now.'”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you telling me that there’s someone on our TVs that doesn’t want to be involved in a ginned up debate purely for the sake of political points or cheap headlines? I am absolutely stunned.

(h/t Splitsider)

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.