Talk about a joke that bombed.
Comedian Daniel Tosh has apologized after a Friday stand-up show in Los Angeles prompted one audience member to express public outrage over a joke he made about gang rape.
"All the out-of-context misquotes aside, I'd like to sincerely apologize," Tosh, 37, tweeted Tuesday, along with a link to the Tumblr post made by the female attendee at the Laugh Factory show. "The point I was making before I was heckled is there are awful things in the world but you can still make jokes about them."
According to the audience member, "Tosh [started] making some very generalizing, declarative statements about rape jokes always being funny, how can a rape joke not be funny, rape is hilarious."
Feeling "provoked," the woman stood up to Tosh and reportedly yelled, "Actually, rape jokes are never funny!"
Then, the woman says, Tosh heckled her right back. "After I called out to him, Tosh paused for a moment. Then, he says, 'Wouldn't it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…'" she recounted on her blog, adding that she immediately sought out the club's manager, who did not refund her money, but instead offered free tickets for another show.
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"I should probably add that having to basically flee while Tosh was enthusing about how hilarious it would be if I was gang-raped in that small, claustrophobic room was pretty viscerally terrifying and threatening all the same, even if the actual scenario was unlikely to take place," the blogger wrote. "The suggestion of it is violent enough and was meant to put me in my place."
Tosh has hosted his own Comedy Central show, Tosh.0, since 2009.
