Comedy Club Owner Says Daniel Tosh Incident Has Been Misunderstood

An anonymous audience member at Tosh’s recent Laugh Factory show accused him of making a gang-rape joke at her expense, prompting widespread Internet outrage.

Source: blogs.knoxnews.com

The owner of the Laugh Factory comedy club chain where Daniel Tosh allegedly made a rape joke that offended a female audience member (and that went viral on Tumblr) tells BuzzFeed Shift that the woman’s account is not entirely accurate. According to Jamie Masada, who was in the room at the club in Hollywood, California, on Friday night, Tosh didn’t make a rape joke at the expense of this audience member, who remains anonymous (the author of the Tumblr post who related the story has not responded to request for comment).

Masada says Tosh asked the audience, “What you guys want to talk about?” After someone in the front said “rape,” a woman in the audience started screaming, “No, rape is painful, don’t talk about it.” Then, Masada says, “Daniel came in, and he said, ‘Well it sounds like she’s been raped by five guys’ — something like that. I really didn’t hear properly.”

He continues, “It was a comment — it wasn’t a joke at the expense of this girl.”

Masada says that the woman then sat through the rest of Tosh’s set — which received a standing ovation — before complaining to the manager about Tosh’s joke. The manager apologized, Masada says, and offered her tickets to come back to the Laugh Factory for another performance, which she accepted.

“If you’re offended why would you take a couple tickets to come back to the club again?” he says. “If you were offended, how about the rest of the audience” — 280 people total — “who’s giving a standing ovation?”

Masada has known Daniel Tosh for 10 years and describes him as an “edgy comic” but also “one of the nicest people in the world.”

“I know his character,” Masada continues. “He was trying to make everybody laugh. He was so sweet to find out one person was insulted to apologize about it.” (Tosh tweeted his apologies about the incident to his more than six million followers this afternoon.)

Unlike Michael Richards’s famous racist tirade at the Laugh Factory in 2006, Masada says Tosh’s rape comment wasn’t hateful. “Michael Richards came from hatred. Daniel Tosh did not — it was a joke and that’s what comedians do.”

Having been in business 32 years, Masada says audience members have been getting offended by the shows at a surprisingly high rate lately. He’s recently deflected complaints from customers offended by comics’ jokes about Barack Obama and another customer offended that a comic told him he was “retaining pizza” after he said he was “retaining water.”

“If this is hurtful — this is a comedy club. They don’t mean any harm,” Masada says. “If you don’t want to get insulted don’t go to comedy clubs.”