Daniel Tosh's rape joke controversy: Club owner speaks out

The Tumblr Cookies for Breakfast posted an account from a woman who attended the comic's show at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles recently, in which she said that Tosh made "some very generalizing, declarative statements about rape jokes always being funny." In response, she called out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!” Apparently Tosh's reaction was even more incendiary.

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…” and I, completely stunned and finding it hard to process what was happening but knowing i needed to get out of there, immediately nudged my friend, who was also completely stunned, and we high-tailed it out of there.

Tosh later followed up on Twitter with:

all the out of context misquotes aside, i'd like to sincerely apologize j.mp/PJ8bNs

— daniel tosh (@danieltosh) July 10, 2012

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. #deadbabies

— daniel tosh (@danieltosh) July 10, 2012

The owner of the Laugh Factory chain, however, told BuzzFeed that the exchange went differently.

[Jamie] 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."