Walking to and from work the other day, I greatly enjoyed listening to some comedy routines of Louis C.K. But I kept having bad feelings about some sections: his sharp, funny, useful insights about our society were back to back with ugly, bad-boy slurs that seemed self-indulgent, thoughtless, and cruel. Or were listeners supposed to see him playing a role of some kind, for some reason? I couldn't see it. Will he look back with pride at those ugly passages in his elder years or wish somebody had pushed back, criticized, and made him think harder about his craft? I don't know. For the artist, maybe those outbursts of too-familiar, hateful speech are the seed of something profound that we cannot yet visualize? I doubt it.