No moment in popular culture is more charged and anxious than when a stand-up comic battles with a heckler. It usually ends with a knockout insult and a huge laugh. But when things turn ugly, as happened three times this month, it can expose the gap between comedians and patrons who see this clash very differently. In a now notorious incident, the loutish comic Daniel Tosh directed an off-the-cuff rape joke at a woman challenging him at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles. The details of the joke are in dispute, but a post from an anonymous audience member set off the controversy, describing how Tosh's premise -- that rape jokes were funny -- earned a rebuke from a woman shouting, "Rape...
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