Comedian Daniel Tosh has been roundly criticized for appearing to advocate the gang rape of a heckler, but at least one fellow funnyman is bucking the trend and extending an olive branch of support to the controversial comic.

"Your show makes me laugh every time I watch it," Louis C.K. tweeted last night. "And you have pretty eyes."

Tosh, host of the popular Comedy Central Internet clip show Tosh.0 found himself on the wrong end of a firestorm yesterday after word spread via Tumblr that he had responded to a female heckler who found his rape jokes offensive by suggesting that it would be amusing to see the girl get raped by several audience members.

Tosh may well have been inspired by C.K., whose FX series Louie featured a very similar scene (left) in which a female heckler chides C.K. for his rape jokes and he retorts with a rape joke.

C.K. has gained something of a reputation for defending seemingly indefensible comics, having previously attempted to excuse Tracy Morgan's now-infamous homophobic rant.

Tosh, for his part, did issue a half-hearted apology for his comment, but claimed he was misquoted. He further qualified his retraction by saying he was making a point about how "there are awful things in the world but you can still make jokes about them."

Though the Tosh incident is being compared to Michael Richards' racist implosion, Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada said the analogy isn't there. "Michael Richards came from hatred," Masada told BuzzFeed. "Daniel Tosh did not - it was a joke and that's what comedians do."

[H/T: MeFi, tweet via @louisck]