Jerry Seinfeld absolves "extreme left" of responsibility for killing comedy
What’s the deal with the “extreme left” killing comedy? Jerry Seinfeld thinks there is none
Photo by Manny Carabel (Getty Images)
Jerry Seinfeld has a new observation: The “extreme left” isn’t killing comedy. After making public his humiliating opinion that the “extreme left and P.C. crap and people worrying so much about offending other people” has kept comedy from television screens, Seinfeld offers a mea culpa in the form of regret. Appearing on Tom Papa’s Breaking Bread podcast, Seinfeld admitted “it’s not true” that the “extreme left” is suppressing comedy.
Well, not at first. To start the conversation, he admitted to a sudden surprise that “anyone cares” what comedians think, a take so laughable at this stage of the game that we’d appreciate him and others stop sharing it. Even Seinfeld cares what comedians say. To wit: he’d like to “take back” two things he said during the Unfrosted press tour that he “regrets.”
“I said that the ‘extreme left’ has suppressed the art of comedy. I did say that. That’s not true,” Seinfeld said. “It’s not true.”
Likening the job of a comedian to that of a “champion skier,” Seinfeld says that society “can put the gate anywhere on the mountain and [comedians are] going to make the gate” because if you don’t, “you’re out of the game.” Perhaps it’s never too late to learn that if the audience isn’t laughing, maybe the joke is the problem, not the audience.
“Does culture change, and are there things that I use to say that [I can’t because] people are always moving [the gate]? Yes, but that’s the biggest and easiest target,” Seinfeld continued. “You can’t say certain words about groups. So what? The accuracy of your observation has to be 100 times finer than that just to be a comedian[…]So I don’t think, as I said, the ‘extreme left’ has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy. I am taking that back now, officially.”
Seinfeld has long criticized a “creepy P.C. thing” ruining comedy. In 2015, he complained about audiences feeling uncomfortable hearing his “gay French king” joke because it ascribes a stereotype to a marginalized group. Describing it on Late Night With Seth Meyers, he said he could feel audiences tense up by suggesting “that a gay person moves their hands in a flourishing motion.”
Seinfeld also cleared the air regarding college audiences being too sensitive for his hot takes on breakfast foods. In 2015, days before his stop at Meyers, Seinfeld said that he doesn’t play colleges but heard they’re too P.C. for comedy. “I hear it all the time. I don’t play colleges, but I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don’t go near colleges. They’re so P.C.[…] “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice.’ They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”
Anyway, he plays “colleges all the time” now and has determined that the kids are alright.
“First of all, I never said it, but if you think I said it, it’s not true, “he said.” I play colleges all the time. I have no problem with kids, performing for them. I was just at the University of Indiana. I do colleges all the time.”
We presume those same audiences are looking forward to him taking back his Bari Weiss “cultural hierarchy” interview and supporting Israel’s ongoing decimation of Gaza. But, hey, the man only has the capacity for one regret at a time.