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Jerry Seinfeld claimed that comedy today is ruined in part by “extreme left & P.C. crap” in an interview, which has earned him serious backlash from those online.
Veteran comedian Jerry Seinfeld shared some thoughts about the state of comedy on television today that has sparked a hefty debate. Seinfeld sat down with journalist David Remnick for the New Yorker Radio Hour podcast to promote a Netflix movie about the origin of Pop-Tarts and was asked by Remnick about how he handles dealing with serious issues going on in the world. “Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it,” Seinfeld began.
“It used to be you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, ‘Oh, Cheers is on,” he continued. “‘Oh, M.A.S.H. is on, oh, Mary Tyler Moore is on. All in the Family is on.’ You just expected, there’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight. Well, guess what? Where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap and people worrying so much about offending other people. When you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups — ‘Here’s our thought about this joke’ — well, that’s the end of your comedy.”
Remnick asked the 70-year-old if he ever “had that experience”. Seinfeld simply replied, “Um, no.” When Remnick asked him about Seinfeld co-creator Larry David and the conclusion of his acclaimed HBO comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm,
the comic replied: “Larry was grandfathered in. He’s old enough so that — ‘I don’t have to observe those rules, because I started before you made those rules.’”
Seinfeld received some support from far-right figures such as Turning Point USA leader Benny Johnson and Dinesh D’Souza after the interview, The comments also earned Seinfeld a heavy amount of backlash online. “Jerry Seinfeld whining that there are no good sitcoms because of wokeness when his writing partner just ended one of the funniest sitcoms of all time which is loved by leftists,” wrote one user in a post on X, formerly Twitter who quoted platform owner Elon Musk’s post of a Seinfeld routine with the caption, “Make comedy great again!”
Check out the responses to Seinfeld’s comments below.