Jerry Seinfeld’s attack on politically correct comedy quotas drew a scathing response from a black comedienne who confesses she’s never watched an entire episode of the comic’s landmark sitcom.
Nicole Byer, whose credits include work on MTV and with the comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade, took offense at Seinfeld’s response to a question asking why more people of color don’t appear on his online series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
People think it’s the census or something,” he said. “This has gotta represent the actual pie chart of America? Who cares? Funny is the world that I live in. You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m not interested. I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that..It’s more about PC nonsense than ‘Are you making us laugh or not?
Byer used her Tumblr page to fire up this response:
Diversity doesn’t matter in comedy or anywhere else in the world. The entertainment world shouldn’t reflect the real world.What a f**king weird thing to say that you don’t care about diversity. Why wouldn’t you want to enrich your comedy by having a different point of view to make your comedy better? I think funny to Jerry is white… I think I would be less offended if he straight up just said I have white people on my web series because I like white people my comedy is for white people and I AM WHITE PEOPLE! Then put on his hood and yelled WHITE POWER and burned a cross on stage. JK if he did the last part I might be offended… but not really. Theres no shame in liking what you like. Like that Duck Dynasty dude saying he doesn’t like gays… well cool, now I never have to watch a show that I’ve never had an interest in watching. Know what I mean? This is the same… I’ve never seen a full episode of Seinfeld and I doubt I will… his funny isn’t my cup of vodka… and I cant seem to forgive his buddy for screaming the N word to an audience of people who paid to watch him “just be funny.”
Gawker scribe Kyle Chayka twisted Seinfeld’s words out of context in this response to the comedian’s thought process:
…the comic “seems to suggest that any comedian who is not a white male is also not funny, though he’s also likely fed up with the amount of bad comedy he’s been forced to sit through in his (waning) career.