Jerry Seinfeld is “officially … taking back” his comments about the “extreme left” ruining comedy.
Over the summer, Seinfeld accurately pointed out that “the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap and people worrying so much about offending other people” has been the death of a no-holds-barred comedy where there were no sacred cows.
“It used to be that you’d go home at the end of the day,” he complained, and “most people would go, ‘Oh, Cheers is on. Oh, M.A.S.H. is on. Oh, Mary Tyler Moore is on, All in the Family is on.’ You just expected [there will] be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight.”
“Well, guess what? Where is it? Where is it?” he added. It’s gone, disappeared by the Woke Nazis and P.C. Brownshirts.
Of course, he was right. This is why so much of television comedy is about sex now. Sex is one of the rare things left you are still allowed to joke about. Great comedy, comedy that matters provokes, offends, shocks, and makes you a little uncomfortable. Above all, it tells the truth about the world, the human condition, our culture, and society. That’s what Seinfeld’s own Seinfeld did, as did the sitcoms he listed, as did comedy legends like George Carlin, Dennis Miller, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Norm Macdonald, Eddie Murphy, Sam Kinison…
Well, as is always the case when one of these cultural elites accidentally tells the truth, Seinfeld is cucking out and taking it all back…
In his rather dumb explanation (appeasement makes you dumb), Seinfeld is now justifying fascism by comparing comedy to skiing:
If you’re Lindsay Vonn, if you’re a champion skier, you can put the gates anywhere you want on the mountain and she’s going to make the gate. That’s comedy. Whatever the culture is, we make the gate. You don’t make the gate, you’re out of the game. The game is where is the gate and how do I make the gate to get down the hill.
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. You can’t say certain words, whatever they are, 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’m taking that back now, officially.
Sorry, Jerry, but people are not “moving the gate.” Yes, the gate does move and it always will. The gate moves when tastes change. What’s happening today has nothing to do with moving a gate. Rather, gates are being closed, locked, and dragged off the slopes. A whole bunch of gates are no longer allowed. You can’t joke about this. You can’t mock that. Don’t be problematic. Don’t punch down. That’s sexist. That’s racist. That’s homophobic. That’s transphobic. That’s speciesist. That’s ableist. That’s a nice career you got there; be a shame if anything happened to it.
A moving gate is a good thing. Taste changing is a good thing. How many Take my wife, please jokes are there? Changing tastes keep comedians on their toes. No one outlawed Amos n’ Andy. The public moved on.
What’s happening today is not that. What’s happening today is cultural fascism and censorship. It’s the heckler’s veto, closing one gate after another.
Worse still, Seinfeld is defending an indefensible double standard; he’s standing up for a bigotry where Christians and men (especially white men) can be ridiculed, demeaned, and insulted, while everyone else is off limits and protected.
Listen, I’m going on 59 years old, so I’m well aware of what it feels like to have the culture leave you behind, and I’m fine with that. Such is life. This isn’t that. Leftists are bullying comedy and comedians for only one reason — to ensure comedy is less honest and to scare comedians into not telling certain inconvenient truths.
Seinfeld is a coward.
I’m now awarding all my delegates to Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.