Comedian Jerry Seinfeld is now regretting blaming the far left for destroying comedy on television, a comment he made earlier this year.
Seinfeld said political correctness is killing comedy in April and now is taking those comments back, per Fox News.
“It used to be that you’d go home at the end of the day, 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,” Seinfeld, 70, said in April.
“Well, guess what? Where is it? Where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap and people worrying so much about offending other people,” he said on the New Yorker’s Radio Hour.
“Now they’re going to see stand-up comics because they are not policed by anyone. The audience polices us. We know when we’re off track. We know instantly. And we adjust to it instantly,” Seinfeld continued. “But 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.”
Seinfeld has had time to rethink those viewpoints in the months that followed.
Seinfeld said he wants to “take [them] back” in an appearance on Tom Papa’s “Breaking Bread” podcast this week.
“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.”
“If you’re a champion skier, you can put the gates anywhere you want on the mountain and [you’re] going to make the gate. That’s comedy,” Seinfeld said. “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 used to say that I can’t say because people are always moving [the gate]? Yes, but that’s the biggest and easiest target,” Seinfeld said.
“You can’t say certain words about groups. So what?” he said. “The accuracy of your observation has to be 100 times finer than that to just 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. They have not,” he continued.
His former “Seinfeld” co-star, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, disputed his remarks about political correctness and comedy.
“If you look back on comedy and drama both, let’s say 30 years ago, through the lens of today, you might find bits and pieces that don’t age well. And I think to have an antenna about sensitivities is not a bad thing,” Louis-Dreyfus previously said in an interview with the New York Times.
“It doesn’t mean that all comedy goes out the window as a result. When I hear people starting to complain about political correctness – and I understand why people might push back on it – but to me that’s a red flag because it sometimes means something else,” the actress said. “I believe being aware of certain sensitivities is not a bad thing.”
