Jerry Seinfeld Weighs In On The Steep Decline Of Comedy: “This Is The Result Of The Extreme Left And PC Crap”
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld has slammed both wokeness and the Left for interfering with comedy to the point of policing jokes that could potentially end up hurting the feelings of the easily offended.
In a recent interview with The New Yorker Radio Hour’s David Remnick, while promoting his new film Unfrosted, Seinfeld talked about comedy and how it’s been negatively impacted by woke culture and political correctness.
“Tell me how you deal with the way that the world, or the serious aspects of the world, weigh on you and how that affects comedy,” Remnick asked Seinfeld, to which the comedian replied, “Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it.”
He then asserted, “It used to be… you would go home at the end of the day [and] most people would go, “Oh, Cheers is on. Oh, M*A*S*H is on. Oh, [The Mary Tyler Moore Show] 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?”
“This is the result of the extreme Left and PC crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people. Now they’re going to see stand-up comics, because we’re not policed by anyone. The audience polices us, we know when we’re off track. We know instantly, and we adjust to it. Instantly.”
“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.”
“We did an episode of [Seinfeld] in the ’90s where Kramer decides to start a business of having homeless pull rickshaw becase, as he says, ‘they’re outside any way,'” as he rhetorically inquired. “Do you think I could get that episode on the air today?”
“We would write a different joke with Kramer and the rickshaw, we wouldn’t do that joke. We come up with another joke. They move the gates like in skiing. Cultural gates are moving. Your job is to be agile and clever enough that wherever they put the gate, I’m going to make the gate.”
When asked whether he believed political correctness is on its way out, Seinfeld simply says, “Slightly,” noting that he sees “a slight movement,” and explaining that he sees this “With certain comedians now, people are having fun with them stepping over the line and us all laughing about it.”
“But again, it’s the stand-ups that really have the freedom to do it because no one else gets the blame if it doesn’t go down well. He or she can take all the blame themself,” he argued.
Earlier in the interview, Seinfeld went on to explain how he and some of his fellow comedy writers come up with ideas for jokes, explaining, “The first 20 minutes I do a 20-minute warm up of just nonsense. ‘What did you do last night, what did you eat? What did you watch?’ And you just start laughing and having fun; this is how comedy is done. You can’t have anybody in the room that doesn’t have the same brain disaffect.”
When encouraged to elaborate, Seinfeld explained, “Regular people need courtesies and respect to converse and socialize with them. You can’t say hostile things to them to their face but comedians love that,” as Remnick asks whether comedians take offense, to which Seinfeld simply said ‘no’ and added, “The offense is if it wasn’t funny. That’s the offense.”
The comedian reiterates that “as long as it’s funny,” the other comedian won’t take offense at the joke, noting, “Which usually… insulting someone to the face is pretty funny. But we don’t think that there is much value in everything else in life.”
“Everything else in life is pretty much a nuisance, but if you can get a laugh out of it is worth it — that’s the way you go through life,” he explained. “You only care about laughing and being funny.”
During an interview with fellow comedian David Spade, Seinfeld also mentioned how he feels about other people meddling with comedy, which is one of the reasons he vouches for stand-up specials and hasn’t really committed to any TV series or movies besides the Seinfeld sitcom and Bee Movie.
“I don’t like other people’s material, first of all,” Seinfeld said in response to Spade asking him why he hasn’t been involved in movies as an actor, adding, “And that’s why, you know, I was fine doing [Seinfeld], but after that I wasn’t looking.”
He explained, “I really feel like I need to control the words too, otherwise it won’t be funny. I can’t do other people’s material and make it funny. And plus, I can’t get over the incredible racket of stand-up comedy.”
“So I say ‘yes’ to every gig, because I love to go out and do the gig. And if I don’t have to deal with other people, and other crap. You know, I can’t deal with all the paraphernalia of other things.”
Like Seinfeld, comedian Rob Schneider also believe that wokeness is on its last legs. In a recent interview with Fox & Friends First, the comedian agreed with co-host Todd Piro about wokeness being “close to collapse,” putting the blame on Democrats for incessantly advocating for censorship.
“What [wokeness] is… is entrenched power, and right now the Democrats are the entrenched power,” Schneider asserted. “Democrats suddenly turned into not being the party of the people. Now they’re the party of forever wars, and now they’re the party of censorship.”
Specifically talking about his anti-woke, pro-free speech book You can Do It: Speak Your Mind, America, the comedian proceeded to explain, “I really wanted to go after what I feel is the attack on free speech, and I also wanted to make fun of people and unfortunately, you know, show business has been a big part of this censorship.”
“If you do speak out of line, and if you dare to not be part of the one-party system, you’re out and you’re out forever,” Schneider added. “So, it’s nice to see guys like Shane Gillis and guys like me still getting on and doing fun stuff, and I really think the turnaround is happening.”
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