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Jerry Seinfeld took back comments he made earlier this year about the “extreme left” killing comedy, adding that he regretted saying so.
The Seinfeld creator said in an interview in April that the “extreme left” killed comedy and that there was no “funny stuff” to watch on TV anymore because of it.
“You just expected there’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight. Well, guess what—where is it?” he told The New Yorker.
“This is the result of the extreme left and PC c*** and people worrying so much about offending other people…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.”
Speaking on Tom Papa’s Breaking Bread podcast, however, Seinfeld claimed that he regretted saying what he did about political correctness killing comedy because “it’s not true”.
“I said that the ‘extreme left’ has suppressed the art of comedy. I did say that. That is not true. It is not true,” he said. “Does culture change and are there things that I used 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?” he said.
“I don’t think the extreme left has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy. I’m taking that back now officially. They have not. Do you like it? Maybe, maybe not. It’s not my business to like or not like where the culture is at.”
After Seinfeld’s comments in April, several comedians, including his Seinfeld co-star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, pushed back. “There’s a lot of talk about how comics can’t be funny now,” Louis-Dreyfus said on the podcast On With Kara Swisher. “I think that’s bulls***. Physical comedy and intellectual comedy and political comedy, I think, has never been more interesting, because there’s so much to do.”
Comedian and actor Stephen Merchant, who co-created The Office, suggested that while there had “always” been policing of comedy, people on the political right were the enforcers of standards.
“It feels like it’s the left that’s doing it now, and it’s allowed the right to become the arbiters of free speech. Which does feel like quite a significant shift,” he said.
Merchant added that comedians were “more cautious” about their work “because you don’t want to spend weeks on Twitter trying to justify a joke you were just experimenting with. Because putting out the fires is exhausting”.
The Independent’s Adam White argued that Seinfeld was wrong in his initial claim. “If it feels as if there’s been a dearth of new comedy on TV lately, it’s probably to do with our modern-day viewing habits, which favour comforting nostalgia over new ideas,” White wrote.
“Seinfeld is such a bizarre person to launch into this kind of polemic. His humour has never had a particular bite to it – his stock has been low-key observations, told cannily and tightly. Politics have been a no-no. Bad language, too. No one has ever watched a Jerry Seinfeld stand-up special and had to clutch their pearls in horror.”
Seinfeld also clarified the claim that he had said he wouldn’t perform at colleges because students demanded political correctness.
“First of all, I never said it, but if you think I said it, it’s not true. I play colleges all the time,” he said on the podcast.
“I have no problem with kids, performing for them. I was just at the University of Indiana, Kentucky, we did UT – I do colleges all the time.”
The comedian was heckled by a protester at a gig in May and saw dozens of students walk out of his commencement speech at Duke University over his support for Israel through its war in Gaza.
In a conversation with host Bari Weiss on her podcast Honestly, Seinfeld said at the time: “I love that these young people, they’re trying to get engaged with politics. We have to just correct their aim a little bit. They don’t seem to understand that, as comedians, we really don’t control anything.”
