Comic retracts comments on PC culture

Jerry Seinfeld has admitted he was wrong to say the ‘extreme left and PC crap’ was ruining comedy.

In April, the comic blamed so-called woke views for the dearth of great comedies on TV.

But in a new interview with fellow stand-up Tom Papa, the 70-year-old admitted: ‘It’s not true.’

‘I don’t think the extreme left has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy,’ he added on Papa’s Breaking Bread podcast. ‘I’m taking that back now officially.’

Seinfeld admitted he may not like the cultural landscape – but added: ‘It’s not my business to like or not like where the culture is at. It’s my business to make the gate.’

The last sentence was part of a longer analogy with skiing – saying that competitive skiers don’t get to choose where the gates are on the slope, they have to go through them wherever the are placed.’

He added that the things ‘Does culture change, and are there things I used to say that I can’t say…?  

‘Yeah, but that’s the biggest, 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 to just be a comedian.’ 

He said the backlash took him by surprise, explaining: ‘I did not know that people cared what comedians said – that literally came as news to me. 

‘Who the hell cares what a comedian thinks about anything? The fun thing about being a comedian, I thought, was "say whatever he hell you want", right? No one's listening, no one cares and if it gets a laugh you get to do another set tomorrow night.

‘So there are two things that I regret saying and that I have to take back, and I’m going to take them back right now.

‘Number 1 – I didn’t say, but people  think I said, so it’s just the same. I said I don’t pay colleges because the kids are too PC and you can’t do comedy for them. Not true. First of all, I never said it. But if you think I said it, it’s not true. I play colleges all the time. I have no problem with kids and performing for them.

‘The other thing [was] I did an interview with the New Yorker and I said the extreme left has suppressed the art of comedy. I did say that. That’s not true.’

What he said in that interview was: ‘It used to be, you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, "Oh, Cheers is on. Oh, MASH is on. Oh, Mary Tyler Moore is on. All in the Family is on."

‘You just expected, "There’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight." Well, guess what—where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people.

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.’

Published: 16 Oct 2024