Thanks for that video. A great story well told! And yeah, not everyone is willing to sell out their values, especially when it comes to doing things that hurt other people.
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Exploring the nuances of racial privilege can make for good and even thoughtful comedic fodder when done right, but that was rarely if ever how Seinfeld approached the subject on stage or in his show.
When Jerry said “I like Chinese people” and got called out for making a racist comment, that could have been a jumping-off point for a funny and interesting conversation about “model minorities” and other forms of racism. Instead it was spun as “boy people sure are overly sensitive these days.”
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The thing is, the whole show was framed as if everyone else was “the problem,” instead of the 4 self-absorbed asshats that were the focus of the series.
IIRC at the show’s finale they were all sentenced to do time together, basically for being horrible, shallow-ass people.
Maybe that was Larry David’s actual opinion of Seinfeld as a person?
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I could see some parts of the actual show being questionable in the modern day (the episode with the cigar store indian certainly comes to mind, even if the whole point was arguably what a culturally insensitive self-absorbed asshole Seinfeld was being), but my point was more that Seinfeld only had a show for a few years and most of his career has been as a stand-up comedian. None of that material ever seemed dependent on politically incorrect humor, so I don’t see how “wokeness” affects his life or work in any significant way. It seems like his brand of humor becoming old and cliche is the real issue and he’s chosen very unwisely in trying to find a scapegoat.
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It’s more what he’s gained: millions and millions of dollars and lots of TV airtime. With rare exceptions, wealth and fame are toxic to good comedy.
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Ah, I see.
I never watched his actual stand up; only the tv series in syndication, back in the day when I didn’t have cable and nothing else was on.
Agreed emphatically.
Even when said comedians don’t become toxic, bigoted assholes, they still often lose the edge they had in their ‘hungry years.’
Eddie Murphy and more recently Kevin Hart come to mind.
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Yeah. Funny (as in not funny, heh!) how those two things (like privilege more generally) so often inspire a sense that, ironically enough, you’re “the real victim these days.”
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This was on in the 90s… there was plenty of discussions on racism of this very kind back then. It’s not some ancient period where white people didn’t understand racism existed and was, you know, BAD… 
“We didn’t know any better” is rarely a good excuse on this kind of thing, because people DID know better. It’s well beyond time to stop trotting that shit out as an excuse for shitty behavior.
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Vonnegut has quote “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
And comedians are oft playing dumb assholes, to the point of bouffon.
But the goal is to entertain the audience, and if they don’t like it, you have to change.
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The wierd thing is I’ve never really seen Seinfeld’s comedy as particularly downpunchy, racially or otherwise. I know that my perspective might make me oblivious, but really his humour has always been fairly mild and even anti-racist etc. Which makes me very curious what he thinks he is missing out on?
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One recent-ish example was an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee in which Seinfeld and Eddie Murphy make fun of local homeless people while driving a $400K automobile. The “joke” was something to the effect of “have you ever considered that when you see two homeless people talking, that means one of them is giving advice to the other?”
I can’t find the direct link to the clip that doesn’t go to Elon’s Nazi site but you can Google it.
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Yeah, but is that REAL bigoted!?! Also, how could they “know better” all the way back in checks notes 2019… Not like we REALLY understood the problems facing the homeless back then ya know!!! /s
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It disappoints me how many comedians complain about this. They don’t like that they can’t resort to cheap stereotypes anymore. It’s simply laziness and a lack of creativity. It’s time for Jerry Seinfeld and his ilk take their bad jokes and their millions of dollars and go away.
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Let’s not get caught up in his conversation flow i.e" extreme left wing, PC crap" but try to bear down on what he is actually saying. Comedy via committee isn’t going to be funny. If it was hten there would have been an opening act at each moaist struggle session. Or you can call him a boomer (and me probably) and point out that lots of funny stuff is on and not being cancelled. Of course he never did mention cancel culture, just unfunny by committee.
Most TV sitcoms, including the ones he mentions and even his own, are “comedy by committee”, AKA a writer’s room. Some work, most don’t. Seinfeld is a Boomer but what he really is is embarrassingly out of touch and upset that white cis-het men supposedly don’t call the shots and set the tone in writer’s rooms anymore.
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I would argue that even the lone standup writing their own material is still comedy via committee. A set is made and taken to a open mic/small club/etc and tested out. If the material bombs, jokes are adjusted and changed. An audience reaction is still a committee.
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This is the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people.
Is that not what he actually said? He’s repeating the tired old line that comedy sucks because comedians are stifled by not wanting to offend and blames that tired old boogeyman “political correctness”.
Modern sensibilities just don’t have a lot of tolerance or appetite for humor that “punches down”. You can be plenty offensive and funny without exploiting those who are marginalized.
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Uh, he literally blames “the extreme left wing” for supposedly ensuring funny stuff doesn’t get on the air anymore and has moaned for years that comedians have a harder time on college campuses because they’re worried about offending people now. So yes, he’s been very vocal about so-called “cancel culture.”
Of course as @gracchus points out there’s never been a time in history when comedians didn’t have to get scripted comedy approved by some kind of network higher-ups to get on TV. If anything network censorship used to be much more constraining than it is today.
Take a look at I Love Lucy as a case study. At the time it aired Lucille Ball had to fight guidelines against interracial relationships on TV just so her real-life husband could appear with her on the show. You think the network bigwigs would have let her air episodes about the Red Scare? Civil rights? Sex? Hell, for most of the show Lucy and Ricky couldn’t even sleep in the same bed.
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