If you’re around my age or even a bit older and have indulged in binge-watching your favorite shows or movies from your youth, you’ve no doubt thought to yourself, “They couldn’t do that joke today,” more than once. Heck, you can look at content that’s merely 10, 15, or 20 years old and observe the same thing. It’s kind of a sad sentiment because some of the most iconic shows and movies that people still love to this day feature situations and jokes that just aren’t considered acceptable anymore.
It’s not exactly news that the woke left is responsible for this. But comedian Jerry Seinfeld is calling leftists out for it.
"Nothing really affects comedy," he said. "People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it. Used to be you would 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. Oh, ‘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?" Seinfeld said during an appearance on "The New Yorker Radio Hour."
And Seinfeld didn’t hold anything back in his criticism of the woke mob, which he blames for ruining comedy.
"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,” he said. "They move the gates, like in skiing. Culture, the gates are moving. Your job is to be agile and clever enough that wherever they put the gates, I’m gonna make the gate."
Seinfeld has generally not been one to flaunt his politics, even though he’s most certainly left-leaning. Still, his willingness to call out the woke left is refreshing. Ten years ago, during an interview with Buzzfeed, he mocked host Peter Laurie for asking about the lack of diversity on his sitcom ‘Seinfeld,’ which had gone off the air sixteen years earlier.
“I have noticed that most of the guests are mostly white males. Of twenty-two episodes…”
“Yeah, let’s get into that!” Seinfeld responded. “Take a look around, Peter,” Seinfeld continued, pointing to the audience. “What do you see? A lotta whitey! What’s going on here?”
“Oh, this really pi**es me off,” Seinfeld continued. Really pi**es me off!”
Seinfeld also said in 2015 that he doesn't perform on college campuses anymore because the younger generation is too politically correct.
It's nice to see someone like Jerry Seinfeld refuse to apologize for his show or his views on comedy. A couple of years ago, one of the co-creators of the show "Friends" apologized for the show's lack of diversity in the main cast.
“Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy,” Marta Kauffman said. “It’s painful looking at yourself in the mirror. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know better 25 years ago.”
Kauffman argued that the show failed to be more “inclusive” and that this was because she internalized systemic racism — which she only was able to see after the murder of George Floyd. She not only apologized for this, but Kauffman also decided to pay reparations for it by pledging $4 million to Brandeis University, her alma mater, to establish an endowed professorship in the school’s African and African American studies department.
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