Rob McElhenney Roasts Jerry Seinfeld’s Mindless Cancel Culture Take

Jerry Seinfeld says that the “extreme left” killed comedy on television and that Seinfeld would be too edgy for today’s P.C. audience – you know, the same viewers who made It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia one of the most popular shows in the world while its main characters continue to torture a homeless priest.

Every time an over-the-hump comedian makes the same complaints about how comedy is “canceled,” everyone is too sensitive and offensive humor has been banned from the mainstream, the entirety of the massive It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fandom collectively reminds whichever medium-talent comic blamed their recent career slow-down on the audience that they’ve never written a single joke that approached the level of line-crossing that Rob McElhenney and his gang have reached in 162-straight episodes and counting. After all, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia isn’t just the most transgressive comedy show on television – it’s the longest-running live-action sitcom in all of TV history. 

So, when the man who made his massive fortune off of jokes about Tic-tacs and airplane peanuts claimed that TV comedy is dead and political correctness killed it, McElhenney gave Seinfeld’s bizarre claims an ocular pat down and asked him, “You sure about that?”

The idea that Seinfeld was too edgy and boundary-pushing to survive in today's hyper-sensitive comedy environment is already laughable, but the example that Seinfeld used during his recent interview for The New Yorker for a joke that he made back in the day that wouldn't fly in 2024 is especially hilarious when you realize that this is what Seinfeld thinks controversial comedy looks like. According to the sitcom legend, the Seinfeld Season 9 episode “The Bookstore” wouldn't fly on TV today because of Kramer's scheme to start a rickshaw taxi business that employs homeless cart-pullers because "they’re outside anyway.” 

Meanwhile, the life of one Matthew “Rickety Cricket” Mara has been plagued by the reprehensible actions of the main characters in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia who have turned the former Catholic priest into a disfigured, disgraced drug addict and “street rat" whose every appearance in the show features more morally objectionable behavior both towards and by him than anything Kramer ever cooked up on Seinfeld. Hell, in this most recent season, Cricket's even become a pimp who sells the bodies of boys on the street for cocaine money.

Seinfeld likes to think that, during his long-since-ended peak as the king of TV comedy, he was more edgy and audacious than any of today's sitcom stars, but Kramer's Rickshaw pullers never had to come neck-wound-to-face with a fully aroused street dog.