Jerry Seinfeld Backtracks on Comments That ‘Extreme Left’ Is Killing Comedy
Professor Comedy takes it back! Jerry Seinfeld, who rarely turns down the chance to pontificate on what’s right and wrong in Capital-C Comedy, went on comic Tom Papa’s Breaking Bread podcast today to walk back his comments about contemporary humor’s demise.
His first admission of mistakes made along the way? “Here's the thing that I got wrong,” he told Papa. “I did not know that people care what comedians say. That literally came as news to me. Who the hell cares what a comedian thinks about anything?”
After referencing that page out of the sorry-you-took-it-the-wrong-way playbook, Seinfeld did offer a more genuine mea culpa — sort of. “There were two things that I have to say I regret,” he admitted, “and that I have to take back.”
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The first thing he takes back is something he claims he never said. It’s a pronouncement that “I didn’t say but people think I did so just the same — I said I don’t play colleges because the kids are too PC and you can’t do comedy for them,” Seinfeld explained. “Not true. 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, performing for them.”
Good on Seinfeld for cutting the kids some slack. But as far as never having said it? The Daily Beast dug up the receipts, finding the 2015 clip in which Seinfeld clearly states, “I don’t play colleges, but I hear a lot of people tell me don’t go near colleges. They’re so PC.”
Seinfeld does a better job of owning his second admission. “The other thing, I did an interview with the New Yorker, and I said that the extreme left has suppressed the art of comedy. I did say that,” he admitted with a you-got-me chuckle. “It’s not true.”
The comedian used the curious example of Olympian Lindsey Vonn to illustrate his newly enlightened thinking on the subject. “If you’re a champion skier, you can put the gates anywhere you want on the mountain. (Vonn) is going to make the gate. That’s comedy.”
Er, how so? “Whatever the culture is, we make the gate. You don’t make the gate, you’re out of the game. The game is: Where is the gate and how do I make the gate?”
Seinfeld clarified his point for the non-skiers in the audience. “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 a hundred times finer than that to just be a comedian.”
Despite his waffling, give Seinfeld credit for disavowing one damning accusation he made earlier this year. “I don’t think, as I said, the Extreme Left has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy. I’m taking that back now officially. They have not.”
Does the Extreme Left like all of Seinfeld’s jokes? “Maybe, maybe not. It’s not my business to like or not like where the culture is at,” he said. “It’s my business to make the gate.”