Earlier this year, Jerry Seinfeld made some comments about the current state of comedy and blamed the “extreme left” for the demise of the TV sitcom. “This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people,” Seinfeld said. “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.” Seinfeld is now taking those comments back, telling his friend and fellow comedian Tom Papa on the Breaking Bread podcast that he regrets it.
“I said that the ‘extreme left’ has suppressed the art of comedy. I did say that. That’s not true,” Seinfeld said. “It’s not true. If you’re a champion skier, you can put the gates anywhere you want on the mountain and you’re going to make the gate. That’s comedy. 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 to get down the hill.“
Seinfeld continued, “Does culture change and are their things that I use to say that [I can’t because] people are always moving [the gate]? Yes, but that’s the biggest and easiest target. You can’t say certain words about groups. So what? The accuracy of your observation has to be 100 times finer than that just to be a comedian…So I don’t think, as I said, the ‘extreme left’ has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy.“
While Jerry Seinfeld accepted his past comments regarding the extreme left, he did shoot down claims that he would never perform at colleges because students have become too politically correct nowadays. “First of all, I never said it, but if you think I said it, it’s not true,” he said. “I play colleges all the time. I have no problem with kids, performing for them. I was just at the University of Indiana. I do colleges all the time.“
What do you think of Seinfeld’s comments?