Jerry Seinfeld regrets saying ruined “far-left” comedy

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Jerry Seinfeld is retracting comments he made earlier this year in which he claimed that political correctness and “PC crap” ruined comedy.

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In an interview with The New Yorker to promote his new Netflix film Thawed In April, Seinfeld, 70, predicted that sitcoms would go extinct because comedians are too worried about offending viewers at home.

“Nothing really affects the comedy. People always need that. They need it so much and they can’t get it,” Seinfeld said. “Before, you would come home at the end of the day and most people would say, 'Oh, Health is activated. Oh, M*A*S*H is activated. Oh, (THE) Mary Tyler Moore (Show) is enabled. All in the family it's on.' You just hoped, 'There's going to be some funny things we get to watch on TV tonight.' Well, guess what – where is it? This is the result of the far left, the PC crap, and people who care so much about offending other people,” he told David Remnick.

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But the comedian is now saying that regrets blaming the “far left” for ruining the mood.

“I did an interview with The New Yorkerand I said that the far left has suppressed the art of comedy,” Seinfeld said in Breaking the Bread with Tom Papa. “I said that. That's not true. It's not true.

Seinfeld told Dad that “there were two things I should say, I regret saying, and I should take it back.”

“One of them, I didn't say, but people think I did it the same way. I said I don't play in colleges because the kids are too PC and you can't do comedy for them,” he said.

Seinfeld claimed he never said that and assured Papa's audience that he plays at colleges “all the time.”

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At the beginning of this year, Seinfeld said entertainment-seeking audiences “will now see stand-up comics because we’re not policed ​​by anyone.”

“The public polices us. We know when we are off track. We know instantly and we adapt to it instantly. But when you write a script and it goes to four or five different hands, committees, groups – 'Here's our take on this joke.' Well, that’s the end of your comedy,” he said.

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Seinfeld expanded on his comments in his chat with Papa. “If you’re Lindsey Vonn, if you’re a champion skier, you can put the gates anywhere you want on the mountain. She will make the gate. This is comedy,” he said.

“Whatever the culture, we make the gate. If you don't make it to the gate, you are out of the game. The game is where is the gate and how do I get the gate to go down the hill the way I want?

Seinfeld recognized that times change and what was funny a decade ago may not be funny now, but it's the comedian's job to see that and adjust their performance accordingly.

“Culture changes and there are things that I said that I can’t say that everyone is always on the move? Yes, but that's the biggest and easiest target. You can't say certain words, you know, whatever they are, about groups – so what? The precision of your observation has to be 100 times more accurate than that just to be a comedian…So I don't believe, as I said, that the 'far left' has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy. I'm officially withdrawing this now. They didn’t do that.”

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Seinfeld also addressed statements he made during his Thawed press tour in which he spoke about the disappearance the time of “dominant masculinity” in the 1960s in conversation with Bari Weiss on his program Honestly in May.

“That was another thing I said, that I missed dominant masculinity, which is probably not the best phrase for what I was actually saying: I miss big personalities,” he clarified to Dad. “That’s what I missed and I mentioned Muhammad Ali, Sean Connery and Howard Cosell. You know. I mean, because those were all the people I wanted to be as a kid. I wanted to be, I wanted to have that kind of authority and style. It was really a style thing.”

Following Seinfeld's original comments, his longtime TV co-star Julia Louis-Dreyfus dismissed his comments, maintaining that having an “antenna over sensitivities is not a bad thing.”

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“If you look back at comedy and drama from, say, 30 years ago, through today’s lens, you might find bits and pieces that don’t age well. And I think having an antenna about sensitivities is not a bad thing,” said Louis-Dreyfus, 63, in an interview with the New York Times. “I believe that being aware of certain sensitivities is not a bad thing, I don't know how else to say it.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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