(Headline USA) Comedian Jerry Seinfeld blasted the “extreme Left” and “PC crap” this week for killing comedy.
The stand-up comedian and Seinfeld creator made the comment during an appearance on the “New Yorker Radio Hour” podcast, arguing that many of the comedic television shows Americans came to know and love no longer exist in the same form.
“It used to be, you would get home at the end of the day, and most people would say, ‘Oh, Cheers is on. M*A*S*H is on. Mary Tyler Moore is on. All in the Family is on,’” Seinfeld said.
“‘You just expected, ‘There’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight,’” he continued. “Well, guess what? Where is it?”
Seinfeld argued that comedy has been stifled by the Left’s social demands.
“This is the result of the extreme Left and PC crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people,” he explained. “When you write a script, and it goes into four or five different hands, committee groups—‘Here’s our thought about this joke’—well, that’s the end of your comedy.”
The comedian cited a joke in an episode of Seinfeld in which the character Kramer (portrayed by Michael Richards) decided to launch a business building rickshaws for homeless people because “they’re outside anyway.”
“Do you think I could get that episode on the air today?” Seinfeld asked. “We wouldn’t do that joke. We’d come up with another joke.”
Seinfeld has made headlines several times for confronting the woke mind virus. The famously Jewish entertainer was harassed by pro-Hamas activists during a stand-up show in Syracuse, N.Y. in December.
After he posted on his Instagram account a message of solidarity with Israel over the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, the activists ironically accused him of being “complicit in genocide.”
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And a 2014 clip recently resurfaced in which Seinfeld brusquely dismissed Buzzfeed editor Peter Lauria after the latter attempted to confront him about the lack of diversity in his Netflix series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
“Yeah, let’s get into that,” the agitated Seinfeld responded, according to the New York Post.
“Take a look around, Peter, what do you see? A lotta whitey! What’s going on here?” he continued. “Oh, this really pisses me off, but go ahead. Really pisses me off.”
The legendary sitcom star now says he plans to be a part of the movement pushing back on political correctness.
“They move the gates, like in skiing,” he said of the Left. “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.’”
He also predicted that stand-up comedy is the future of the genre since it isn’t as heavily “policed” by leftist elites.
Nonetheless, it can have its perils, as Richards can attest.
Seinfeld’s costar saw his career come to an abrupt halt in 2006 after reacting poorly to a heckler during a stand-up segment with a two-minute rant that included five repetitions of the n-word. A video of the ill-fated show quickly went viral.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
