Seinfeld Talks ‘Creepy P.C.’ Culture with Seth Meyers

Walter Ego

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Walter Ego
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CNN reported this week that Chris Rock and Larry the Cable Guy have also dropped college play dates because of flack from the PC brigades. It's not worth the hassle for some top comics.

Jerry Seinfeld made headlines earlier this week when he revealed in a radio interview that he no longer performs at college campuses because of the political correctness. While Seinfeld is known for being a clean comedian, who doesn’t use profanity in his routines and rarely delves into controversial topics, he thinks the obsession with being politically correct hurts comedy as a whole.

When Seinfeld stopped by Late Night on Tuesday night, host Seth Meyers engaged him on the topic along with New Yorker editor David Remnick, who was also on the show. Seinfeld held his line saying that there is a “creepy P.C. thing out there that really bothers” him, using an example of one of his jokes whose punchline is about a “gay French king.” He’s seemingly worried that it is becoming inappropriate for him to suggest that gay people “move their hands in a flourishing motion.” He feels that the lines of what is and is not politically correct are being constantly moved inwards, to the detriment of comedy.

http://time.com/3915889/jerry-seinfeld-pc-culture-late-night-seth-meyers/
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He looks good for a guy in his sixties, but yeah, I don't think his act has aged well. I remember seeing him in a roundtable youtube clip with Chris Rock, Louis CK, Ricky Gervais. A popular comment: "Three funny comedians and Jerry Seinfeld."
 
Jerry Seinfeld won't do college tours? That's probably quite a sacrifice for him since that's where the big money's at in comedy.
 
Also, nobody who dated a 17-year-old high school girl while in his late 30s gets to apply the word "creepy" to anything, ever.
 
I wish more comedians would perform at my college. But if I was a comedian, I sure as hell wouldn't.
 
Comedy often is inappropriate, that is sometimes at the heart of the comedy. The gold standard test for comedy is: "is it funny for your audience." To me it sounds that Seinfeld's comedy is no longer funny to the "college campuses" audiences.

Times change, either you change your material with the times or you stick with your old material and accept that some people may no longer find your act as funny as it was perceived to be 10, 20, or 30 years ago.

And that has nothing to do with the right's most successful strawman "PC".
 
Walter Ego said:
Seinfeld already has the "big money." He could retire now if he wants to.
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Sounds like he doesn't want to but also doesn't want to update his material to meet the changing world.

I suspect he's subject to that terrible curse of all very successful people - no one in their circle wants to tell the successful person they are wrong or they need to change. And since he is being told his act is a funny as ever by that circle the fault for it actually no longer being funny to some audiences has to be a fault with that audience.
 
IIRC he also handwaved all comedy outside of the most mainstream sources are garbage (specifically youtube).. but I don't remember his phrasing atm...

I heard about it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KagTiHo_T8k

I think it's one more piece of evidence that he isn't willing to change as culture does for comedy but tbh I don't really know much about him beyond these two stories and ofc his show which was great
 
Walter Ego said:
Seinfeld already has the "big money." He could retire now if he wants to.
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Of course, and obviously I was making a snide remark that [to my mind] doesn't require literal truth.

That said, there are multiple reasons for a comedian in his position not to tour colleges, chief among them what Darat has alluded to: Young people don't find his standup funny. I'm closer to his age than college age (though it's close) and I found that "gay French king" joke in the second link (which he chose himself as an example of a joke that either didn't go over or that he didn't think would go over) to be terrible. It had nothing to do with political correctness, it's just not in any way funny to me.

I also tend to find that, apart from a shrill minority, most people recognize that the absolute primary responsibility of a comedian is to be funny. They can get away with all sorts of things (like dating high school girls - sorry!) in their act as long as there are laughs in it. For example, some of Louis CK's standup verges on being offensive to me but he saves it by making me laugh like a loon. Jeff Dunham's racism (I remember a bit from his act where he used the word "raghead" without irony), on the other hand, is super gross to me because I don't find it amusing.

Michael Richards (at least in his famous, terrible incident): Wrong. Don Rickles: So wrong he's right. ;)
 
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And yet Comedy Central hasn't had this problem with their shows. The closest was #CancelColbert, which everyone agreed was stupid.

I mean, yes there is a "safe space" mentality that has spread on Tumblr and Twitter, but that floppy wrist joke just isn't good. What line is it supposed to be pushing?
 
Yeah, he claimed that he could feel people's ideologically motivated disagreement, but it seems at least as likely they just didn't think it was a funny joke.
Or a bit of both, there are plenty of jokes about stereotypes that get laughs, but the time for "haha, gay folks are swishy" as a punchline has passed.
 
Also one has to wonder do the "college campuses" organisers issue edicts on what one can or cannot say in a comedy act?
 
Darat said:
Comedy often is inappropriate, that is sometimes at the heart of the comedy. The gold standard test for comedy is: "is it funny for your audience." To me it sounds that Seinfeld's comedy is no longer funny to the "college campuses" audiences.

Times change, either you change your material with the times or you stick with your old material and accept that some people may no longer find your act as funny as it was perceived to be 10, 20, or 30 years ago.

And that has nothing to do with the right's most successful strawman "PC".
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Darat said:
Also one has to wonder do the "college campuses" organisers issue edicts on what one can or cannot say in a comedy act?
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I don't know about the U.S. but it happens in UK student unions all the time.
 
angrysoba said:
I don't know about the U.S. but it happens in UK student unions all the time.
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Really? Hard one to provide evidence for I know but any links? Back in my days (yeah OK they were still called gymnasiums back then) there would be a committee that would book the acts and usually they were up their own arses political activist types (I may or may not have been on such a committee) but didn't actually try to dictate what the act could or could not cover.
 
Darat said:
Really? Hard one to provide evidence for I know but any links? Back in my days (yeah OK they were still called gymnasiums back then) there would be a committee that would book the acts and usually they were up their own arses political activist types (I may or may not have been on such a committee) but didn't actually try to dictate what the act could or could not cover.
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Well, maybe not comedy acts so much - although there are a couple of examples - but student unions tend to ban a number of things such as the Sun, Jack Straw and other corrupting influences. The recent examples of comedians were Dapper Laughs and Kate Smurphwaite (sp?). In the U.S. I think Bill Maher was subject to attempts to have him banned.
 
angrysoba said:
Well, maybe not comedy acts so much - although there are a couple of examples - but student unions tend to ban a number of things such as the Sun, Jack Straw and other corrupting influences. The recent examples of comedians were Dapper Laughs and Kate Smurphwaite (sp?). In the U.S. I think Bill Maher was subject to attempts to have him banned.
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Oh yeah - totally agree about that kind of censorship going on all the time - always has done. The Sun has for decades always "been banned" in one student union cheap bar facility or an other. And of course if a student group should invite the wrong type of politician to a debate (wrong type of course means one of them and not one of us) then there will be mass protests.
 
I remember years back reading how student unions were booking Frankie Howerd and how this was all about post-modernist irony, the students understanding some deep truth in his "outdated act" and so on. It was even credited with reviving his career which had been on the wan for some time. What amused me was how they kept missing a simple point - which was he was still funny which is why they were booking him.
 
angrysoba said:
I don't know about the U.S. but it happens in UK student unions all the time.
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That is unfortunately true. It is amazing the turnaround since students in the 80's and 90's. Now you have student bodies acting like Mary Whitehouse wanting to ban this filth and essentially the establishment railing againt it. Who'd have thought!
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
And yet Comedy Central hasn't had this problem with their shows. The closest was #CancelColbert, which everyone agreed was stupid.

I mean, yes there is a "safe space" mentality that has spread on Tumblr and Twitter, but that floppy wrist joke just isn't good. What line is it supposed to be pushing?
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The stupidity line.
 
Darat said:
And that has nothing to do with the right's most successful strawman "PC".
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Actually that's exactly what it's about. It's not a strawman at all and it's not about the right (most comics are not conservative at all). College kids still think Seinfeld is funny, but there is a very vocal group that gets out there and pickets anything that doesn't conform to strict PC standards. Many other comics are saying the exact same thing.


Walter Ego said:
The PC left responds. ;)

Jerry Seinfeld—White Hetero Male Worth $820 Million—Thinks World Is Too 'PC'
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Pretty much all comedians complain about PC culture, it's not just the privileged rich white cis hetero male patriarchy. PC culture is constantly stifling comedy (or trying to).

Here's an article from a woman: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/lisa-lampanelli-how-political-correctness-450210

Who wants to make a bet that we can't find mexican, black, and gay comics saying the exact same thing?
 
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I bet nobody laughs at his wicked flapper jokes, or his hilarious take on Calvin Coolidge either.
 
I'll be damned. Seinfeld has managed to get his name in the press for the first time since 1998.
 
A lot of this problem with PC is not about comics making racial jokes or jokes about gay people, it's about the audience's complete failure to comprehend satire and immediately launching into SJW mode to use hot topic buzzwords that they don't even understand themselves. A couple examples were given in another article on this subject:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/10/living/seinfeld-comedy-colleges-feat/index.html

Another [Second City] sketch spoofing privilege shows three women working late in the office, complaining about how they can't meet their husbands for an expensive dinner or show. A cleaning lady joins them to commiserate, lamenting the horrors of her home country, where she was raped and brutalized.

The troupe performed the skit on a college campus recently, only to find out through Twitter that a member of the audience didn't appreciate the "rape joke,"
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This person totally missed the point of the joke, but because it mentioned rape, it immediately became a rape joke in her mind. No thought at all.

But, sometimes, it's as if students and comedians are speaking different languages.

Take comedian Chuck Nice. He told a bit about getting on his knees at the playground and giving his young daughter a dollar for swinging on a pole in a manner that reminded him of a stripper.

It was satire, he says, meant to show that the last thing he wanted was his daughter to become a stripper. The next day, he received a letter telling him he was not welcome back to the institution, he said.

"That's what comedians are talking about when they say college campuses have become places where sensitivity has run amok," he said. "There are tons of stories like that."
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ThunderChunky said:
Here's an article from a woman: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/lisa-lampanelli-how-political-correctness-450210
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In some ways, maybe all this PC crap is good for comedy. A few years back, you hadda get naked onstage and set your pubic hair on fire to get noticed in the media. Now, if you happen to mention that, statistically, Asian people are slightly more at risk to be involved in a car accident, you’ll have Wolf Blitzer climbing through your basement window in a Navy Seal outfit to get an interview with you.
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I'd pay to see that. :D
 
Wait- Seinfeld is HETERO ????

I bet he sure does the Gay French King thing well.

But if I had $820m, I'd do or not do whatever I wanted. Maybe even become an Anti-PC warrior.
 
I wonder if they would be complaining about college venues if they weren't already booked to the max at casinos and sports arenas? So yeah, no need to put up with the PC crowd any how, so why bother.

Larry the Cable guy played here a decade ago. 13,000 seat arena, $70 seat. What was his personal take? Or I think I mean, his corporation's?
 
Darat said:
Comedy often is inappropriate, that is sometimes at the heart of the comedy. The gold standard test for comedy is: "is it funny for your audience." To me it sounds that Seinfeld's comedy is no longer funny to the "college campuses" audiences.

Times change, either you change your material with the times or you stick with your old material and accept that some people may no longer find your act as funny as it was perceived to be 10, 20, or 30 years ago.

And that has nothing to do with the right's most successful strawman "PC".
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Times do change.
I was poking around YouTube and ended up watching some Dean Martin roasts from the 1970s. They really liked the racist humor back then and were not afraid to use racial and ethnic slurs in their acts. Pretty cringeworthy. Although the non-racist material had a few good moments.
 
Sienfeld needs to check his hetronormative cis white male privilege and realise that he isn't welcome. His very presence is oppressive and makes non gender binary queerkin polydemisexual women profoundly uncomfortable
 
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Edx said:
Sienfeld needs to check his hetronormative cis white male privilege and realise that he isn't welcome. His very presence is oppressive and makes non gender binary queerkin polydemisexual women profoundly uncomfortable
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That's 'womyn', you piece of scum. And 'Seinfeld'. Are you some kind of holocaust denier?
 
Porpoise of Life said:
That's 'womyn', you piece of scum. And 'Seinfeld'. Are you some kind of holocaust denier?
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I find your use of "scum" as an insult extremely offensive to all the scumkin out there battling everyday to be recognised as people too.
 
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