Jerry Seinfeld Blames Death of TV Comedy on ‘Extreme Left and PC Crap’
In decades past, according to cranky comedy curmudgeon Jerry Seinfeld, America could get its comedy fix by simply flipping on its televisions. “People always need (comedy). They need it so badly and they don't get it,” he told The New Yorker Radio Hour. “It used to be you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, ‘Oh, Cheers is on. Oh, M*A*S*H is on. Oh, Mary Tyler Moore is on, All in the Family's on.’”
But what’s on prime time now? Not much and Seinfeld is frustrated. “Where is it? Where is it?” he says, unable to find a 2024 version of Friends or, heck, Seinfeld to satisfy his comedy cravings. “This Is the result of the extreme left and PC crap. And people worrying so much about offending other people.”
Forget the new realities of streaming that have obliterated nearly all the old broadcast network norms. Forget YouTube and TikTok stealing comedy eyeballs. The calculated efforts of Extreme Left, Inc., says Seinfeld, have kept a modern-day Welcome Back, Kotter or Mr. Belvidere from reaching American homes.
But all is not lost, he says. While the PC Crap Commandos have strangled sitcoms, they have yet to find a way to muzzle comedians like Jerry Seinfeld. These days, people “are going to see stand-up comics because we are not policed by anyone,” he boasts. “The audience polices us. We know when we're off track, we know instantly and we adjust to it instantly. But when you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups, (they come back with) ‘Here's our thought about this joke.’ Well, that's the end of your comedy.”
Sounds terrible! New Yorker Radio Hour’s David Remnick asked the comic if he had that experience on Seinfeld. “Um,” said Jerry as he tried to recall. “No.”
Then surely old pal Larry David has felt the sting of these new realities. Actually, “Larry was grandfathered in,” Seinfeld says. “He's old enough that ‘I don’t have to observe those rules because I started before you made those rules.’”
So who exactly is being silenced? Seinfeld imagines his own show would be the victim if it had to play by today’s PC regulations. “We did an episode of (Seinfeld) in the ’90s where Kramer decides to start a business of having homeless pull rickshaws because, as he says, ‘They’re outside anyway.’”
That’s the kind of real comedy Seinfeld could get away with before America lost its sense of humor. But he’s conveniently forgetting ditched Seinfeld installments like “The Bet,” otherwise known as the Elaine-buys-a-gun episode. As revealed when the discarded script leaked last week, “The Bet” didn’t get made thanks to the extreme-left protests of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the episode’s intended director Tom Cherones. “In my opinion, guns aren’t funny,” Cherones chided on a DVD extra. “I remember it didn’t get a lot of laughs,” JLD said last year on The Last Laugh podcast.
In the unproduced script, it’s Jerry who argues that Elaine should rethink her plans. “Elaine, if you buy a gun you’re just perpetuating the violence!” he says. “You’re as bad as the criminal!” It’s too bad the show’s inner censors didn’t allow Jerry’s woke message on Must-See TV.
