Comedian Jerry Seinfeld had a blunt assessment of how the “extreme Left” is wrecking comedy in television programming.
“It used to be that you’d go home at the end of the day, most people would go, ‘Oh, Cheers is on. Oh, M.A.S.H. is on. Oh, [The] Mary Tyler Moore [Show] is on, All in the Family is on.’ You just expected [there would] be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight,” Seinfeld said on a recent episode of the New Yorker’s Radio Hour.
He added, “Well, guess what? Where is it? Where is it? This is the result of the extreme Left and [politically correct] crap and people worrying so much about offending other people.”
The 70-year-old stand-up comedian told the podcast that people need comedy right now “so badly” but they “don’t get it.”
Seinfeld explained how audiences are flocking to stand-up comedians because they can be independent in their comedy without a committee of television executives dissecting every joke. He said the audience gives them instant feedback.
“Now they’re going to see stand-up comics because they are not policed by anyone. The audience polices us. We know when we’re off track. We know instantly. And we adjust to it instantly,” Seinfeld said. “But 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.”
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He added, “It’s the stand-ups that really have the freedom to do it because no one else gets the blame if it doesn’t go down well. He or she can take all the blame.”
In 2015, Seinfeld made comments that were reported to be dismissive of performing on college campuses because of political correctness. In a podcast interview with fellow comedian Ricky Gervais in 2018, he clarified the widely reported story, noting that those were not his words. Seinfeld stated that he had merely been repeating a story about what a comedian had told him regarding losing interest in playing at colleges but that he was open to doing stand-up anywhere.