Jerry Seinfeld, a Democrat, is drawing praise from the right after commenting that political correctness from the “extreme left” is “policing” modern sitcoms, and has led to their demise.
The anti-woke crowd is embracing his theory, with Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart and social media agitators like Dinesh D’Souza, The Blaze, Kyle Becker, Benny Johnson and others essentially declaring, “He’s right.”
To get their comedy now, people are “going to see standup comics because we are not policed by anyone,” Seinfeld continued, “The audience polices us. We know when we’re off track.”
The comments were made during an interview with the New Yorker while promoting his new Netflix film Unfrosted — a film about Pop-Tarts.
Seinfeld’s own comedy is far from incendiary. Aside from the typical jokes about race or women in Seinfeld that were considered acceptable in the 80s and 90s, his comedy is generally profanity and controversy-free. In at least one of his stand-up shows from the past decade (an earlier time he might agree was a less “PC” than today), he spends a chunk of his set making jokes about pop-tarts.
Daily Beast
Commentary from The Independent also blasted Seinfeld’s take.
What’s the deal with wokeness?” Jerry Seinfeld probably whispers to himself while reclining in his bathtub of money. Over the course of his 40-plus years in showbusiness, the billionaire observational comedian and actor – whose eponymous Nineties sitcom Seinfeld is the blueprint for every dark comedy about miserable people that came after it – has embodied a number of different guises. The stand-up. The sitcom star. The maker of Bee Movie. And now he’s embraced another persona, the kind that truthfully must be resisted by all: the late-in-life scold.
His humour has never had a particular bite to it – his stock has been low-key observations, told cannily and tightly. Politics have been a no-no. Bad language, too. No one has ever watched a Jerry Seinfeld stand-up special and had to clutch their pearls in horror.
Seinfeld is giving interviews to promote his new film, by the way. Unfrosted, hitting Netflix on Friday, is about the birth of the popular American breakfast snack known as the Pop-Tart. I’m guessing, based on his comments, it’ll be a real, two-middle-fingers-up-to-political-correctness hootenanny, right? Anything less won’t suffice.
Today happens to be Jerry’s 70th birthday. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.