Jerry Seinfeld thinks ‘the extreme left’ is killing comedy

The comedian has blamed the dearth of television comedy on political correctness and ‘people worrying so much about offending other people’.

Jerry Seinfeld observed that comedy fans are increasingly turning to stand-up comics to get their fix. Picture: Getty Images

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld has blamed the dearth of television comedy on “the extreme left.”

Seinfeld, 70, is in the midst of promoting his directorial debut, Unfrosted, a straight-to-Netflix film about the invention of the breakfast pastry Pop-Tarts, and he’s been using the press tour to mouth off about the state of Hollywood and comedy.

During an appearance on The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast, the Seinfeld star was asked how he thinks that “dark” world events — such as the Middle East conflict — affects comedy. “Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly,” he told host David Remnick. He went on to add that comedy fans “don’t get” classic sitcoms any more, because of political correctness.

Reflecting on the heyday of network television comedies in the 1970s and 80s with shows like M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore, and All in the Family, Seinfeld commented, “You just expected [there will] be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight. Well guess what? Where is it? Where is it?”

“This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people.”

Seinfeld observed that comedy fans are increasingly turning to stand-up comics to get their fix because “we 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. 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.

The comedian said that some jokes in Seinfeld wouldn’t be allowed to air today.

“With certain comedians now, people are having fun with them stepping over the line and us all laughing about it. But, again, it’s the standups 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 themself.”

The comedian further mentioned that there are jokes made in his show Seinfeld, which originally aired from 1989 to 1998, that wouldn’t fly today. “We did an episode in the nineties where Kramer decides to start a business of having homeless people pull rickshaws because, as he says, ‘They’re outside anyway’,” he said.

“Do you think I could get that episode on the air today? … We would write a different joke with Kramer and the rickshaw today. We wouldn’t do that joke. We’d come up with another joke. They move the gates like in the slalom. Culture — the gates are moving. Your job is to be agile and clever enough that, wherever they put the gates, I’m going to make the gate.”

In response to Seinfeld’s remarks, Tesla founder Elon Musk wrote on X, “Make comedy legal again!”

While actor John Hurley, a recurring cast member of Seinfeld, told Fox News, “We have lost our sense of humour.”

Hurley praised his former co-star as being one of the cleanest comics in the business. “Jerry more than anyone had a more accessible and clean platform of comedy.” He then went on to muse that comedy has been ruined by “a select group of those who know better”.

“The problem is that we have lost our ability to be silly. That’s a sad thing when you think about it,” he said. “Historically, ethnic groups would be searching to be included in the comic repertoire in our culture. Now there’s a select group of those who know better who feel as though they should be deprived of it. Our comedy is no longer silly; it’s not about that — it’s mocking and it’s sarcasm, and that’s not comedy.”

Last week, Seinfeld told GQ magazine that “the movie business is over” and that movies are no longer “the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy” they once were.

“Film doesn’t occupy the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy that it did for most of our lives. When a movie came out, if it was good, we all went to see it. We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked. Now we’re walking through a fire hose of water, just trying to see,” he explained.

Asked what in his opinion has replaced movies, Seinfeld said: “I would say confusion. Disorientation replaced the movie business. Everyone I know in show business, every day, is going, ‘What’s going on? How do you do this? What are we supposed to do now?’”

Unfrosted, a comedy about the race in the early 60s to create the Pop-Tart between rival cereal companies Kellogg’s and Post, stars Seinfeld and Melisss McCarthy as Kellogg’s executives, and Amy Schumer as the head of Post. It arrives on Netflix on May 3.