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Jerry Seinfeld is unhappy with the state of television comedy.
During a podcast appearance for The New Yorker Radio HourSeinfeld didn’t hesitate to share his opinion on the pitfalls of making laugh-out-loud television today.
“Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it, they need it so much and they don’t understand it,” Seinfeld, 70, told New Yorker editor-in-chief David Remnick.
The comedian went on to say “modern computer junk” and the “extreme left” kept audiences from turning to comedy TV shows like his former sitcom. Seinfeldwhich operated between 1989 and 1998.
“Back in the day, you’d come home at the end of the day and most people would say, ‘Oh, for life worker. crush worker. Mary Tyler Moore worker. All in the family on,'” lamented Seinfeld. “You just expected, ‘There’s going to be some funny stuff we can see on TV tonight.'” Well guess what? Where is it?”
Seinfeld said that television is no longer funny as a “result of the extreme left, and computer crap, and people who are so afraid of hurting other people.”
“When you write a script and it goes through four or five different hands, committees, groups, your comedy comes,” he said.
The comedian said the unfunny state of television has turned audiences into stand-up comics like him “because we’re not policed by anybody.”
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“The crowd polices us. We know when we’re off track, we know right away, and we adjust to it,” Seinfeld said.
When Remnick countered Seinfeld’s claim about TV sitcoms, citing the popularity of curb your enthusiasm, Seinfeld said the Larry David-led show is unusual because of David’s decades-long career. Curb your enthusiasm finished its 12th and final season on HBO in early April, and Seinfeld made a guest appearance in the finale.
“Larry was a grandfather,” Seinfeld said. “He’s old enough to say, ‘I don’t have to follow these rules, because I started before you made these rules.'”
Seinfeld said David, 76, would not be able to write jokes like these Curb your enthusiasm – Seinfeld specifically points to that of the show Palestinian chicken Chapter – If he was a young and developing comic.
For fear of ruffling feathers, Seinfeld claimed that television studios rejected the creation of new sitcoms altogether.
For Seinfeld, comedy today is about flexibility. He quoted A Seinfeld An episode where Kramer hires a group of homeless men to pull rickshaws through town.
“We wouldn’t do that joke with Kramer and the rickshaws today. We’ll make up another joke,” Seinfeld said. “They move the goals, like in slalom (skiing). The goals move. Your job is to be quick and smart enough that wherever they put the goal, you will make the goal.”
Seinfeld is currently on a press tour to promote his Netflix directorial debut not frozen, detailing the fictional origin of the Pop-Tart. He will also star in the film, alongside Melissa McCarthy, Christian Slater, Jim Gaffigan, Hugh Grant and Amy Schumer.
This press tour isn’t the only time Seinfeld has discussed his struggles writing comedy in the modern age.
In 2015, Seinfeld (among other comedians) said he avoided performing stand-up on college campuses because the students were too politically correct. He worried that students would misinterpret his jokes as racist or sexist.
Seinfeld’s critical stance on comedy and political correctness has won him credit among far-right internet influencers — as well as billionaire Elon Musk, who shared audio from Seinfeld’s New York podcast and wrote, “Make comedy legal again!”
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