Jerry Seinfeld Retracts Comments About Blaming the Left For Chilling Effect on Comedy: ‘I Did Say That. That’s Not True’
Jerry Seinfeld took some flack for blaming “the extreme left and PC crap” for stifling comedians — and during a recent podcast appearance, he retracted his comments.
While a guest on comedian Tom Papa’s Breaking Bread podcast, Seinfeld took a moment to take back those words, saying to Papa a bit past the 24:00 mark: “There were two things that, I have to say, I regret saying, and that I have to take back.” Papa pressed further, and Seinfeld explained:
So, here’s two things I regret saying and I have to take back: Number one — one of them I didn’t say, but people think I did, so, just the same. I said I don’t play colleges because the kids are too PC and you can’t do comedy for them. Not true. First of all, I never said it, but if you think I said it, it’s not true. I play colleges all the time. I have no problem with kids, performing for them. In fact, I was just at the University of Indiana, Kentucky, we did UT. I mean, I do colleges all the time. So, that perception that I don’t play colleges — wrong. I do, I play them all the time, and it’s not a problem.
The other thing, I did an interview with The New Yorker, and I said that the extreme left has suppressed the art of comedy. I did say that. That’s not true. It’s not true! … And the other thing I have said about this — if you’re Lindsey Vonn, if you’re a champion skier, you can put the gates anywhere you want on the mountain. She’s gonna make the gate, right? That’s comedy. Whatever the culture is, we make the gate. If you don’t make the gate, you’re out of the game. The game is “Where is the gate? How do I make the gate and get down the hill the way I want to?” So, does culture change, and are there things that I use to say that I can’t say, that everybody’s always moving? Yeah, but that’s the biggest, easiest target. You can’t say certain words, you know, whatever they are, versus about groups. So what? The accuracy of your observation has to be 100 times finer than that just to be a comedian.
He added: “So I don’t think, as I said, the ‘extreme left’ has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy. I’m taking that back now, officially. They have not.”
Watch the full interview at Tom Papa on YouTube.
