I notice Aziz Ansari isn't having trouble drawing college crowds. Maybe different audiences just like different things. They're not obligated to like you, and if they don't it's not the same thing as oppression, as conservatives seem to think. The kids have not been "unwittingly drawn into a cult they cannot escape." They are young, they like what they like, and they think old people smell.
UPDATE. Hey, remember that crazy shrink or psycho-sociomologist or whatever she is Stella Morabito from The Federalist? She has another the-PC-end-is-near rant ("Ignorance was cultivated in the schools through political correctness and squashing free debate," etc. skree), and in it she acknowledges that the peecee people do in fact laugh, but at bad things that it's bad to laugh at:
I think the reason there is so little “comedy” that’s funny today is the genre itself has been hijacked by the humorless PC crowd. Why is their humor so unamusing and so dependent upon mean-spiritedness?Also, the music they listen to these days, you can't even make out the lyrics, and what's with those baggy pants. Increasingly it looks like this whole P.C. boo-hoo is just a weaponized version of Those Were The Days.
UPDATE 2. Enjoy some libertarian Mad Libs from the Fonzie of Freedom at Reason:
To be sure, San Diego State student Anthony Berteaux also insists in his letter that, hey, he likes edgy and funny folks such as Amy Schumer and Louis C.K. and George Carlin and that Seinfeld should "Offend the fuck out of college students. Provoke the fuck out of me. We'll thank you for it later."
But this doesn't just ignore the chill that is already upon campuses when lefty feminist profs like Laura Kipnis gets dragged into Title IX hearings about sex on campus in The Chronicle of Higher Education...If you don't laugh at this AARP member's jokes, Laura Kipnis goes to the gas!
...viewings of films as mainstream and honored as American Sniper are replaced by Paddington, and students call for trigger warnings before reading The Great Gatsby.Regular readers know how sick I am of all the culture-war bullshit, but Fonzie has it exactly backwards. College students saying they don't like your act isn't oppression. If the kids want a different leisure time activity than American Sniper, which made gazillions of dollars without their help, who gives a fuck? You don't have a Constitutional right to student activity board funds. Incursions into the curriculum and the rights of professors, on the other hand, are about the new consumerist approach to education, whereby students are regarded as customers to be satisfied rather than seekers after knowledge; "social justice" is just the MacGuffin. The bad ideas you should worry about are the ones that created this system, not some teenager's insufficiently deep understanding of racism.
61 year old comedian upset because 20-somethings don't connect with his humor.
ReplyDeleteWhy this is literally something that has never occurred before in the history of comedy! Perhaps he should get some tips from Jay Leno and David Letterman on how they stayed so relevant with the kids these days...
Jerry Seinfeld is in his sixties. His show went off the air 17 years ago. It's no more relevant to these kids today than "I love Lucy" was to me in 1977, when it had been off the air the same amount of time. He shouldn't be surprised that teenagers don't think he's funny. He should be surprised if they even know who he is.
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of world do we live in, where a comedian can't tell jokes about victims of child molestation or sexism or racism? Don't people know that others' pain is funny? That being a white male means you can get very, very rich by pandering to other rich white males?
ReplyDeleteWomen were disposable in Seinfeld, minorities were invisible, the poor were props. Seinfeld made over 3/4 of a billion dollars that way. Yet like everyone else he blames young adults for refusing to shut up about their victimization.
Which they don't.
ReplyDelete"And you can't even perform at a comedy club and shout 'Nigger' at a heckler anymore. I mean, what is the deal with that?"
ReplyDeleteThey should bring back Rich Little. His impressions of Lyndon Johnson and Lester B Pearson never get old.
ReplyDeleteI'm still in my 60s (until January...) but I always thought Seinfeld sucked. Never found him funny in the least.
ReplyDeleteRelevant point: I don't think Lenny Bruce is funny because his comedy is about as distant from me as Seinfeld's is from Today's Youth. It doesn't really translate those near generational gaps. And, lo! the heavens shook but did not fall.
ReplyDeleteObservational humor in particular has this problem because it has not yet stood the test of time. The quotidian from a generation past isn't relevant, but is not so distant that is can stand for a curiosity or a universal experience.
"If one should dare break from the PC protocol, they [sic] are forced back into compliance or ejected from the group, like the morlocks in the Time Machine by HG Wells."
ReplyDeleteFirst, they came for the morlocks....
That's the thing. I'm young, and I find some old classic Hollywood movie comedies funny, especially some of the better screwball romances (and I got a kick out of Charlie Chaplin movies when I was a kid). But I never found Seinfeld funny either (same goes for Jerry Lewis). Sometimes it's not just a matter of age, but just either the material doesn't date well or I don't think the comedian is so great.
ReplyDeleteHey, Jerry, guess what? I took a look around on some real estate websites, and you know that little one-bedroom walk-up from your show? If some bright-eyed young person thought that place looked pretty cool and wanted to live there, it'd set them back $2500 a month. $30k a year. Which means that young person (if they want to eat, clothe themselves, and pay their taxes) had better be drawing a salary somewhere around $100,000. Minimum. Do they have student loans? They'd better be making a lot more. Maybe that's why kids today don't think they have anything much in common with you.
ReplyDeleteEgads - whoever it is you're quoting, that's some weapons-grade missing of the point Wells was trying to make about Morlocks and Eloi.
ReplyDelete"What's the deal with real estate prices these days?"
ReplyDeleteHell, I'm almost 50, and I never thought he was funny. Everyone seemed to put Seinfeld up on some sort of pedestal (including members of my own family), but I couldn't stand it. With rare exceptions, I simply cannot like a TV show that has characters I thoroughly and completely dislike (it's also why I gave up on Married With Children after the first few seasons, when the Bundys morphed from being merely dysfunctional to actively hostile towards each other).
ReplyDeleteHere's one of Seinfeld's specific complaints:
ReplyDelete“I could imagine a time where people would say that’s offensive to suggest that a gay person moves their hands in a flourishing notion, and you need to apologize. There’s a creepy, PC thing out there that really bothers me.”
I guess he doesn't understand that what's considered funny changes over time. For an illustration, see the "Me so solly" moment in The Simpsons that one time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yKrI8NPul0).
Broad, gay stereotypes used to be considered funny. So did broad Asian stereotypes. So did broad Italian stereotypes. But as society became more diverse and less tolerant of open bigotry, audiences began rejecting jokes based on racial stereotypes. Now, the only people who can get away with that kind of humor are comics who belong to the groups they're satirizing. I guess you could define that as political correctness if you have to label it. It is what it is.
You can't tell people what they should think is funny. You can try, I guess. Let me know how that works for you, Jerry.
I didn't actively despise Seinfeld until I saw him do a "what is comedy" roundtable. He's a remarkably unfunny person. Don Rickles without the warmth.
ReplyDeleteIs it just me who found his complaining about audiences, I dunno, very unSeinfeldian?
ReplyDeleteI've always found that when it came to him, people either loved his stuff, or didn't really get it. But it was fundamentally light-touch humor, not meant to be taken over-seriously. For him to be openly worrying that an audience might take certain things too seriously, is he forgetting what made so much of his material legendary?
I agree (younger, but still during the era). whiny, pompous New York Yuppie Hipsters too full of themselves.
ReplyDeleteI agree 100% w/r/t Seinfeld.
ReplyDeleteI still love and always loved Married With Children, but that may be because of my own shortcomings.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but how then does Modern Family thrive? To my eye, they do a pretty good job of mocking stereotypes, maybe what matters is that they are in fact mocking the stereotype... I'm not sure though, but whatever their magic ingredient is, they get away with some fantastically un-PC jokes almost every episode.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't even actually say the kids don't like him. He doesn't play colleges any more, probably because he's 61 and worth eight hundred million dollars.
ReplyDeleteHe said he heard from other, unnamed people that the kids don't like THEM. And that his 14-year-old daughter called him sexist once. This is perhaps not the most compelling evidence of the liberal fascist revolution.
The Philadelphia Story is still funny. The Thin Man series is still funny.
ReplyDeleteYou can ignore the dated or racist jokes because there's a whole other dimension of writing, acting and timing that makes it worth getting past. The only drag is they're all ghosts.
Agreed. I have always hated that show because I hated the people IN the show. Friends have tried to explain to me that was part of charm. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has awful characters too, but it's funny.
ReplyDeleteI could imagine a time
ReplyDeleteSo what he's upset about is, so far as he can tell, imaginary?
I never liked Seinfeld much, but I always felt that was in large part because, not being familiar enough with New York at the time, I didn't get a lot of the jokes. My wife still loves it though. (I'd liken it to 30 Rock, which I think is great, but many, many others simply don't get).
ReplyDeleteThe humor is I think I'm using the term correctly, sui generis. Which is great while it lasts, but you gotta figure it won't last forever and Seinfeld is well past it's sell-by date.
Poor comedy, that needy waif of pop culture, is getting bullied. “Laughter is supposed to be a unifying force,” AO Scott wrote, “a leveler of distinctions and a healer of divisions. But it often seems to be just as divisive as anything else in our angry and polarized climate. Can’t we just all have a good time together?”
ReplyDeleteIf you see comedy as a progressive kindergarten, or a family outing to the zoo, uh, sure. But that leveling process? It’s not about healing, really. It often reflects some vicious and ugly divisions in our country that many comedians and audience members don’t see as anywhere close to level—or even agree among themselves, for that matter, that leveling is the needful social remedy in question. Comedy isn’t supposed to be anything, except what the comedian tries to make it—harmless, mean, political, dirty, dumb. You wouldn’t say that music or fiction are “supposed” to be anything; so why do we saddle all comedy with a curative democratic mission? Too often we view comedy as a craft, a service brought to us by cheerful comfort-workers, more than the work of serious artists. Thus, when they don’t comfort us, we want to complain to the manager.
[snip]
Americans have always told comedians to shut up, and American comedians, to their credit, have rarely done it. They’ve been shut up at times, yes: fired from shows, shouted down, banned from clubs etc. But that’s not what’s happening today. No one banned Seinfeld and Rock from doing campus shows; instead, they opted out, because that’s not their audience anymore. That’s just show business. Last year, students uninvited Maher from a commencement speech appearance, and he was then re-invited by the chancellor, hours later. He continues to offend people weekly, and often daily, on Twitter. No one was more surprised to be booed during Vietnam than Bob Hope. It shouldn’t surprise anyone if one day, and maybe one day soon, the same thing happens to Amy Schumer or John Oliver.
[snip]
Comedy is more often than not a populist business, so why are we surprised when the response it engenders in its audience is equally populist? What we could use is a better vocabulary to criticize and answer comedians. Is every comment about race, gender, or sexuality we don’t agree with a sure sign the comedian is a racist or bigot whose career needs to end? While watching a comedian in a club, do we really need to shout them down in the middle of a set because we fear that it’s heading somewhere that we won’t like? In short, a little patience, a little of the tolerance we insist that our comedians demonstrate, would be welcome from the audience, too.
via
Isn't it possible, if not inevitable, that what Seinfeld and his audience used to think were surprising (and pleasingly true) insights, are common knowledge to today's yoots? I loved the show--especially the interconnections between the three or four sub-plots--but nothing ages faster than standup and "observations" about types.
ReplyDeleteStandup--unless it's absurdist (Robin W., Andy Kauffman, Steve Martin) or surreal (Stephen Wright)--is always commentary on mores. There's no way, in this day and a., that sort of thing can be expected to translate from one generation to another. Life changes too fast. The only cohort of youngs not committed to overthrowing and snickering at (not with) their elders, are the hateful young-fogey conservatives, who want nothing more than a pat on the head and a monthly check from Daddy.
I know it is really hard for Daniel Tosh to make ends meet. Because, you know, PC.
ReplyDeleteAnd that his 14-year-old daughter called him sexist once.
ReplyDeleteTo add insult to injury it was in front of his 18 year old wife!
Just spitballing, but maybe the reason kids aren't into Seinfeld isn't because they're a buncha no-good PC fascists but because, coming of age after his heyday, all the stuff that was pioneering when he started out seems cliche as all hell.
ReplyDeleteI have a theory the characters we truly hate past the point of capacity to enjoy the show are the ones we recognize. The average person probably has had to deal with far more George Costanzas than Frank Reynoldses.
ReplyDeleteOld Man Yells at Crowd.
ReplyDeleteIn a just world the Baffler would be the most read magazine in the US and Vox would vanish in a puff of smoke.
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure it's anything to do with having something in common with, in this case, Seinfeld as much as it's the style of humor (and the topics) is more attuned with his own demographic. Seinfeld's regular audiences wouldn't get a Carly Rae Jepson reference, but "the kids" certainly would.
ReplyDeleteHey, Jerry! Call me, maybe.
Sunny is also the rare show that can land a smart, aware rape joke.
ReplyDeleteI think it's reaching a bit to say kids don't dig him any more. His show is in reruns everywhere and much more popular with college kids than, say, Louie or Girls. Like his buddy Chris Rock, he could draw crowds on college campuses, he just doesn't want to because he thinks he could get in trouble for saying something, and he doesn't need the money.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the response has been that Seinfeld is just angry because he's old and irrelevant, but that seems like wishful thinking.
Rock knows as well as anyone that "offensive" comedy has its dangers - he stopped doing the "niggaz vs. black people" bit because so many racists took it out of context and used it as evidence that Chris Rock agrees with them. But I don't think he and Seinfeld are wrong that there's an expectation on colleges that comedians will, basically, lie about the world they see if it doesn't match what they've been taught.
It's not linear, I don't think. You could never get away with making "Blazing Saddles" today but you could never have made that Amy Schumer Friday Night Lights sketch in 1974 either.
ReplyDeleteBecause of the implications.
ReplyDeleteYou're funnier than Seinfeld.
ReplyDeleteFor a guy who won't play colleges, he sure knows what's going on there!
ReplyDeleteOne can sense the whiff of Chris Rock on this complaint. Don't get me wrong, I love Rock's old stand-up. I was one of 12 people to see "The Five" and love it. But, Chris is cynical nowadays. He laments PC wherever he goes. I imagine it's the true believer in him, worn down by Hollywood superficiality. he always thought he was gonna be Eddie with a social message and, instead he's an aging black Jerry Seinfled.
I think Chris influences Jerry, because he's smarter than Seinfled and Jerry knows it (their Comedians in Cars getting Coffee episode was wonderful). In the end, Chris is annoyed at "PC" and he mentions it.
PS the answer about Louis CK was typical Seinfled. The idea that Louis CK doesn't care what people think is pretty humorous. He cares what the right people think desperately, whereas Seinfeld, the sociopath, really could give a crap. He just want adulation and cash
And Chris Rock can get away with a routine about the difference between black people and niggers, but Louis CK had probably better not try it.
ReplyDeleteThat's sums it up perfectly. It's painful to watch black comic characters in movies from the 1930s. Think Willie Best and Charlie Chan.
ReplyDeleteThere's a reason Amos and Andy isn't still in production.
ReplyDeleteDid Jerry ever defend Michael Richards? i don't remember him doing that
ReplyDeleteSo now we're treated to comedy club trigger warnings from an aspiring mediocrity like Lindy West? And then come a flurry of trained seal comments about the need for pain free comedy and hapless declarations that I'm too young 'n hip for Lenny Bruce. Why do people in our hapless country find it necessary to put a political gloss on being a boring prig?
ReplyDeleteMy teenager thinks he's funny. Seinfeld will be a show discovered by new generations of people and loved. it is a classic.
ReplyDeleteBut, let's try to remember, these comments were not about the show, they were about doing current comedy. After all, rich or not, Seinfeld continues to tour
The guy whining about being second-guessed by his teenage daughter kind of sounds like a boring prig.
ReplyDelete"I got busted for saying 'shit' in a town where the big game is Craps."
ReplyDeleteThat Lenny Bruce line will, at least for me, remain funny for eternity.
You mean, Friends?
ReplyDeleteI also disliked very much Friends. :)
ReplyDeleteFriends was so much worse than Seinfeld because it thought its characters were endearing.
ReplyDeleteThanks. The running with this comment by (esp conservatives) is so annoying, because of that. Dude actively states he won't play colleges because of what he heard.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think he could just pause, say "not that there's anything wrong with that" and move on
ReplyDeleteThis is a pet peeve of mine and something I've bitched about here before: You can SURELY make Blazing Saddles, or something like it, again. It'll mostly likely be on Broadway soon. And it's really easy to find that kind of transgressive, yet sympathetic humor in all kinds of places.
ReplyDeleteWhat you won't see is Amos and Andy. What you will see is people sending up white privilege, which is all Brooks was doing 40 years ago.
Seriously, we should nominate a group of people to wear masks and beat him with quarters. Hopefully, the mob will include disabled folks, some bright ladies, and at least one person representing the cardigan wearers of America who are pissed he tries to hide his essential cruelty by wearing a damn sweater.
ReplyDeleteIt's to the point that i see anyone wearing a cardigan and want to yell at them...because of that colossal douche
That's cause you aren't stupid
ReplyDeleteSeinfeld was about as edgy as fucking soup, so how his idiotic stand up would ever run up agains "PC" shibboleths just isn't even in the realm of realistic. His shit would kill in nursing homes right now. The show, which was an annoyance to me, but had its moments, was better because Larry David is funnier, but neither one of them had any actual humanity in them. I don't need hugs, but I enjoy things where writers don't actively hate their characters and their audience.
ReplyDeleteThe theme song bored directly into my hippocampus.
ReplyDeleteI will be there in hell, waiting for the bastard that wrote it.
He likes his gays MINCING and whines that they don't fit his stereotype. Just like a neurotic Jew to bitch like that.
ReplyDeleteSeinfeld did an episode of Comedians in cars getting coffee with him. It was a while after the incident and Richards seemed really humbled by the experience and it was one of the more human episodes of the series. Came out of it, not feeling sorry for the guy, but glad that he had grown enough as a person to understand how privileged he had been to be in the position that he was and how he screwed up badly. Or maybe it was just an act to try and rehabilitate his career, but it seemed pretty sincere.
ReplyDelete"Did you ever notice how your finger sometimes gets stuck in your rotary phone and you get tangled in the chord?"
ReplyDeleteI see what you did.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Disqus lost my profile. I couldn't even recover my password so I had to create a new one. FUDisqus.
ReplyDeleteWow. So much hate for Jerry Seinfeld. It's like he's Dane Cook or something.
ReplyDeletePlease, nobody mention Sarah Silverman. Things could get ugly.
Sarah's good. iIm just glad I never went out with her.
ReplyDeleteShe would have killed with it.
I loved the Seinfeld show. I mostly love Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Jerry doesn't seem like the brightest guy, still he makes a good foil for his costars [Wiki: "The word foil comes from the old practice of backing gems with foil in order to make them shine more brightly."] I see him struggling to (re)gain relevance. It's not pretty, but it's understandable. I'm not a big fan of stand-up anyway, except Carlin and Pryor, and the 60s Woody Allen stuff.
ReplyDeleteBut hey, I am old, I like what I like, and gosh darn it, I do smell.
You know who I hate? That insufferable Marty Allen.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's my oldfartism showing, but I tend to agree with Seinfeld here.
ReplyDeleteThe preponderance of professional victimhood in this age is off the charts. And I think this point, more than a lament about his own waning appeal to young people, is what Seinfeld is getting at.
His story about his daughter's use of the word "sexism" is a perfect example of what he's referring to, and he's absolutely correct in pointing out that for a lot of people, far, far too many people, the true meaning of words is a complete mystery to them despite their throwing them around like so much confetti.
For me, the best comedy (or best novels, or best music) is questing, questioning, challenging, and makes me think. I like when it offers a perspective not mine and makes me consider my own stance. I like when it pushes my buttons, when it's rigorous and though-provoking.
Too many people today have a default setting of being offended, a sense of somehow being oppressed when their precious ideals or thoughts are challenged in any manner. The cult of victimhood is preeminent today in a way I've not seen before, and it frankly offends the fuck out of me.
"Today's comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A
ReplyDeletecomedian of the older generation did an act and he told the audience,
This is my act. Today's comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes
he's telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week."
--Lenny Bruce
I too think it makes sense to use a 14-year-old not understanding a word to extrapolate sweeping statements about nobody understanding it.
ReplyDeleteWhat about the 'repressed woman raped by a monster whose member is so large she sings for joy' sequence key to the plot of "Young Frankenstein"?
ReplyDeleteIs a billionaire who made his money on television the right messenger for bitching about how feels oppressed by other people's grievances?
ReplyDeleteComedians in Cars Getting Coffee holds my interest just for the cars, which are usually almost as interesting as the people in them. The series works mostly because he just lets his 'guests' relax and be themselves. I don't care that Jerry isn't all that likable as a person, he's, as you say, an excellent foil for the foibles of his co-stars and co-cars. I think it's great that he's made an extremely successful career out of being anti-charismatic. Even Jason Richardson's character had more charm than him.
ReplyDeleteAll victimhood is imaginary except for that of a rich man who thinks some people might hypothetically not think he's funny.
ReplyDeleteThat's a trope and an ugly one, but I don't think it's ever gone away. The notion that uptight bitches just need a good lay is usually played for laughs. And I certainly didn't say Brooks hits 1.000 on his jokes.
ReplyDeleteA world that rewards sociopathic behaviour rnsures that many more people will exhibit it than are actual sociopaths.
ReplyDeleteGood comedy often examines the pain in living and lets people laugh at it. That's tremendously different from making a joke at someone else's expense, especially one that laughs at other people's misery.
ReplyDeleteWhy do people put a political gloss on personal taste and dislike of punching down?
This is the problem though; once we start analyzing which jokes are Good and which are Problematic we've moved into joke-explaining territory.
ReplyDeleteSometimes a stereotype works because it's true; sometimes it's because we're laughing at ourselves for shamefully believing it; sometimes a joke questions the stereotype and sometimes it runs right into it, but I think comedians are right that there's no rule about what makes a stereotype joke work. The comedians hate Krusty's routine because it's old and hacky, not because it's stereotypical (and even what's old and corny can change).
There's a certain school of thought, not just in analyzing comedy, where someone points out the use of a trope and condemns it, but then adds that it would be okay if it were done differently (if it "punched up"). In some ways that's worse than just declaring some subjects out of bounds.
Maybe that's a big part of his problem: when people find a joke (or set-up, as in the white N.Y.C. of "Seinfeld") funny, many (most?) of those whose ox is not being gored, and even some of the {gored-ox} owners, are willing to forgive things that otherwise would make it unacceptable.
ReplyDeleteTry your waiter, tip me...the veal will be here all week.
ReplyDeleteIt is a poor player who blames his instrument.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, he's the saddest victim of all.
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite sure I understand your complaint. Seinfeld, as a stand-up, was as pain-free as you could get. It's just old and boring and, IMO, priggish.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the daughter probably did not like to be told who she was or how she would behave, which would be typical of a 14-year-old.
ReplyDeleteAn intelligent teen wouldn't like being told she would go boy crazy and start chasing boys because she hit puberty. That stereotype is very unflattering.
Suddenly wanted a hipster Morlock restaurant in which you get a complete biography of the Eloii on offer. '...loved poetry and flower arranging, had an all-fruit diet, and roamed free until I hit hom with a club.'
ReplyDeleteHe didn't exactly "defend" Richards, but Seinfeld arranged for a lengthy segment of one of his appearances on Letterman to be devoted to a phone-in apology by Richards. It began with the audience thinking it was a gag, and ultimately didn't achieve much.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/IwBoVZh1ruQ
Yeah in context she probably meant something closer to "heternormative" but is a teenager not being familiar with that term/concept really evidence of widespread misunderstanding of sexism as a concept?
ReplyDeleteMaybe he could do a routine mocking the rich, who are simultaneously extremely self-satisfied and never satisfied with anyone or anything else.
ReplyDeleteWhy do people put a political gloss on personal taste and dislike of punching down?
ReplyDeleteBecause if they didn't, they wouldn't be legacy hires writing for National Review.
Ignorance was cultivated through political correctness? Yeah, right, nothing says "well informed" like a constant barrage of racial slurs, gendered insults, and jokes about the disabled.
ReplyDeleteTrue enough. And I shouldn't have gotten around responding to the "what about a different movie and a different joke/if you insist on broccoli why aren't you apologizing about Stalin" set up.
ReplyDeletePity poor Jonah; it's hard to find an angle when the cultural conversation for the past couple weeks has been dominated by a pro-reproductive freedom action movie, soon to be replaced by a movie about the importance of theme park regulation. Maybe when "Inside Out" comes out he can write about how it proves girls are too emotional.
ReplyDeleteWell, if you want to read that piece of shit Lindy West wrote as "reportage' I might agree with you.
ReplyDeleteRead it again and note she takes one small quoted bit and then runs on and on and fucking on about a whole lot of nothing that he did say.
But hey! At least she struck a chord with something for you to get all worked up over!
Protohipsters... also, Jerry was the straight man on that show, so people just discovering it would think that the other cast members were funnier.
ReplyDeleteWhoa- this just hit me, is he criticizing political correctness because racist language buried Michael Richards' career? Can't a bigoted middle-aged white guy catch a break?
It is indeed a shame when people get worked up in response to a chord being struck. I'm glad you're above that.
ReplyDeleteImagine what the alternate timeline where Richards accepted the role of Monk must be like.
ReplyDeleteYou'd have to seriously have your head in the sand not to notice how freely words are thrown around today by people who don't have a fucking clue what they mean, or to not notice how virtually every public utterance is "oppressive" to someone or thing.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Stepin Fetchit is now nothing more than an embarrassing footnote in history.
ReplyDeleteI think the reason there is so little “comedy” that’s funny today is the genre itself has been hijacked by the humorless PC crowd.
ReplyDeleteIt's less complicated than that.
Cellular death is ruthlessy narrowing your horizons every minute now. You are finding everything a little less interesting every day. Young people find things funny that you don't because your biological destiny is to make way for them.
Haha... ha... aw, man.
ReplyDeleteYes, in an era of vastly expanded communication and social platforms, far more people are able to publicly voice their disapproval of things than before, in some cases even if you, personally, do not share that disapproval. This is very, very bad, I guess.
ReplyDeleteIt's a show about the nothingness of the void.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid
ReplyDeleteLiberal professor also contends PC has reached new highs.
Anonymous author uses anecdotal evidence to blame screwed-up tenure system on The Young People.
ReplyDeleteI literally have no idea what you are talking about. Seinfeld said he heard that none of his friends will play colleges anymore because they are so PC and that strikes me as pretty stupid for several reasons. I grew up in the 80's in a New England college town, so I know the PC culture intimately so I know how absurd it can get and, if anything, it's way freer now. Kids have always felt oppressed, then they rebel. If they rebel against stale beliefs about "going downtown to look at boys" and "white cops are totally doing great", I'm on their side.
ReplyDeleteThe comedians hate Krusty's routine because it's old and hacky, not because it's stereotypical
ReplyDeleteTrue. Audience is key. Just like comedians love The Aristocrats beyond 99% of the public's ability to comprehend their obsession with its "brilliance." Comedy for the in-crowd isn't going to fly as well in front of other groups.
Wasn't running on and on about nothing Seinfeld's schtick? Is this a professional dispute?
ReplyDeleteI was never particularly a Seinfeld fan, but that article about him came off as pretty snotty and obnoxious. I didn't get the sense that he was complaining about being a victim of PC; it's closer to him saying that performing at colleges is a pain in the ass because of hypersensitivity, and I'm not at all sure that he's wrong about that.
ReplyDelete#notallmorlocks
ReplyDeleteAlternate take: This is really about ethics in eating surface dwellers.
Imma have to dissent on all the Seinfeld hatin here.
ReplyDeleteAs for Seinfeld (the guy), meh. He was gifted, back in the day, at a form of comedy that doesn't really do much for me, but then de gustibus and all that. But as for Seinfeld (the show), now... Especially in season 4-6, there were episodes that need to preserved digitally so the cockroaches that inherit the earth from us can one day learn that we had our virtues, too. Jay B. is right that nobody in comedy bats 1.000. But so what? Most comedians don't come within an order of magnitude of the Mendoza line. In its peak seasons, Seinfeld out-batted Ty Cobb.
But that wasn't Jerry at the bat. He really was just the straight man, not that this role is unimportant. It was the four. To the limited extent that an individual cast member was key, the descending order of importance was: Alexander, Louis-Dreyfus, Kramer, Seinfeld. Seinfeld was, essentially, the irritating grain of sand that allowed the pearl to form. (NB: that is high praise, not dismissal.)
You might disagree. And, in the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit that I find both Airplane and Zoolander gaspingly funny. But then, as I said above, de gustibus and all that.
Oh, well! If you "grew up in the 80's in a New England college town" then of course you "know the PC culture intimately."
ReplyDeleteI bow to your insight and thank you for the chuckle.
I just saw Spy last night and it feels like a broke a rib I laughed so hard.
ReplyDeleteOh, fuck me. God, I hated Friends. I thought the characters on Seinfeld were hateful until an old girlfriend convinced me to watch this collection of goldfish mug for the camera.
ReplyDeleteI feel a little sick now...
"You'd have to seriously have your head in the sand not to notice how freely words are thrown around today by people who don't have a fucking clue what they mean..."
ReplyDeleteThis is a new thing?
"Anonymous author" proud to serve as cat's paw for Scott Walker.
ReplyDeleteThey did bring him back. After Steven Colbert's legendary performance at the White House Correspondent's Association dinner in 2006, the group decided actual comedy was too controversial. So, they hired Rich Little to perform the next year. With predictable results.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.adweek.com/fishbowlny/a-year-after-colbert-little-bombs-white-house-dinner/5868
Now -- reborn as Jar Jar Binks!
ReplyDeleteYou could call it
ReplyDeleteThe preponderance of professional victimhood in this age is off the charts
Or you could say people are sick of getting shit on for just trying to get by. You could say that people who aren't white straight cisgendered men are sick of being treated like second class citizens. I think many people are waking up to just exactly how messed up business as usual really is, and are speaking up.
Gonna need to catch that one.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I also guffawed so uproariously at Krull and The Seventh Seal that I was ejected forcibly. (It was a double-bill.) Wept like a toddler at Hemo the Magnificent.
They are young, they like what they like, and they think old people smell.
ReplyDeletePerhaps if we changed our Depends more often...
Right. It's impossible to have experiences that inform the conversation and give you actual insights. It's way better to generalize from "feelings" because of something you heard.
ReplyDeleteTrouble is that's George Carlin, not Lenny Bruce.
ReplyDeleteUm, excuse you, it's Shia LeBouef.
ReplyDeleteIt depends. Go read tumblr for a while and then tell me how many of the pangender fairie trans-toaster otherkin have a point, and then consider that they scream at people online who call them by the wrong signifier of whatever identity it is they've decided to change in the last five minutes. And in case you think I'm exaggerating all that much, I assure you, I'm really not. There are grievances and then there are grievances.
ReplyDeleteAnd while I generally agree with you that democratising media platforms is great for getting marginalised people heard, it has also enabled a lot of vocal crazy that clocks in at about 0.82 TimeCubes.
I think your error is a combination of using Tumblr as a cultural barometer and assuming what you describe is anything other than a troll blog making fun of trans people.
ReplyDeleteSEINFELD: Have you ever noticed---
ReplyDeleteAUDIENCE: YES!!!
SEINFELD: Sheesh, the PC youth of today.
Not to mention the stole that schtick from Andy Rooney.
ReplyDelete[slow clap]
ReplyDeleteEven funnier if you say it with a fake Chinese accent.
ReplyDelete0.82 TimeCubes.You totally need to do a full chart, because we need more data to calibrate the scale.
ReplyDeleteMOAR GOLD BOND MEDICATED POWDER!
ReplyDeleteI don't get how this works. They'd book a show at college theaters, people would pay money to attend it (presumably because they like/know the performer) and then the audience would turn on the comic because of hypersensitivity?
ReplyDeleteOf course, I also guffawed so uproariously at Krull and The Seventh Seal that I was ejected forcibly. (It was a double-bill.)Krull back-to-back with ... a Bergman film? That must have been some theater.
ReplyDeleteOn his old show, Conan O'B. had a nice bit when Seinfeld announced his show was ending. They "auditioned" replacements. I remember one guy, with a heavy Indian accent and no discernible talent, saying, "WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH CORN NUTS? IS IT A CORN, OR A NUT?"
ReplyDeletewhereas reading random tumblrs...
ReplyDeleteI genuinely haven't heard of any instances of a comedian's presence on campus being protested; the closest I can think of is LAST year's PC-will-kill-us-all controversy with various commencement speakers being protested (because boo-hoo, not wanting to subsidize war criminals means the death of free exchange of ideas).
ReplyDeleteOh, come on, there was that time he was really edgy about waitstaff.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course Larry David as the true genius behind it all.
ReplyDeleteWell. If I'm honest, I have to admit that I was completely fabricating that part, a little.
ReplyDeleteGot my comics stuck together!
ReplyDelete[MONOTONE] I set my PC to hypersensitive. Now whenever I try to type on it, a woman in Germany tweets "Cut it out."
ReplyDeleteJust like a neurotic Jew to kvetch like that.
ReplyDeleteFTFY
I think you might have just set it to "Germany."
ReplyDeleteI saw a sign in a restaurant window, it said BREAKFAST ANY TIME, so I went in and said, I want French toast in the Renaissance.
ReplyDeleteBut this doesn't just ignore the chill that is already upon campuses when lefty feminist profs like Laura KipnisOh, shut the fuck up, you greasy misogynist shitwaffle. The only ones actually trying to fire people like Laura Kipnis right now are the pigshits on your team, Nick. So can we just move on, and your side can go back to shrieking 24xFucking7 about all the "out-of-control" lefty feminist indoctrination going on in our colleges?
ReplyDeleteHave you been to the internet (specifically Twitter) before?
ReplyDeleteWhat happens is, one person takes a quote out of context and runs with it, and thousands of people who didn't go to the show go on a hysterical twitter rampage about it. Then a bunch of people who have a professional interest in ginning up controversy write over-the-top essays and thinkpieces. All context is lost, and what may have started with an out of touch old guy saying something kinda clueless turns into an internet witch hunt.
Or it could be both.
ReplyDeleteLook, I'm absolutely all for equality and equity for traditionally marginalized folks. I think the strides made in this arena have been some of the largest I've witnessed in my lifetime, and as someone who has spoken out and taken action for these things I'm grateful.
But I do believe there's a "preponderance of professional victimhood" at work in culture today that's very debilitating. Look at politics, for example, and the complete polarization of the two sides. Or the poor, oppressed God-botherers who cry out as if crucified when they're told they can't be bigots. Or racist, power-mad cops who when they act like racist, power-mad dipshits claim victimhood; claim rational warnings about their abusive actions malign their precious fucking professionalism.
There are absolutely issues and instances where power and "the system" are used to create or maintain control over real victims, and these absolutely need to be addressed. But in our culture today seemingly everyone wants to cry "I'm a victim!" at the drop of a fucking hat and the perniciousness of this not only misdirects rightful activism, it also emboldens even more ridiculous entities to claim victim status.
I think our society has moved towards inclusion and equality in tremendous ways over the past decades, and I also think there are those that have twisted the emphasis of respect to individuals as meaning everything promoted that they disagree with is making them a victim. With a whole lot of good has come the attendant bad.
As for Seinfeld's comments, I think his mild (and obvious) observation that colleges are populated with an overabundance of precious little snowflakes that makes them not worth the bother is fairly benign. But the Lindy West piece, with its completely over-the-top projections, well, let's just say that I think her shit proved Seinfeld's point more than she realizes.
No True Otherkin!
ReplyDeleteHave any of those "witch hunts" actually hurt any careers?
ReplyDelete"I'm absolutely all for equality, but."
ReplyDeleteSomeone who wants their fifteen minutes of fame weeds through all of the Seinfeld episodes, tweets, whatever; they demand that he condemn Richards for racism, whatever. They organize a boycott, demand that the show be cancelled. The bad PR and hassle just isn't worth it when you can completely avoid the scenario by booking a gig at a private venue.
ReplyDeleteWe've seen the movie often enough that it's not irrational to decide "why bother"?
What comedian did that happen to?
ReplyDeleteOK, but how does that make it a campus issue?
ReplyDeleteBut he can get away with this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=betkymYDzfg
ReplyDeleteI doubt that Seinfeld is worried about his career. It's more likely that he'd just rather not have to worry about a completely avoidable twitter storm. It's not as if he needs to break into the comedy business and needs the exposure wherever he can get it.
ReplyDeleteI will always cut Jerry Seinfeld a little slack, for the sake of his dad.
ReplyDeleteBut he can get away with this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS2THqZemoc)
ReplyDeleteSo...They could either choose between addressing the nontroversy and saying it has no bearing on them, or whine about it and book another hall — either way they get paid and no free speech has been abridged.
ReplyDeleteThe odds of getting a show cancelled are much higher if you can apply pressure to a controversy-adverse college administrator than they are for a private club. The latter might even mine it for ticket sales.
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to agree with him to understand the logic, which is (I think) a hell of a lot more sensible than the gloss in that Guardian article.
Who did that happen to?
ReplyDeleteI was simply noting it's not the 80s any more.
ReplyDeleteAs for your edit, I completely agree.
I get that it's not the 80's anymore, but since that's when the actual PC movement was born, I've seen it be a lot worse than it is now. I think the culture is way way more freewheeling now than it was then.
ReplyDeleteYes. People were yelling about how PC is ruining everything when "Seinfeld" was at its peak and he survived somehow.
ReplyDelete"it's closer to him saying that performing at colleges is a pain in the ass because of hypersensitivity"
ReplyDeleteJerry Seinfeld has a bajillion dollars and can easily tell the offended to go screw with virtually zero consequence. As pains in the ass go, this one's lemon-pepper levels of hot.
Well, we can start with hip hop...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-08/princeton-students-protest-rapper-big-sean-for-promoting-rape-culture
Bill Maher got protests for speaking at Berkeley because of what he's said about Islam.
On a quick Google search, I got
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/31089462/feminist-comedian-claims-uni-gig-pulled-over-feminist-threat
and a pretty healthy list below it...seriously, pretending that this isn't happening is a little silly. Yea, we've got other (bigger) problems, like with reactionaries, but so what?
I think the reason there is so little “comedy” that’s funny today is the
ReplyDeletegenre itself has been hijacked by the humorless PC crowd. Why is their
humor so unamusing and so dependent upon mean-spiritedness?
Lefty humorless scolds are all like this, while righty humorless scolds are all like that.
If he just wants to have fun in a club and cash in, why bother? It's not as if I'm sorry for him; I just think that what he's saying isn't what the Guardian article was going on about.
ReplyDeleteNot "new," Roy, but certainly "improved."
ReplyDeleteSo a) a non-comedian and b) a guy who is in theory a comedian who people don't want as their commencement speaker, which is not the same thing as not wanting him to perform on campus because they have to listen to him and are paying to subsidize him?
ReplyDeleteNo True Scotsman!
ReplyDeleteNo, actually, no true examples of what Seinfeld is accusing of destroying comedy. It's not No True Scotsman to say that a rapper isn't a comedian.
ReplyDeleteSo-called liberal professor blames liberal students for the actions of his conservative students.
ReplyDeleteI'm just leave this here.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC link is interesting and is the most germane to what Seinfeld is talking about. It happened in the UK and was about a feminist comic and her views on prostitution. But that's not a US campus and while it COULD happen here, I'd also like to think that people would stand up to free speech. If it's just as easy to ditch and book another hall, it's an opportunity missed to address the threat. If people think PC is oppressing them (which is irony for you), the sensible thing would be to fight back. A billionaire could do just that without much fear.
ReplyDeleteHear, hear.
ReplyDeleteWhat bothers me the most is that internet ragegasm slacktivism ends up being a barrier to real progress. It gives people on the left the tools of shame and ostracism, and theatrical victimhood, that have historically been the purview of the right.
It's not about thoughtful discussion, it's not about changing minds, it's not even remotely about making the world a better place, it's about mutually assured douche-struction. It's about clickbait. It's masturbatory at best. At worst, it's just as ugly as the same routine coming from the right even if, ostensibly, I agree with the politics. It's explicitly authoritarian.
It turns politics into what Seinfeld called "rooting for laundry." It turns people like Lindy West into the political equivalent of hockey enforcers, the kind of people you like if they're on your team and you hate if they aren't. I think we can and should do better.
That's not why I'm a liberal. I'm a liberal because I want to make the world a better place, and I think that can be done with kindness and decency. Howls of outrage might make people feel better, it might pay Lindy West's bills better than her own excellent comedy (or her laudable efforts to make the world a better place, like IBY,INYF) but it doesn't change shit. And it isn't funny.
Incursions into the curriculum and the rights of professors, on the other hand, are about the new consumerist approach to education, whereby students are regarded as customers to be satisfied rather than seekers after knowledge; "social justice" is just the MacGuffin.
ReplyDeleteJust as complaints about the laziness and entitlement of millennials is more about pundits trying to undercut any blowback from the gutting of this generation to pay for bank bailouts and illegal wars.
I hate myself for laughing but I do it anyway. The aliens and Al's socks still makes me fall over laughing.
ReplyDeleteI remember the soul-destroying conversation of whether the Obamas New Yorker Cover was funny and having Kevin Drum(!) try to punch it up. I sat in the corner repeating "the horror" for weeks after that.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I have never seen a single episode of either Seinfeld or Friends. This is not because I only watch PBS, or because I don't own a silly television. (Although I haven't had a TV or cable for years on account of I can't afford it, and besides, I can catch up on my TV watching when I house-sit.) Each show's cast and premise seemed unappealing to me, and I never felt like giving either show a try.
ReplyDeleteSo I can't participate in the liking or disliking portion of today's discussion, but comedy is strange and sometimes hard to explain. Like I am a permanent Buffy geek, and there were some fine comedic riffs in there. And I think Sarah Silverman is highlarious, although I'm sure I wouldn't like everything she's ever performed. And when There's Something About Mary first came out, I took a friend with me for her birthday, and I laughed hysterically throughout while she sat there scowling. And that movie was just gross. But I laughed. And I have said I'd vote for Wanda Sykes. I love love love John Oliver. I don't know. It's hard to explain. I don't like mean stuff, but I like sharp, acidic stuff. You can cringe and laugh. And just because a show or genre doesn't stand the test of time doesn't necessarily mean it sucked.
Sidebar ad coming soon to Alicublog!
ReplyDeleteI don't think Jerry is a free speech crusader. It doesn't have to be a big deal for someone to decide that the risk is big enough that it's not worth it. Doesn't mean that it would actually happen to him or that he couldn't weather it - it's enough that he'd believe it and he'd rather cash a safe check across the street.
ReplyDeleteThe only reason that I brought it up was that Roy can usually hone right on on what's going on, and I think that the article that he picked up on misread what Seinfeld was actually saying. Doesn't mean that Roy isn't right about the dynamic of older comedy not aging well and all that.
I'm not going to to deny that specific "professional victims" exist. Of course they do, the question is how many are there and do they represent the leaders of, opportunistic followers of any given issue, and to what extent does their professional or amateur status discredit their objectives. And that's a complicated question. I would call Wayne LaPierre and Pamela Gellar "professional victims" with actual if wildly exaggerated concerns. Some people would like nothing better than to ban the personal ownership of firearms. Some Muslims would like to see Israel destroyed and the Jews exterminated. And both of those people are making a living portraying their enemies as a monolithic bloc of dangerous tyrants. I would argue their overheated, not to say paranoid, rhetoric pushes them over the limit from useful 'public representatives of a political viewpoint' to 'useless destructive loudmouthed idiots'.
ReplyDeleteBut that's a line we each have to draw for ourselves. So I get that you perceive a climate so concerned with not offending the delicate sensibilities of professional victims that constructive discourse on issues of race and gender is nearly impossible. But there's a lot of us that don't think that's the case. From where I sit, in my admittedly comfortable position of white male privilege, when I consider the state of discourse on America's campuses, I see a lot of young people working very hard to carve out space for themselves in a very crowded marketplace of ideas. Their numbers and the amount of noise they can make are exaggerated because the internet has existed for their entire life, and they dig into social media with both hands. No one needs to explain social media or twitter or tumblr to them, that's where they grew up. They know a viral meme or a trending hashtag can catch more eyeballs and do it faster than all but the biggest street protests. But they know how to do that too. Occupy Wall Street, the ongoing Ferguson and Baltimore protests, and every other protest movement you've seen in the last 10 years was organized on line. It's about getting people motivated and visible and getting the message out in ways that can make a difference. And of course it's loud, it's unruly, it's demanding, it even includes some people who are disreputable or dishonest, it's uncomfortable to hear, but that's the whole point. And it's not making people rich. One organizer I follow on Twitter had to quit his job and start emptying his 401k to be a part of the ongoing protests against police violence. That's not a 'professional victim' that's man deeply committed to the biggest civil rights struggle of our time.
There does not exist a "grievance registry" so that people can look up and rank injustices to see which ones are worthy of the attention of society at large. So we each have to exercise our own judgement. If you think J. Random Demographic Social Gender and Ethnic Minority's complaint isn't valid or isn't valid enough, say so, at any volume in any terms or language you care to employ. So say it as loud as you like, but the people your message reaches are totally within their rights to judge you based on who's sacred cow you're skewering and how.
My real sense of shame comes from laughing at NOMAAM!
ReplyDeleteAfter the first few seasons, they were writing multiple intertwined plots that quietly built up to total insanity, How could you not love the show that ended with Elaine pushing a dumpster past George, drilling in the street until the Phil Rizzuto key chain flew up on the geyser of a broken watermain?
ReplyDeleteHoly Cow!
And Psycho Mom.
ReplyDeleteShe hit her man with a frying pan!
Psycho Mom!
But that's a line we each have to draw for ourselves.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more.
Thanks for the well-expressed thoughts.
That was the genius of Seinfeld, not the stand-up-type of material.
ReplyDeleteI am probably not the only one who started watching it off a rec from Amanda Marcotte.
ReplyDeleteI liked Seinfeld the show, but Seinfeld the standup..not so funny
ReplyDeleteI loved the show, but Seinfeld's character on it functioned more as a straight man or at least a center for the whackier characters to orbit around. I also always wondered whether his standup as displayed on the show not being very funny was part of the joke.
ReplyDeleteWe have a Weena!
ReplyDeleteI don't think Seinfeld is even talking about how his act is perceived, but about how COLLEGE audience reactions have changed. Chris Rock said the same thing. CLUB audiences are older and better able to perceive actual racism or sexism. Saying that a black guy dances better than me is not the same as championing voter suppression, but it is no less likely to have you called out as a racist in a college setting. Both Seinfeld and Rock are saying it's not worth the trouble and that they won't do colleges.
ReplyDeleteThen.....don't?
ReplyDeleteCollege-aged kids can be ridiculous. Ultimately, so what?
On the one hand, Tosh wears cardigans. On the other hand, so did Fred Rogers. I'd say it's a wash. Call it the Law of Conservation of Cardigan.
ReplyDeleteBut what do I know? I'm still hoping to save the fedora.
Yeah, then what's the point of this blog post if it can be summed up with "then ... don't"? I'm responding to what was written and the comments that follow.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I always enjoyed the show. And I really agree with this:
ReplyDelete"But that wasn't Jerry at the bat. He really was just the straight
man, not that this role is unimportant. It was the four as a unit. To
the limited extent that an individual cast member was key, the
descending order of importance was: Alexander, Louis-Dreyfus, Richards, Seinfeld. Seinfeld was, essentially, the irritating grain of sand that allowed the pearl to form. (NB: that is high praise, not dismissal.)"
The show was famously not premised on Jerry Seinfeld being a likable personality. Not that you dislike him exactly, but he was more like a tour guide to the weird personalities you met. Think how much people talk about specific supporting performances from it, whether your Soup Nazi, Puddy, Lloyd Braun or bigger ones like Newman or Susan.
Yes, why is P.C. humor so mean spirited? Perhaps there should be trigger warnings before someone says something P.C. and thereby offends conservatives delicate UN-PC sensibilities.
ReplyDeleteThe fedora and the trilby are lost causes. Pick something that hasn't been appropriated by internet douchebags. How do you feel about Tyrolian caps and lederhosen?
ReplyDeleteWhat, you don't know a little German?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0lJyDCLYTE
It gets worse. I'm an old woman. The other day I looked into the abyss and it didn't even bother looking back.
ReplyDelete