Recently, Jerry Seinfeld sits down with his friend and fellow comedian Tom Papa on his Breaking Bread podcast. There, he sheepishly walks back his viral comments on The New Yorker earlier this year. He says at the time, "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."
Nowadays, Jerry regrets those comments and sees the laziness in his expression. "I said that the 'extreme left' has suppressed the art of comedy. I did say that. That's not true," Seinfeld says. "It's not true. If you're a champion skier, you can put the gates anywhere you want on the mountain and you're going to make the gate. That's comedy. Whatever the culture is, we make the gate. You don't make the gate, you're out of the game. The game is where is the gate and how do I make the gate to get down the hill."
Jerry Seinfeld Sees The Change in Culture and The Need to Alter Your Comedic Observations
Jerry does admit that there is some alterations in culture that changes the nature of comedy over time. However, it's also not an excuse to complain. If anything, it should make you want to up your game. "Does culture change and are their things that I use to say that [I can't because] people are always moving [the gate]? Yes, but that's the biggest and easiest target," Seinfeld emphasizes. "You can't say certain words about groups. So what? The accuracy of your observation has to be 100 times finer than that just to be a comedian...So I don't think, as I said, the 'extreme left' has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy."
This also comes on the heels of when Jerry Seinfeld called for the comeback of 'real men' and dominant masculinity. He reminisces on the '60s when promoting his Pop-Tarts movie and advocates for a certain type of man back then. "We have no sense of hierarchy, and as humans, we don't really feel comfortable like that. That is part of what I think, if you want to talk about nostalgia, that's part of what makes that moment attractive looking back. And the other thing is, as a man... can I say that? I've always wanted to be a real man. I never made it," he says.
