Discussion for article #237343
A great comedian would confront the political correctness head on with withering humor, not avoid it. When I hear Jerry Seinfeld whine like this I don’t worry about the state of college campuses, I just think he’s gotten rich and lazy
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If a mother said her son would want to spend more time hanging out with girls during the summer… would that be sexist?
sauce for the goose.
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hey Jerry… what’s funny is that you’re old and cranky… not that there’s anything wrong with that…
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I’m an old man! I’m confused!!
I fall back on that one all the time these days.
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¨…Jerry Seinfeld, whose “observational” comedy felt dated when he was at the height of his popularity…¨
I never liked the Seinfeld monologues, but I often enjoyed the show itself. The mystery of this was cleared up when Larry David’s show came along. LD could hardly be accused of PC, yet I find him to be achingly funny. In Seinfeld’s case, I think his humor hides a very conventional and reactionary mindset, whereas LD’s misanthropic shtick hides a keen observer of class, power, and social structure; I attribute my enjoyment of ¨Seinfeld¨ to him.
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Why do they call it Ovaltine when it’s round? 
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Never thought he was funny in the first place. Seems to me he didn’t play a snarky wiseass on TV, he was just being himself, and any residual humor that might have been derived from that portrayal doesn’t reflect kindly on the man.
We’re not laughing with you, Jerry, we’re laughing at you. Once a dick, always a dick.
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This article makes some good points, but the unnecessary ad hominen attacks ruin it. Calling Seinfeld a hack is just mean. Come back when you grow up.
A favorite among critics, the show led the Nielsen ratings in seasons six and nine, and finished among the top two (with NBC’s ER) every year from 1994 to 1998. In 2002, TV Guide named Seinfeld the greatest television program of all time.[1] In 1997, the episodes “The Boyfriend” and “The Parking Garage” were respectively ranked numbers 4 and 33 on TV Guide’s 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time,[2] and in 2009, “The Contest” was ranked #1 on the same magazine’s list of TV’s Top 100 Episodes of All Time.[3] E! named it the “number 1 reason the '90s ruled.”[4] In 2013, the Writers Guild of America named Seinfeld the No. 2 Best Written TV Series of All Time (second to The Sopranos).[5] That same year, Entertainment Weekly named it the No. 3 best TV series of all time.[6]
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not particularly funny
I never liked his humor (What’s the deal with [blank]?) with its elitist voice and cruel undertones and didn’t watch the sitcom.
Historically, weren’t most French fops heterosexual (not that the term existed then, just the behavior)? Jerry should have realized that for gay Kings one cannot top the English, so to speak.
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I think it is fair to say that Jerry Seinfeld is considerably better at what he does than Amanda Marcotte is at what she does.
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I loved the Seinfeld show…until Larry David left and it became obvious that he was the genius behind it. Jerry Seinfeld was an excellent vehicle for delivering Larry David’s humor. The final two seasons were simply not funny.
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yawn
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I attempted to watch the Seinfeld show exactly twice - and neither time was I able to sit through it without my attention wandering off long before the end. I literally did not find one single line remotely funny or even interesting. It was just excruciatingly boring. I am usually pretty good at looking at something from someone else’s perspective - to say “Well, it’s not my cup of tea, but I can understand how it could appeal to someone else”. But in the case of Seinfeld, nothing.
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So why is it acceptable to beat up on older people, but not others? I’ve seen a lot of this double standard on this board.
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Sure, some gay men are bitchy. So are some straight men, though they may express it differently.
And evidently so are some Amanda Marcotte articles. E.g., “Wasn’t the joke on Seinfeld that he was a second-rate hack?” Not remotely, and no one who has seen the show, or who was alive in the '90s, could honestly believe that was the premise. (YOU might think Seinfeld was a hack, but it was not “the joke on Seinfeld”, and I find it very difficult to believe Marcotte actually thinks this.) The analysis here is seriously undermined by childish slams like “ever pretending Seinfeld was funny”. Whatever your own opinion of him, he was massively popular in the '90s, and to sneer that the huge audiences who tuned into his show were just “pretending” to be entertained by it is the stuff of middle school conversations about how, god, all the people in this stupid town are such uncool sheep, ugh.
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Quite the understatement. I frankly never found Seinfeld’s show funny, but it was indeed amazingly successful. I’ve heard some of his very early stand-up, and that was funny.
Chris Rock has made the same complaint about the PC stuff, a good writer would have included him in this article as well since he is one of the top comedians of our time.
Thing is, I don’t like to be PC, but I have no problem if people want to be. Just don’t try to censor other people who are not. Funny, the generation thing actually is different for this one. It has always been the older generation trying to censor the younger generation. Now the younger generation wants to censor the older one. There is a difference between thinking a comment is in bad taste vs. whining people should not even be allowed to say it.
I always though Andrew Dice Clay was unfunny, crude, rude and obnoxious. But I never felt the urge to form a movement to stop him from performing or telling crude jokes.
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It’s insane people can pretend political correctness has killed comedy when Louis CK is out there pushing the boundaries and killing it every goddamn night.
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People keep missing an important distinction. It’s entirely possible that Seinfield the show was very funny while Seinfeld the comedian wasn’t funny at all. In fact the Jerry-at-work segments were excruciating and quickly dropped once the show found its footing, Seinfeld did fine playing a comedian; that doesn’t mean he was good at being a comedian.
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I found Seinfeld’s show funny when it was first one, but now I can’t watch it because it just now seems stale and dated, plus after Michael Richards went on this racist tirade it forever ruins it for me now and I can’t watch.
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