I've never understood why he's been placed on such a pedestal. Professionally, he wasn't even among the funniest of his contemporaries. Personally, he's also always been a piece of shit, and I'm not just talking about him being generally rude to others.
I mean Seinfeld was fucking huge. It's hard to overstate how big a hit it was in its time. And he was co-creator, the lead role, and obv his name is the name of the show. How could you not see people putting him up as one of the greats?
I'm not personally the biggest fan of his particular style of comedy, and you can certainly find issue with his personality and behavior over the years, but the man knows how joke structure works. He's an expert in his craft. And you may not think he's as good as some of his contemporaries, but there's no denying he's more of a household name than most if not all of them.
Hey, good for him. I believe firmly in reformation, or reflection and changing your views and it sounds to me like he thought about it and came around, so good.
I think he was trying to get a buzz for his stand-up by going anti-woke. Then those people didn't show up for him because they are still laughing at Rob Schneider.
After Jerry realized his mistake, he figured he would say he grew and learned to help any damage control. I don't think people really care enough about him for this, but he is rich enough to have people tell him.
Wait, you wonder why we're still listening to Jerry Seinfeld about comedy?
Like, I don't agree with the guy and I don't think everything he does is funny, but... I mean, I'm a contrarian nerd on the Internet and even I would think about that one twice.
For what it's worth, you can change your mind on things as often as you want. Hell, I'll take older rich guys walking back their slow drift rightwards as many times as is necessary.
To be fair, it's a complicated topic. Some people see humour as a form of therapy or control over dark topics while others see it as a channel to project them. And both are true. Unfortunately many people lack the spark to discern the two and subsequently fall back on the behaviour they are familiar with; picking a side and setting up camp in it.
He’s a total asshole. He may have had the show, but standup isn’t funny and his personal life and stances are questionable. I’d be glad if he just disappeared without a peep. That whiny nasally “I hate everything boo hoo” attitude.
sounds to me like he thought about it and came around
That's not what it sounds like to me. I think a slightly different kind of absolute nonsense just started coming out of his face:
“I said that the ‘extreme left’ has suppressed the art of comedy... 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.”
Even you generously interpret that as coherent thought, he's still saying that the left changed comedy and you can't make same jokes anymore. No awareness that risky and 'offensive' comedy is fine and everywhere, no awareness that there's a difference between offensive comedy and racism on a stage, no awareness of the social context of his comments amidst the rise of fascism.
He just repeated his comments, but less coherently and with the strongly negative words taken out.
“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 added. “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.”
I don't know, seems pretty cogent to me and it seems pretty far from doubling down.
Why are you guys making me defend Jerry Seinfeld? Seriously, sometimes leftie spaces just can't take a win.
I never understood why he would say that to begin with. It's not like his brand of comedy was ever particularly edgy. Obviously the "people are too sensitive these days" thing is stupid, but it felt extra strange coming from him.
People are too sensitive these days though. The problem is that no one agrees what it's important to be sensitive about while simultaneously looking for reasons to be offended on behalf of others.
His show was a cultural phenomenon. You've never heard of the least funny comedian. Let's stop the weird Lemmy contrarianism. It makes us look more insanely out of touch than Jerry Seinfeld. (Which is so well known his name is in my auto-correct).
I absolutely loved Seinfeld (the show) and recently saw his stand up in person and it was absolutely terrible, it was actually pretty shocking. He's just so incredibly unrelatable now.
I wouldn't say that's contrarianism. I've heard criticism for Jerry Seinfeld's comedy since at least 2004, calling out observation comics as a whole was trending at the time of his show even. Larry David made that show great, and some of the cast played their roles really well, Jerry Seinfeld wasn't one of them for me and seemingly a lot of people.
I don't think the contrarianism is Lemmy specific. Whenever someone becomes problematic for whatever, there'll always be people taking to twitter or whatever to say "well they were never really that good anyway". And it is almost always just a cope, except in the specific case of Rob Schneider.
I agree that comedy is an area that rarely ages well. If you look at the old post 9/11 HBO comedy spots on MAX they are atrociously racist against middle eastern people to the point where I don’t think they should be available or at least should be labeled history and not comedy.
Yeah but Jerry got mad that he wasn't allowed to tell racist, transphobic, and highly political jokes like a year ago. And he got drawn into the MAGA crowd like a tractor beam, being sponsored by out of touch old fogeys and anti-woke propagandists.