What's the deal with kids being all PC these days?
June 9, 2015 10:45 AM Subscribe

Jerry Seinfeld, in an interview, is unhappy about the current state of comedy. (slESPN) "They just want to use these words: 'That’s racist;' 'That’s sexist;' 'That’s prejudice.' They don’t know what the f--k they’re talking about.”

Seinfeld has been taken to task before for the imbalance of women and people of colour in his series, "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" (the new season premiered June 3rd).

The ever clever Lindy West has a rebuttal at The Grauniad.

posted by Kitteh (428 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite

Oh goodness, yes, poor Seinfeld. How his edginess has suffered in this terrible new cultural climate. Can anyone spare an ice pack? I appear to have sprained the upper front sector of my head from all the eye-rolling.
posted by palomar at 10:49 AM on June 9, 2015 [31 favorites]

Jerry: These kids today are too PC for standup!
Kramer: Boy, you're tellin me, Jer.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 10:49 AM on June 9, 2015 [91 favorites]

"They just want to use these words: 'That’s racist;' 'That’s sexist;' 'That’s prejudice.' They don’t know what the f--k they’re talking about.”

Seinfeld, the go-to person to explain sexism. I'm sure if I were his teenage daughter, I'd be super pleased he brought up this anecdote about how she just uses the word sexism without knowing what it means and she's stupid.
posted by jeather at 10:50 AM on June 9, 2015 [28 favorites]

I've seen this going around the past few days. If I remember correctly, it was Chris Rock who said "I don't even play colleges anymore, not worth it." in conversation with Seinfeld. Here's the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKY6BGcx37k I don't remember the timestamp for him saying that, but I remember it from here.

Edited to make the link an actual link.
posted by Ambient Echo at 10:50 AM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

I wondered when people would start talking about this topic. One of the Richard Pryor specials was on TV the other day, and I remember thinking, wow, this is such a foreign concept to the younger generation...
posted by Melismata at 10:53 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

Could it be that college kids aren't interested in bloated old millionaire dad humor? Can anyone blame them for that?
posted by bleep at 10:53 AM on June 9, 2015 [107 favorites]

Since constraints are the foundation of creativity, it always makes me wonder why I see so many (mostly older white dude) comedians bitch about them. "I can't say outrageous things anymore! Boooo! Waaaah! I need freedom to be horrific!"

If I have to use these ridiculous brand guidelines, you can do your job too. "College campus talking, who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?" I'll give you that one for free.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:54 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

I mean it's like all these old guys are complaining that everything is "too PC" because they don't want to admit that the world is moving on and they can't keep up.
posted by bleep at 10:54 AM on June 9, 2015 [36 favorites]

And the anecdote about his daughter seems on point to me. I was an annoying know-it-all when I was younger. The older I get, the less certain I am about many things, and I've seen this is other people. That a presumably immature person is trying for dramatic effect seems to me to be a rather ordinary point. I guess I'm missing where he's so wrong.
posted by Ambient Echo at 10:54 AM on June 9, 2015 [19 favorites]

Just think if things had been so PC back in the 1990s when Jerry was first living large on NBC's dime, and when, by the way "PC" was actually such a thing that there were movies named after it), Jerry might not have been able to date a 17 year old when he was almost 40 without somebody saying something.

And that's 90% of this is: though some do want to just silence people, most people who complain about stuff they find offensive in comedy don't have that as a motive, they're just pointing out that they think it's shitty and not funny. If you can't stand the heat, grow the fuck up and listen.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:56 AM on June 9, 2015 [63 favorites]

I'd love to hear a conversation between Seinfeld and Aziz Ansari about this. Ansari really seems to have the social justice humor thing nailed and I bet he'd have a few great rebuttals to Seinfeld's argument.
posted by dialetheia at 10:56 AM on June 9, 2015 [46 favorites]

the man who started dating a girl when she was 17 and he was nearly 40 wants to lecture me on what sexism means? lol, no.
posted by nadawi at 10:58 AM on June 9, 2015 [102 favorites]

I don't think Aziz is as much of a social justice comic as, say, Hari Kondabolu.
posted by sweetkid at 10:58 AM on June 9, 2015 [20 favorites]

Hat tip to Saladin Ahmed:

Playwright/performing artist Danny Hoch was originally cast as the Pool Guy in this episode. According to Hoch he objected to what he felt was ethnic stereotyping in the way his character was written: a stereotype of a "crazy Hispanic named Ramon." After Hoch unsuccessfully tried to have the character changed, he said that Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus were supportive of him, while Michael Richards told him he would be fired if he didn't play the role as written. Hoch then returned to his hotel room, and shortly afterwards received a phone call telling him he was being replaced and he should fly home as soon as possible. He told this story on a 2005 television documentary Race Is the Place and in his one-man show Jails, Hospitals & Hip Hop.

posted by kmz at 10:59 AM on June 9, 2015 [61 favorites]

dialetheia, that would be AWESOME.

Seinfeld is playing my town--or maybe he already did, I dunno--and I was legitimately surprised at the amount of money he charges for tickets, but I guess you don't become a comedy bajillionaire solely on the strength of your observations about airplane food alone.
posted by Kitteh at 11:00 AM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

How his edginess has suffered in this terrible new cultural climate.

I think a lot of comedians pride themselves on being "edgy" and "irreverent". The problem is that it's not actually irreverent to say things you're not "supposed" to say when they reflect underlying power structures; you are in fact still revering the status quo. When people get upset about comedians making fun of women and people of color, they are in fact pushing for MORE irreverence.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 11:00 AM on June 9, 2015 [110 favorites]

From the Lindy West piece:

Beloved funnyman of yesteryear Jerry Seinfeld (ask your parents!)

Ouch, Lindy. I mean, accurate (if I'd had my kid earlier) but..ouch.
posted by emjaybee at 11:01 AM on June 9, 2015 [17 favorites]

I'm not famous, and God willing never will be, but I still hope I die before I get to the "Old [usually white] Man Yells At Cloud" stage of life.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:01 AM on June 9, 2015 [11 favorites]

God, there is nothing more edgy than making fun of the poor, women, people of color, and traumas that other people have experienced but the comedian hasn't, and how will comedy survive if they can't explore the envelope of who they can bully?
posted by maxsparber at 11:01 AM on June 9, 2015 [35 favorites]

hari kondabolu is exactly who i think of when old dudes complain that the kids are just too sensitive. some people are managing just fine. it's not really a wonder why the kids don't care about seinfeld's humor.
posted by nadawi at 11:02 AM on June 9, 2015 [14 favorites]

I think we're missing the point here. Seinfeld's stand-up shtick has never, ever been edgy. This is just an old man yells at cloud comment, the kind that periodically emanate from entitled rich people when nobody is paying attention to them.

Goddamnit Card Cheat.
posted by selfnoise at 11:02 AM on June 9, 2015 [37 favorites]

Just think if things had been so PC back in the 1990s when Jerry was first living large on NBC's dime

Haha, what? We always complain nowadays about the "sharing economy" and how content creators can't make any money, but Jerry Seinfeld's success (and NBC's success) is the result of his own hard work. NBC didn't do anything for him. His parents were Jewish immigrants. He went to community college in upstate New York.

I think the "these kids today are all so PC" is just old-man crankiness, but Seinfeld is a success story. NBC was making money off of him.
posted by Nevin at 11:03 AM on June 9, 2015 [17 favorites]

I mean, shows like Family Guy and South Park are still around and doing fine even though they are routinely offensive to women and minorities. All the PC brigade can do is say they don't like the humor and why, they don't actually have much power to stop you if you want to make an offensive joke. You don't have a right to universal approval, which is what it sounds like this is really about.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:03 AM on June 9, 2015 [30 favorites]

Holy shit, we don't like an interview with perhaps the most mainstream person ever in the history of people aired on ESPN on a show apparently called The Herd? Wow, so surprised.
posted by Keith Talent at 11:03 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

On the one hand, yes: Seinfeld, the "greatest" sitcom ever, the stubborn old guard, the hallowed shrine of traditional comedy, things aren't ha-ha "funny" anymore, the kidz these days are so PC, etc., etc.

On the other hand, screw him, his sanctimony, his privilege, and his general whiny, petulant assholery.

I saw a tweet from Ariana Grande (I'm way too old for her demo, but whatever) the other day that included several strong, inspired references to her aunt being the first Italian-American female president of the National Press Club, and liberally quoting Gloria Steinem for truth -- and I wanted to jump for joy. This dude, on the other hand, the older and crankier he gets, sums up just about everything rotten, mean, and prickish about this country.
posted by blucevalo at 11:05 AM on June 9, 2015 [21 favorites]

It's when the white comedians take up the rallying cry of "SILENCED ALL MY LIFE" is when I am like, "Holy shit, no one is silencing you. You can make your shitty hacky sexist/racist/etc jokes till the cows come home but nobody's gotta give you the overwhelming approval you apparently demand. It just means you only know one trick and it's not even very good."
posted by Kitteh at 11:05 AM on June 9, 2015 [87 favorites]

I think we already had this conversation, on the rape jokes thread, which was basically, anyone (or Seinfeld) absolutely has the right to make shitty racist/sexist/whatever jokes all they want.

They don't have the right to get laughs, though. If people have changed, well tough shit; time to make some new jokes.
posted by emjaybee at 11:06 AM on June 9, 2015 [40 favorites]

I blame the Internet :)

No, seriously, I do. The internet, specifically YouTube videos and clickbait "news" sites, have cultivated and promoted a culture of outrage so that people expect to see awful things and believe that being "edgy" now is to expose some awfulness somewhere - even where it may not exist. "Find the Awful!" appears to be the new mantra of those who spend far too much time viewing sites catering to just that denomination/demographic.

Granted we've exposed a lot of hypocrites who were awful but we just never knew it before (lookin' at you Mr. Cosby) but we've gone so far down that rabbit hole that a certain type of person now expects everything to be awful and seeks awful where it might not really exist.

So a lot of internetzians have lost the ability to laugh at themselves and instead seek the awful in everyone else - which, like Chris Rock, I think is pretty awful.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 11:07 AM on June 9, 2015 [26 favorites]

By the way, if you want to talk about courage in comedy, near-billionaire Seinfeld is complaining about gigs he already doesn't do, while Lindy West, who has consistently and intelligently written about comedy for years now, literally becomes the target of rape and deaths threats every single time she does.

But boo hoo, Seinfeld. I'm sure you know more about sexism than West does.
posted by maxsparber at 11:07 AM on June 9, 2015 [99 favorites]

ah, the great paradox of wanting to be edgy and offensive but having a huge snitfit when you end up hurting and offending people and they don't find you funny
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:08 AM on June 9, 2015 [28 favorites]

And the anecdote about his daughter seems on point to me.

Yeah, teens trying to figure out things like this is a normal, natural thing. But it doesn't mean they're wrong, or that they don't understand sexism even if they don't explain it quite correctly. And it doesn't mean telling stories mocking his 14 year old daughter is an awesome thing to do.
posted by jeather at 11:08 AM on June 9, 2015 [14 favorites]

Ouch, Lindy. I mean, accurate (if I'd had my kid earlier) but..ouch.

Oh whatever. Jerry's place in the annals of standup history is secure and his career should be the envy of ANY aspiring comic. Who the hell will know who this Lindy person is in the future? And besides, great comics are great in their time and FOR their time. Bill Hicks might be your hero, but kids won't know much about him either. I felt the main point Jerry is making is that college crowds fucking suck and aren't worth doing.

The only time I saw Carlin live was at a college gig in New Jersey. Among his time-honored bits about observations and language, he did a long bit just TEARING into the fratboy jock mentality that had the crowd totally booing... Well most of them. My sister and I were on our feet applauding!
posted by ReeMonster at 11:09 AM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

heh in fact, hari has already responded : Political Correctness is stifling Jerry Seinfeld's ability to say nothing.
posted by nadawi at 11:09 AM on June 9, 2015 [53 favorites]

No, seriously, I do. The internet, specifically YouTube videos and clickbait "news" sites, have cultivated and promoted a culture of outrage so that people expect to see awful things and believe that being "edgy" now is to expose some awfulness somewhere - even where it may not exist.

Yes. White men have been terrible on the web, complaining nonstop about minorities finally finding a place where they can raise concerns and objections.

I assume that's what you're takling about, yes? When you say "culture of outrage," you're talking about white men who can't handle the diversifying of voices on the web? Right?
posted by maxsparber at 11:09 AM on June 9, 2015 [68 favorites]

His 14-year-old daughter tells him to stop assuming she spends all her time thinking about boys, and he uses that as an excuse to tell the world how ignorant she is about sexism.
posted by jaguar at 11:09 AM on June 9, 2015 [88 favorites]

I mean, shows like Family Guy and South Park are still around and doing fine even though they are routinely offensive to women and minorities.

They are offensive to *everyone*. That is their point. They are most offensive to US (esp white middle class) ideas of normality. The older white males in those shows are cast as stupid and psychopathic, pretty much without fail.

The shows are *also* offensive to women/minorities/etc—they spare no one any mercy. To focus on them like this—as if racism and sexism are their focus or even particularly relevant to understanding their cultural function—reflects a fetish and fixation on being offended, to the point of blinkering away the rest of reality.

It is what Seinfeld was talking about, and it's pathetic.
posted by andrewpcone at 11:10 AM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

in 3 years his daughter will be old enough to date his 40 year old friends, right jerry?
posted by nadawi at 11:12 AM on June 9, 2015 [50 favorites]

The internet, specifically YouTube videos and clickbait "news" sites, have cultivated and promoted a culture of outrage so that people expect to see awful things and believe that being "edgy" now is to expose some awfulness somewhere - even where it may not exist.

Just out of curiosity, what did you blame it on in the '90s -- you know, the last time this exact fucking issue was endlessly whinged about by straight white men who suddenly had to deal with the merest hint of a suggestion of an idea that maybe "Bitches are like this, amirite?" didn't go over with every single person in the audience?
posted by Etrigan at 11:12 AM on June 9, 2015 [34 favorites]

. But his past work does not entitle Seinfeld to our eternal adoration or unconditional support.

Then why write an article in the Guardian about him? Ignore him and do your own thing.

I never watched Seinfeld back in the 90's (it seemed to me my friends back then only spoke in Seinfeld quotes), but I do like his Comedians in Cars series.

I wasn't aware that Lindy West was a comedian. I thought she was more of a pop culture commentator. Does anyone have any links to her comedy?
posted by Nevin at 11:13 AM on June 9, 2015

To focus on them like this, as if racism and sexism are their focus or even particularly relevant to understanding their culture function—reflects a fetish and fixation on being offended, to the point of blinkering away the rest of reality.

So, wait, racism and sexism are totally fine if whoever is perpetrating it also takes a few shots at the Man?
posted by griphus at 11:13 AM on June 9, 2015 [28 favorites]

When you say "culture of outrage," you're talking about white men who can't handle the diversifying of voices on the web? Right?

No, he's talking about the culture of outrage, which is often most prominently expressed by self-righteous, self-flagellating white males. The most outrageous voices are not typically those of marginalized self-resepct; they are the voices of privileged puritanical piety, and you know it.
posted by andrewpcone at 11:13 AM on June 9, 2015 [16 favorites]

ah, the great paradox of wanting to be edgy and offensive but having a huge snitfit when you end up hurting and offending people and they don't find you funny

The Marc Maron interview with Gallagher (speaking of cranky old guys) is a perfect case in point. He was just asking him why he felt the need to tell what were basically crappy homophobic and racist dad jokes on stage and he threw a shit fit and stormed out.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:13 AM on June 9, 2015 [20 favorites]

So, wait, racism and sexism are totally fine if whoever is perpetrating it also takes a few shots at the Man?

That's not what I said, but yes. Some measure of racism and sexism are fine. Deal with it.
posted by andrewpcone at 11:13 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

lots of diverse comedians are out there absolutely winning - if you think everyone is looking for misery, you're looking at the wrong things.
posted by nadawi at 11:14 AM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

Hey remember The Marriage Ref? I think we should all take a moment and remember The Marriage Ref.

(Also, the brotastic obnoxious take down of "Too politically correct colleges" movie PCU came out OVER TWENTY YEARS AGO)
posted by The Whelk at 11:14 AM on June 9, 2015 [14 favorites]

Some measure of racism and sexism are fine.

Cool.
posted by griphus at 11:14 AM on June 9, 2015 [42 favorites]

The funniest thing I have seen Seinfeld associated with recently was his Comedians in Cars with Miranda Sings, a YouTube comic whose approach is so far from Seinfeld's that she might as well be an alien, and who spent the whole episode pretending not to know who Seinfeld was, glowering at him, treating him like a creepy old man, and behaving as though she assumed Seinfeld had invited her out because he wanted advice on comedy from her.
posted by maxsparber at 11:14 AM on June 9, 2015 [27 favorites]

I wasn't aware that Lindy West was a comedian. I thought she was more of a pop culture commentator. Does anyone have any links to her comedy?

Who said she's a comedian? She's a comedy critic who also happens to be very funny.
posted by maxsparber at 11:15 AM on June 9, 2015 [10 favorites]

I mean it's like all these old guys are complaining that everything is "too PC" because they don't want to admit that the world is moving on and they can't keep up.

but is it really true that "political correctness" is a factor in comedy? I thought it was fairly accepted in major comedians today to say things fairly cruel and unPC... I'm thinking of Sara Silverman.
posted by jayder at 11:15 AM on June 9, 2015

When you say "culture of outrage," you're talking about white men who can't handle the diversifying of voices on the web? Right?

There are a lot of angry people who will express outrage over damn near anything because at last they can in a way that people will be able to hear. Sometimes people express outrage at something that's an outrage. Sometimes they express outrage at something not terribly outrageous because they need to let out their anger and they found a target. This is not limited to white men. It's limited to people with internet access.
posted by Harvey Jerkwater at 11:15 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

The conversation involving his daughter was this:

My daughter's 14. My wife says to her, 'Well, you know, in the next couple years, I think maybe you’re going to want to be hanging around the city more on the weekends, so you can see boys.' You know what my daughter says? She says, ‘That’s sexist.’

So, it's not between Seinfeld and his daughter. And the point is that she will be more interested in boys as she ages, not that she can't think about anything else. It looked to me like the mother was expecting a certain set of changes in her daughter that track with how many people change over time. I fail to see the sexism in that. I wish *my* mom had made it easier to pursue boys. But hell, I was scared enough as a teen that I barely could chase my own shadow.
posted by Ambient Echo at 11:16 AM on June 9, 2015 [7 favorites]

I think andrewpcone nailed it.
posted by MattMangels at 11:17 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

So it's not between Seinfeld and his daughter.

I missed the wife bit, so yes. But assuming the main reason your daughter wants to go into a city on the weekend is to meet up with boys, at whatever age, is a fairly sexist assumption, yes.
posted by jaguar at 11:18 AM on June 9, 2015 [33 favorites]

Who said she's a comedian? She's a comedy critic who also happens to be very funny.

She does do stand-up IIRC--she opens for fantastic political comedian Jamie Kilstein every time he stops in Seattle--but I guess since she's a not comedian with a capital C like Saint Jerry, then her opinion must be worthless? That is a messed up metric.
posted by Kitteh at 11:19 AM on June 9, 2015 [10 favorites]

Some measure of racism and sexism are fine. Deal with it.

Ugh. Only if you'll admit that people vociferously criticizing your racist, sexist bullshit are also fine, and that you should also just "deal with it" instead of being so outraged that somebody is criticizing your precious boys club.
posted by dialetheia at 11:19 AM on June 9, 2015 [100 favorites]

sarah silverman isn't exactly current and she was actually brought up recently at a panel about comedy and race for her use of blackface.
posted by nadawi at 11:19 AM on June 9, 2015 [10 favorites]

To focus on them like this—as if racism and sexism are their focus or even particularly relevant to understanding their cultural function—reflects a fetish and fixation on being offended, to the point of blinkering away the rest of reality.

It is what Seinfeld was talking about, and it's pathetic.

LOL. I'm a huge fan of both shows, especially Family Guy. I've probably seen every FG episode 5+ times or more. Being offensive to everyone is not an excuse, because sometimes that is punching up and sometimes it's punching down. The misogyny in Family Guy especially often strikes me as Seth MacFarlane saying this is what he really thinks with a pretty thin veneer of jokiness.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:19 AM on June 9, 2015 [13 favorites]

(I spent all day watching recent Netflix stand-up specials and now I'm convinced only lesbians should be allowed perform stand-up. Not like, forever, but maybe for a good five year streach)
posted by The Whelk at 11:19 AM on June 9, 2015 [62 favorites]

how the hell are you supposed to know how seriously to take somebody's opinions if you don't know how much money and notoriety they have??
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:20 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

And the point is that she will be more interested in boys as she ages

which is, in fact, sexist, as well as making unnecessary and potentially hurtful assumptions about the kid's sexuality.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:20 AM on June 9, 2015 [50 favorites]

Seems to me that many of the comments in this thread speak to the very issue and perhaps help to validate his point. Outrage, insolence and over-analysis of things that maybe don't deserve outrage, insolence and over-analysis.
posted by annekenstein at 11:21 AM on June 9, 2015 [14 favorites]

I agree, Kitteh. That would totally be a messed up metric. I'm glad no one said either of those things.
posted by Ambient Echo at 11:21 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah this thread is going weirdly, I feel like it's 2002 or some such.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 11:22 AM on June 9, 2015 [34 favorites]

And the point is that she will be more interested in boys as she ages, not that she can't think about anything else.

The point is that her actions and decisions about how she spends her free time will be dictated by her feelings about the opposite sex. I think "that's sexist" as a response lacks nuance, but I don't think it's a crazy thing for this young woman to say. I don't think she's trying to tell her mother "you're a horrible person and should feel bad", and I don't think her mother IS a horrible person who should feel bad, but she made a statement that reflected certain assumptions. I think the young woman pointing out to her mother, however clumsily, that this is an assumption being made is valuable and impressive.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 11:22 AM on June 9, 2015 [56 favorites]

Outrage, insolence and over-analysis of things that maybe don't deserve outrage, insolence and over-analysis.

Or maybe it points out that comedy is something that is worth taking seriously, which is something most comedians agree with right up until the moment "taking seriously" is coupled with "addressing critically."
posted by maxsparber at 11:22 AM on June 9, 2015 [37 favorites]

ah, the great paradox of wanting to be edgy and offensive but having a huge snitfit when you end up hurting and offending people and they don't find you funny

Can't possibly favorite this enough. So tired of self-described "edgy" figures whining about how everyone else in the world should treat them with kid gloves.
posted by jason_steakums at 11:23 AM on June 9, 2015 [18 favorites]

Please don't use the word "insolent" unless you're cosplaying Doctor Doom.
posted by selfnoise at 11:23 AM on June 9, 2015 [39 favorites]

which is, in fact, sexist, as well as making unnecessary and potentially hurtful assumptions about the kid's sexuality.

It's not unreasonable to expect that her own mother likely has a reasonably good idea of her child's sexuality. Sure , parents get that wrong (mine did) but it's not an unreasonable assumption. Nor is it an awful thing.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 11:23 AM on June 9, 2015 [10 favorites]

Outrage, insolence and over-analysis of things that maybe don't deserve outrage, insolence and over-analysis.

Like outrage when people call you sexist and over-analysis of how they are wrong yes?
posted by jeather at 11:24 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

I don't see how the claim that these terms are often misused is even debatable. He's not saying sexism and racism don't exist. He's saying the terms and concepts are often misunderstood and misapplied, and he's right. Righteous indignation is a flamethrower, not a scalpel, especially on college campuses.
posted by echocollate at 11:27 AM on June 9, 2015 [17 favorites]

maybe the 14 year old was mouthing off to her mother and shouldn't be held up as some sort of example of how dumb young girls are by her own father.
posted by nadawi at 11:27 AM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

Folks, if we're going to have a thread about this, which I'm not at all convinced we should, people need to read the room and not barge around with old complaints about the PC police, but also please try not to paraphrase what other people are saying in the worst possible way. Plus maybe we can lay off speculating about Seinfeld's kid's sexuality. Thanks.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:28 AM on June 9, 2015 [12 favorites]

Righteousness indignation is a flamethrower, not a scalpel, especially on college campuses.

Nonsense. That's a complainy talking point that has been completely unproven, and it's the same whine that I've heard about students since I went to school in the Eighties. It's a perennial whinge, not a genuine criticism.
posted by maxsparber at 11:28 AM on June 9, 2015 [28 favorites]

Oh my, all you talking about the daughters motivations for calling out the parents sexism, the kid may be bright and informed and compassionate, but Jesus Christ, she called out her mothers sexism because it's what 14 year old girls do, call out any perceived transgression. You are waaaaaaayyyy overthinking that particular plate of beans.
posted by Keith Talent at 11:28 AM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

I'm glad no one said either of those things.

"Oh whatever. Jerry's place in the annals of standup history is secure and his career should be the envy of ANY aspiring comic. Who the hell will know who this Lindy person is in the future?"
posted by Etrigan at 11:29 AM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

I saw Seinfeld perform on tour about a decade ago. The middle of his set was a lot of "men drive like this, but women drive like this". I was a much less informed feminist at the time, but even then I felt it was a little simplistic. Not offensive, just.. really boring.

We paid a lot of money for those tickets too. Basically what I'm saying is: college students, you are probably better off without seeing a Seinfeld show.
posted by jess at 11:29 AM on June 9, 2015 [8 favorites]

Plus it would be great if folks could not literally endorse sexism and racism. That is also not a way toward great conversation. Thanks.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:29 AM on June 9, 2015 [53 favorites]

Sure , parents get that wrong (mine did) but it's not an unreasonable assumption. Nor is it an awful thing.

Who said it was awful? Just that it was sexist (and/or heteronormative). And it absolutely can be very harmful to the child in question, your apparent experience notwithstanding (ask me how I know!).

I don't see how the claim that these terms are often misused is even debatable.

Because that claim is coming from somebody who gives no indication whatsoever that he himself understands these terms, and for whom those terms are mostly abstract and have little personal relevance. When a white straight dude wants to start lecturing people on what racism and sexism *really* are, this is a pretty standard response.
posted by dialetheia at 11:29 AM on June 9, 2015 [13 favorites]

isn't it her father who overthought that plate of beans? i mean, he's the reason we know the story.
posted by nadawi at 11:29 AM on June 9, 2015 [11 favorites]

They are offensive to *everyone*. That is their point. They are most offensive to US (esp white middle class) ideas of normality. The older white males in those shows are cast as stupid and psychopathic, pretty much without fail.

The shows are *also* offensive to women/minorities/etc—they spare no one any mercy. To focus on them like this—as if racism and sexism are their focus or even particularly relevant to understanding their cultural function—reflects a fetish and fixation on being offended, to the point of blinkering away the rest of reality.

"Hey Lois, remember that time we didn't punch down for cheap laughs?"

*flashback to Brian spending an entire episode puking in disgust over Quagmire's dad's transsexuality*
posted by jason_steakums at 11:29 AM on June 9, 2015 [27 favorites]

The perspective here is that we are talking about a Huffington Post outragefilter article about an ESPN interview promoting Seinfeld's new season of his web series who's first show of the season features a female comedian.

I can only slow-clap the promoters and P.R. people who set this all up to be the massive publicity-generating shit-show that it was all designed to be.

In 1980 sex sells.
In 2015 outrage sells more.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 11:30 AM on June 9, 2015 [21 favorites]

the flamethrower of righteous indignation is especially dangerous now that young people, women, and POC have gotten their hands on it
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:30 AM on June 9, 2015 [63 favorites]

Fair enough, Etrigan, I missed that comment.
posted by Ambient Echo at 11:31 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Mrs Pterodactyl: I think a lot of comedians pride themselves on being "edgy" and "irreverent".

THEN:

selfnoise: I think we're missing the point here. Seinfeld's stand-up shtick has never, ever been edgy.

Exactly this. It's easy to misread what Jerry's doing here as being comparable to Collin Quinn's earlier complaints, or that shitbag Daniel Tosh. It's not. Jerry's entire career was based around being able to completely avoid all controversy whatsoever. He never cursed, he never mentioned race, he never mentioned anything but the absolute most banal observations humanly possible. It was a mystery to many at the time how he could be as funny as he was (if that's your thing) without being in any way edgy.

So to hear someone point out that his stuff has issues with sexism or racism, his mind may have literally been blown. He cannot imagine that he, the king of bland, could be anything at all but inoffensively funny.

This is because he does not understand that exclusion is part of the problem. That you don't get around something by not mentioning it. That avoiding the topic is enabling it to continue.
posted by shmegegge at 11:31 AM on June 9, 2015 [41 favorites]

Old, unfunny comedian flails around to find a scapegoat for the fact that the kids these days aren't as in to him as he thinks they should be.

News at 11.
posted by Itaxpica at 11:31 AM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

Righteous indignation is a flamethrower, not a scalpel, especially on college campuses.

This tedious bullshit has been knocked down so many times it could be the subject of a Chumbawamba song.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:31 AM on June 9, 2015 [79 favorites]

he never mentioned anything but the absolute most banal observations humanly possible.

I did recently discover what the deal with airline food was. It's kinda interesting, but off-topic.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:34 AM on June 9, 2015 [27 favorites]

*flashback to Brian spending an entire episode puking in disgust over Quagmire's dad's transsexuality*

I don't really wanna be the guy who defends that episode, but in context, Quagmire's dad is portrayed as a decent upstanding person and Brian is consistently depicted as a selfish hypocritical asshole, especially in terms of his romantic pursuits.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:34 AM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

pulled this quote from someone (credited with his twitter handle) the other day and I think it fits Jerry's comments and this thread:

@max_read

anger is the emotion currently trading at the best exchange rate for attention, the internet’s most widely used currency.
posted by GrapeApiary at 11:35 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

anger is the emotion currently trading at the best exchange rate for attention, the internet’s most widely used currency.

It's also possible people legitimately are angry; there're plenty of good reasons.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 11:36 AM on June 9, 2015 [37 favorites]

One thing that should be cleared up in this thread-- Seinfeld has never been edgy. In general, his comedy has always been about quotidian observations-- his all time funniest bits are about airplane food. He's definitely done the "women do things like this, and men do things like this," schtick, but I honestly don't think anyone on any college would find his act offensive, unless it's changed significantly of late.

Maybe he doesn't play colleges because they don't pay enough?
posted by cell divide at 11:36 AM on June 9, 2015

I read this yesterday and mentioned it to my husband, who said that he hears quite a few comedians complain about this very thing on the many comedy podcasts he listens to. I think Seinfeld said this because there's apparently a large segment of the comedy world that feels the same way, and he didn't realize that, by virtue of being the richest comedy man in the world or whatever, the media was going to pick up the story and run with it.

What stuck out to me, though, is that the other person I personally see complaining about the supposed overly PC nature of college campuses is my friend who happens to be an executive for a high profile conservative right wing think tank. Comedians and Republicans! BFF.
posted by something something at 11:37 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

>I wasn't aware that Lindy West was a comedian. I thought she was more of a pop culture commentator. Does anyone have any links to her comedy?

Who said she's a comedian? She's a comedy critic who also happens to be very funny.

Oops, I reread the other comment and she writes about comedy. So I guess she's a professional critic.
posted by Nevin at 11:38 AM on June 9, 2015

I think it's worth noting that nobody seemed to have an issue with anger when it was presented by white men (many of whom built their careers around anger: Louis Black, Sam Kinison, Morton Downey Jr., etc.)

But now that it's not just white men who are angry, oh my god, freedom itself is at stake!
posted by maxsparber at 11:38 AM on June 9, 2015 [53 favorites]

yeah, the hilarious meme that minorities are only angry about *isms because they "want attention" gets enough play everywhere else online, it would be great if we could resist smearing that shit all over mefi.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:39 AM on June 9, 2015 [53 favorites]

I think Seinfeld makes a good point. And, as several posters have noted, other comedians have made the same point with a bit more credibility. Which is the problem with Seinfeld saying this, and ironically, makes it a bit more newsworthy. When Chris Rock says this, it's kind of a snooze.

Though I do think it's a valid point, I also don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. To me, it's an indication that the game is simply more challenging, and following the times. Any standup can still do race/sex/etc humor that's edgy. But to pull it off, it has to make people laugh, not wince. Challenges aplenty for aspiring comics everywhere. Bad news for comics who foster the entitled, whiny prick personality that Seinfeld does so expertly.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:41 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

I do like his Comedians in Cars series.

Really? The fake reaction shots and forced laughter is even more annoying than the laugh tracks on his sitcoms.
posted by JackFlash at 11:41 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

All this handwringing about college shows. Oh no! College students don't like my work! Well, dude, maybe it's you. Maybe you're not college-campus material. Maybe you're just too damn old to be playing college shows because the world has changed so much that your insights are completely irrelevant and alien to them. It happens.

My kid's childhood resembles mine in very few ways, so much so that I have had to give up a number of assumptions and stop relying on what I "knew" about kids/childhood when relating to him. Some it is how we're raising him, but a whole lot of it is a very different world he lives in, compared to the one I grew up in.

College kids today have entirely different burdens and fears than they did the last time Jerry went to class. It's mostly a hell of a lot harder. They're more aware of certain things, too, like discrimination. They might be clumsy about how they express it, or he might just be the oversensitive one, who is just entirely out of touch with them.

I lean towards the second explanation.
posted by emjaybee at 11:42 AM on June 9, 2015 [42 favorites]

I think Seinfeld's anecdote actually illustrates the opposite of what he thinks it does:

"My daughter's 14. My wife says to her, 'Well, you know, in the next couple years, I think maybe you’re going to want to be hanging around the city more on the weekends, so you can see boys.' You know what my daughter says? She says, ‘That’s sexist.’ They just want to use these words: 'That’s racist;' 'That’s sexist;' 'That’s prejudice.' They don’t know what the f--k they’re talking about.”

Jerry himself doesn't see, one might suspect, the kind of classical sexism in that sentiment that he might actually oppose, or publicly say he opposes, such as literally saying "women are not as smart as men" or something equally big and unambiguous. He doesn't see how heteronormativity could be experienced by a girl or a young woman as sexism, but his daughter understands what sexism actually entails far better than he does. He's the one who doesn't understand what the fuck he's talking about, and his 14-year-old daughter does.
posted by clockzero at 11:42 AM on June 9, 2015 [67 favorites]

(I spent all day watching recent Netflix stand-up specials and now I'm convinced only lesbians should be allowed perform stand-up. Not like, forever, but maybe for a good five year stretch)

I think I'm against this, unless you mean just five years of Tig Notaro, in which case I'm adamantly for it.
posted by The Bellman at 11:43 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but I just loved this bit from the Lindy West piece: "literally being figuratively strangled"
posted by dabug at 11:44 AM on June 9, 2015 [16 favorites]

when women point out that they have a hard time getting booked, all the male comics line up to tell them to toughen up and get better - well, old dudes - toughen up and get better, or fade away, we aren't really missing you.
posted by nadawi at 11:45 AM on June 9, 2015 [55 favorites]

I get the sense that there are many stand-up comics whose hackles go up the moment they are told they can't say something, completely forgetting whether or not they should say it in the first place.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:45 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

I think I'm against this, unless you mean just five years of Tig Notaro, in which case I'm adamantly for it.

I'll take some Carmen Esposito too
posted by The Whelk at 11:45 AM on June 9, 2015 [10 favorites]

Saying you won't do college shows because the crowds are too "PC" -- okay, fine, whatever. But:

"They just want to use these words: 'That’s racist;' 'That’s sexist;' 'That’s prejudice.' They don’t know what the f--k they’re talking about."

That's some heinously ignorant garbage there.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:46 AM on June 9, 2015 [16 favorites]

Courage in comedy: Lindy West, yes.

Also Hannibal Buress. We have a lot to thank him for. Cosby's victims, obviously, had to show even greater courage, but still. That's how you handle this "It's too PC" stuff.

I cry no tears at all for Seinfeld, and I seriously question anyone who does.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:46 AM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

hannibal buress is a fantastic example. he used to have more problematic parts to his bits. then he started working with ilana glazer and abbi jacobson, and credits them directly with opening his eyes on some things and making him a better person, and in the process, a better comic who was more aware.
posted by nadawi at 11:48 AM on June 9, 2015 [45 favorites]

I cry no tears at all for Seinfeld, and I seriously question anyone who does.

Nobody is crying for Seinfeld. He's drowning in "fuck you" money, travels via private jet when touring and priced himself out of performing at colleges years ago.
posted by MikeMc at 11:49 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

how the hell are you supposed to know how seriously to take somebody's opinions if you don't know how much money and notoriety they have??

Seriously! It's like they've never even heard of Worthington's Law.
posted by dialetheia at 11:51 AM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Because a lot of this edgy humor reveals the comedian's extremely self-centered and narrow view of the world and inability to consider other perspectives.
posted by ChuckRamone at 11:53 AM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

When Jerry was in college did he dig comics 40 years older than him? We're talking someone who would have been born in 1911, here. Were they speaking his language, where they hip to what was important to him and his classmates? Anti-war, pro-rock and roll and sexual revolution?

I think not.

This is the same story from forever: got older, got out of touch. The kids don't get what's really important, the kids are too sensitive to what isn't important.

Truth: the kids are smarter, kinder, and more accepting than you in areas where it counts. The kids are the continuing social revolution. And your kind isn't long for this world.
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:54 AM on June 9, 2015 [25 favorites]

When Jerry was in college did he dig comics 40 years older than him?

Well, he did, but he's kind of an edge case.
posted by maxsparber at 11:55 AM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

Because a lot of this edgy humor reveals the comedian's extremely self-centered and narrow view of the world and inability to consider other perspectives.

I don't find Seinfeld funny, but one of the points of observational comedy is to *reveal* that the comedian, and be extension the audience, is self-centered, narrow, or otherwise irrational or flawed.
posted by andrewpcone at 11:56 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

The last time I heard Seinfeld's comedy he was on a late night show talking about how everybody has too much stuff. If a dude who owns 47 Porsches wants to lecture people who don't have 47 Porsches about how they have too much stuff... yeah, not surprising if his comedy isn't going over well with the college kids.
posted by Jeanne at 11:56 AM on June 9, 2015 [30 favorites]

When Jerry was in college did he dig comics 40 years older than him? We're talking someone who would have been born in 1911, here.

I get the point you are making here but Henny Youngman.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:56 AM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

I wonder what it is about campuses being PC that makes comedians like Seinfeld not want to go there. The risk that you will say something horrible and people will tweet about it? That’s at every show, everywhere.

I think what dudes like him really don’t like is the idea that they might get an audience that won’t laugh. He says Seinfeld-observation joke, and the audience stares blankly, or some of them frown, or some of them roll their eyes. Maybe a few bros laugh.

It took me until my thirties until I felt like I could de-program myself to stop laughing at terrible, unfunny, offensive jokes (it’s only polite/I don’t want him to feel bad/performing is scary/random culture habit learned at young age). Kudos to college students for possibly being able to un-learn that at a much earlier age.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 11:57 AM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

I don't think Aziz is as much of a social justice comic as, say, Hari Kondabolu.
posted by sweetkid at 1:58 PM on June 9 [7 favorites +] [!]

Thank you for Hari Kondabolu.
posted by edbles at 11:58 AM on June 9, 2015 [7 favorites]

I remember enjoying the Seinfeld sitcom, then seeing his stand-up. I was, like, why isn't this funny? It was basically wooden, old-man-wokka-wokka-type humor even back in the '90s.

Later, I found out about Larry David, and Curb Your Enthusiasm made it apparent where the humor came from.

Seinfeld has had a hell of a ride on those coattails. Probably a good idea to not wave around too much at this point and risk people noticing.
posted by ignignokt at 12:02 PM on June 9, 2015 [12 favorites]

~~Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee~~
Old White Man Telling You to Get Off His Lawn
posted by Fizz at 12:04 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Seinfeld's Clio speech is pretty funny.
posted by Nevin at 12:09 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Seinfeld has had a hell of a ride on [Larry David's] coattails.

Not everything Larry David ever did was genius or successful -- it's much fairer to say that the collaboration of the two was pretty damn good.
posted by Etrigan at 12:09 PM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

Whoops, I was thinking of this Seinfeld awards speech.
posted by Nevin at 12:12 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't think Aziz is as much of a social justice comic as, say, Hari Kondabolu.

I saw Aziz at the Comedy Cellar, and he did around 40 minutes, most of which was dedicated to talking about feminism and animal rights. And he KILLED. It was pretty incredible, because the Comedy Cellar is a completely random mix of people who came to see a random mix of comics, so there was no guarantee they'd be friendly to that kind of material. But he completely sold it. He is definitely a comic who cares about social justice, if not a 'social justice comic' per se.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:13 PM on June 9, 2015 [29 favorites]

When Jerry was in college did he dig comics 40 years older than him?

Probably not the antisemitic bits, although the analogy would be lost on him.
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:14 PM on June 9, 2015 [19 favorites]

I gotta say whenever I see these rants about how young people are ruining everything the opening bars to this song plays in my head. Skip to 1:20.
posted by edbles at 12:15 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Genuinely surprised to see the "people are just feigning outrage for points", "self flagellating white males" sort of chat in here. Baffled as to how people get so angry about this.

Also I wonder if I've just been reading the wrong threads, or if we've had a recent lot of fresh blood joining the "im so mad a bit the pc. Police" brigade?
posted by ominous_paws at 12:16 PM on June 9, 2015 [13 favorites]

Here's the thing about Recreational Outrage among The Youth: it does happen sometimes. But I don't think that's a bad thing. A certain level of radicalism will always be necessary to shift the window of what is considered 'normal' - if activism was on a spectrum from 'Insanely Regressive' to 'Exactly What I Personally Feel is Correct', nothing would ever get to the point of Exactly What I Personally Feel is Correct.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:17 PM on June 9, 2015 [36 favorites]

BREAKING NEWS: Andrew Dice Clay stated during an interview with Cooter and the Blorp on the Q97.7 Morning Zoo that he will no longer be playing colleges either, in solidarity with Jerry Seinfeld.

"These colleges are definitely asking me all the time to do my nursery rhymes with cursing and also to wear my enormous jacket," he said. "But I will refuse every single one of these requests that I still get regularly because my career is going well. Relevant, notable comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and I, the Diceman, need to stick together in times like this."

He added that his loyal fans can still catch his act at Chuckles Laff Club off the Exit 12 on the I-50 next to that old strip club they burned down for the insurance money.
posted by griphus at 12:19 PM on June 9, 2015 [37 favorites]

I heard about him praising Cowherd about a week ago. It was very disappointing. I can't even listen to Cowherd because of his randomly inserted right wing talking point brain spasms. Should've known this was coming.

Even though I liked and admired him, Jerry has always seemed really uptight and driven. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise when that morphs into crotchety-ness when you've nothing to shoot for.
posted by Trochanter at 12:19 PM on June 9, 2015

I feel like it's 2002 or some such.

Oh God. That means I'm twelve years old and I get to do it right this time! Also, I've got some important letters to write to various world leaders about future events, which they'll roundly ignore.
posted by The Zeroth Law at 12:22 PM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

I get the point you are making here but Henny Youngman.

Yeah there's a more nuanced digression here about styles of comedy. Many of the great older comics (I grew up on a lot of Victor Borge) played in classic comic stylings that, for the most part, didn't trade in skewering social taboos. Or if so, not in an 'edgy' way. I think that comic stuff really is timeless.

As others have pointed out a lot of what we think of as classic Seinfeld — airplane food jokes etc. — isn't far off that. So it's interesting* to see that he's triggered by the new social consciousness: demonstrating that he's ossified and become more conservative even if his comedy was always relatively safe.

* Not all that interesting. Just another white dude who sees his world disappearing.
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:23 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

*shakes fist at passing cumulonimbus*
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 12:25 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm sure if I were his teenage daughter, I'd be super pleased he brought up this anecdote about how she just uses the word sexism without knowing what it means and she's stupid.

Look on the bright side. At least he's not dating any teenage daughters.
posted by jonp72 at 12:25 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

But he completely sold it.

Yes, Aziz has gotten really good about feminism etc lately. But he wouldn't take on Seinfeld on it. He was on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and talked a little about being Indian, but he would never have taken on Seinfeld. And Hari Kondabolu would never be invited on Comedians...Cars...Coffee and he'll never be as famous as Aziz because he takes on these topics.

it's not a criticism of either, as an Indian American person who likes comedy I am glad two people from my culture are bringing representation in different ways.
posted by sweetkid at 12:27 PM on June 9, 2015 [15 favorites]

I saw Aziz at the Comedy Cellar, and he did around 40 minutes, most of which was dedicated to talking about feminism and animal rights.

Anybody have any links to some of his animal rights material that you think is good? I would be interested to hear it.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:29 PM on June 9, 2015

Just out of curiosity, what did you blame it on in the '90s -- you know, the last time this exact fucking issue was endlessly whinged about by straight white men

Seinfeld was silent on the issue in the 90s. Not because of PC censorship, but because he was making millions telling jokes about airplane peanuts. The idea that the Internet hordes are blunting his edginess, not the Almighty Dollar, is ludicrous.
posted by jonp72 at 12:31 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

Seinfeld went off the air when most of these college kids were preschoolers, if not infants.

In my mid-90s college days, I don't think most people would have been clamoring to see a Henny Youngman or Buddy Hackett type of comic from decades prior.
posted by dr_dank at 12:31 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Anybody have any links to some of his animal rights material that you think is good? I would be interested to hear it.

Apparently there's some in his new Netflix special (haven't seen it yet). I think he may have been workshopping material for that special when I saw him at the Comedy Cellar, it was around a year ago.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:31 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also I am totally jells that you saw Aziz at Comedy Cellar showbiz_liz. I was there last night and Ray Romano stopped in, and he's actually pretty funny.
posted by sweetkid at 12:32 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I actually saw Ray Romano there a different time! I go every time I have a guest. No one should ever visit NYC without going to the Comedy Cellar.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:33 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'd say Hari Kondabolu is a social justice comic, because some of his bits are directly about and aimed at the social justice community, compared to Aziz Ansari whose comedy covers some social justice topics. When I listened to Kondabolu's stand up album Waiting for 2048 (which last I checked, was available on Amazon Prime's streaming service if you want an easy way to check it out), I definitely felt like "I am the exact target audience of this comedy, this is amazing. And it's hilarious!" That probably means Kondabolu's never going to be anything approaching mainstream, and that's fine.

Every time old white dudes complain about kids these days and how PC they are, I roll my eyes. Cry more on your piles of money, sorry we don't find your boring, toothless comedy funny or valuable any more. I mean, it's not even that we kids these days demand all our comedy be incisive and all about sociopolitical issues. There's like a whole subgenre of popular comedy podcasts and stuff that's just absurdist and bizarre improv humor.
posted by yasaman at 12:37 PM on June 9, 2015 [15 favorites]

No self-respecting artist would be able to look back on the work he/she was doing 25 years ago and observe with pride that it hadn't changed and matured through the years to reflect both the changes in society and themselves over time. A true artist is always evolving.

Richard Pryor, a comic genius who was the very definition of 'edgy' and never afraid to offend anyone by saying exactly what was on his mind, famously said this on-stage after a 1979 trip to Africa:

“There’s nothing like going and seeing nothing but black. Black people. I mean from the wino to the president, it’s black people…

One thing I got out of it was magic. I’d like to share it with you. I was leaving, and I was sitting in the hotel and a voice said to me, it said, ‘Look around, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘I see all colors of people doing everything, you know.’ And the voice said, ‘Do you see any niggers?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And it said, ‘You know why? Because there aren’t any.’ And it hit me like a shot...

I was sitting there, I said, ‘Yeah, I been here three weeks and I haven’t even said it. I haven’t even thought it.’ And it made me think, Oh my God, I’ve been wrong. I’ve been wrong...

I ain’t never going to call another black man a nigger. You know, because we never was no niggers. That’s a word that’s used to describe our own wretchedness. And we perpetuate it now. Because it’s dead. That word is dead. [We’re] men and women...

And I don’t want them hip white people coming up to me, calling me no nigger or telling me nigger jokes. I don’t like it. I’m just telling you, it’s uncomfortable to me. I don’t like it when black people say it to me. So I love you all, and you can take that with you."

I guess, for some, this is proof that he submitted to the PC police.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:39 PM on June 9, 2015 [144 favorites]

The older I get, the less certain I am about many things, and I've seen this is other people. That a presumably immature person is trying for dramatic effect seems to me to be a rather ordinary point.

Yeah, Seinfeld doesn't seem very mature. You'd think at his age, he would know that every generation sees things the generation before doesn't. You'd think he'd be less certain about his own beliefs on political correctness. Maybe ask his daughter about her view, why she thought it was sexist, and consider where she's coming from. Instead of saying publicly, with all the publicity that comes with being Jerry fucking Seinfeld, that his 14-year-old daughter doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about. Is that the kind of maturity you mean?

Just from that little story, I like his daughter already, and feel optimistic for her future. She knows how to stand up for herself, and she knows to challenge assumptions about how she relates to boys. Sounds good to me.

Less optimistic about their father-daughter relationship, but maybe they have the kind of relationship where your famous comedian father publicly saying you don't know what the fuck you're talking about (and if she's known on any social media at all, exposing her to the anti-PC and anti-feminist rage and abuse of the internet) is okay.

But you know, yesterday I was just despairing a bit about another circlejerk on the Reddit front page about "Tumblrinas" and trigger warnings. I never could understand why there was so much constant rage and bile about it, why if they didn't like it they couldn't just ignore it -- talk about constant outrage! But today seeing this I realise, they wouldn't be so bothered if they weren't threatened by it. All these recent spate of people-are-too-PC complaints and articles -- this means progress is happening. The world is changing, exactly as they say. And they can write all the complaint articles and mock trigger warnings and send death threats all they want, and it's still happening. That made me feel pretty good. Thanks, kids of today.
posted by catchingsignals at 12:43 PM on June 9, 2015 [30 favorites]

Which is the weirdest thing about his "I won't perform colleges anymore because they're too PC." There isn't a college in the country that could afford him.

I mean it's not actually weird, he just wanted to complain publicly about political correctness, but it's in bad faith.

Another weird thing is that he doesn't seem to have actually said it, and yet there is no shortage of people to explain why he shouldn't have said it, or who think they know exactly why he said it, or can tell you what scorching truths about Seinfeld are revealed by the fact of him having said it.

Radio host Colin Cowherd mentioned that Chris Rock and Larry the Cable Guy won't play colleges because the audiences are too PC. Seinfeld explained that he didn't play college--e.g., he couldn't personally vouch for excessive PC among those audiences--but did agree that he heard other comedians making the same observation.

And then he told an anecdote from his own life about a teenager which leads him to give credence to the reports he's heard from other comedians.
posted by layceepee at 12:48 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

even splitting the hairs that way don't exactly leave jerry glimmering "these two comics who are likely priced out of colleges won't play them, and i've heard that around, and btw can i tell you how stupid my daughter is?"
posted by nadawi at 12:50 PM on June 9, 2015 [8 favorites]

Is that the kind of maturity you mean?

That question was directly posted to me. I'm uncertain in what way I'm permitted to answer it. I believe you know it wasn't what I meant.
posted by Ambient Echo at 12:51 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

catchingsignals it's funny you bring up trigger warnings and peoples' hatred of them. They don't understand that trigger warnings aren't for everyone, they aren't a form of censorship, they're to warn people with PTSD or people who have gone through traumatic events that what's coming up in a post or video could "trigger" them. Reddit doesn't understand that and neither does a lot of the populace. If my ex were on reddit and there wasn't a trigger warning for a video with lots of flashing lights she could have a seizure and end up in the hospital, and I know /b/ has "trolled" LJ communities for epileptics doing just that. There's a specific use there.

As for Seinfeld, he should stick to doing jokes about nothing. I think a lot of these comedians are sad that the "bad boy" days of anything goes comedy are a bit gone, especially since it was really a white-majority boys club (unless you were one of the "cool girls"). They're old, it sucks, more people want to see Aziz Ansari and Hannibal Burress. Sorry.
posted by gucci mane at 12:51 PM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

In 2015 outrage sells more.

Yep, yep. I am amused by the one-step-further rise of deliberate prog-baiting as marketing strategy to draw attention and sell things to non-progressives. Capitalism takes your politics and uses them to trick you into selling the capitalist's protein powder.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 12:52 PM on June 9, 2015 [8 favorites]

Seinfeld has always been a rather boring comedian of a far-distant prior generation, of the type I didn't watch when I was part of that generation. My husband was addicted to the Seinfeld show, which I couldn't watch much because all the people on it were the kind of person I would not want to get trapped with at a party. So the strong reaction to his feeble complaint strikes me as funny. Does he matter that much? It's kind of like Merv Griffin said something of the sort. Hi, Merv. Let me adjust your pillow. Look how pretty the trees are.

However, as for young people overusing "that's racist," the people who work in my school's library got bent out of shape because the white kids complained the library staff were too friendly with the black kids. "That's racist," the white kids (who are, for the most part, very privileged and well-to-do) said. Now that's overusing the word.
posted by Peach at 12:53 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

The fact that so many people flip the fuck out when they see the phrase "trigger warning" should in itself be enough to explain to them why such things are needed but that kind of self-reflection seems to be beyond them.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:53 PM on June 9, 2015 [26 favorites]

In 2015 outrage sells more.

If that were true Hari Kondabolu would have 47 Porsches.
posted by sweetkid at 12:55 PM on June 9, 2015 [22 favorites]

What Seinfeld's wife said to her daughter is really interesting for me. My dad is about Seinfeld's age, and had never said anything of this sort to me, or my sister. So when I go to meet my uncle a few summers back, and he jokes to me about checking out the girls at his daughter's wedding... An honest person has to ask the question why some families are brought up to think and look this way, and others a different way. How does sexism manifest itself across these different cultures? And how do you show others that these biases are real, especially if they haven't been exposed to other possibilities of living?
posted by polymodus at 12:56 PM on June 9, 2015 [14 favorites]

Yeah I see whites overusing the term more than anyone. "The police are more racist against whites, they killed more of us than black people! Where's our movement?!" is a common thing I saw after Ferguson and after some conservative radio host posted that "statistic". Ditto for MRA's and "that's sexist". No one thinks to use some critical thinking to get to the root issues here, they'd rather fight each other.
posted by gucci mane at 12:57 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

The fact that so many people flip the fuck out when they see the phrase "trigger warning"

I think it just means that there is a lot of work to be done as a society to understand PTSD.
posted by Nevin at 12:59 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

The idea that people enjoy being outraged and aren't actually, you know, just pissed about some injustice has always seemed so self-evidently stupid that I continue to be surprised that it continues to be dragged out and flogged in discussions like this. I guess it's the last desperate measure of people who can't engage in an honest substantive discussion about the subject at hand.

he's talking about the culture of outrage, which is often most prominently expressed by self-righteous, self-flagellating white males. The most outrageous voices are not typically those of marginalized self-resepct; they are the voices of privileged puritanical piety, and you know it.

And this is just weird. I'm not sure what "marginalized self-respect" means but the rest of your comment seems to be saying that it's self-flagellating white men who are complaining about sexism and racism? This is completely not my experience and is yet another way of dismissing sexism and racism without engaging on the substance. Trust me, women and people of color are speaking up about these things all the time.
posted by Mavri at 1:04 PM on June 9, 2015 [21 favorites]

i wish white dudes who probably got way further in their comedy than they should've because of their race and gender would figure out that most of the people who don't want to watch their sexist and/or racist comedy are just bored as hell with racist and/or sexist comedy. a lot of us are also outraged that we live in a culture in which that kind of shit is not only seen as okay but also lauded, sure, but we're bombarded by that shit on all sides all the time; we probably think that it should be enough for people to want to stop making those kind of jokes because they're harmful and so we go for the "that's harmful" argument before any others because we have a misguided hope that the dudes yelling at clouds have a modicum of empathy and human decency. but i think maybe we should switch to "punching down is boring" because it is clear that the "assuming empathy and decency" isn't gonna work

also lindy west is a fucking hilarious gem of a human being
posted by NoraReed at 1:06 PM on June 9, 2015 [27 favorites]

Ambient Echo: I started writing a reply to you, but thought we better take it to Memail (if you want to talk about it), as I don't want to derail over such a small point -- for what it's worth, it was just a mostly rhetorical (but entirely sincere) question.
posted by catchingsignals at 1:07 PM on June 9, 2015

Chris Rock already says basically the same thing Seinfeld does.

>You recently hosted Saturday Night Live, and in the monologue, where you were talking about the opening of One World Trade, my wife and I both felt just like you: No way are we going into that building. But you look online the next morning, and some people were offended2and accused you of disparaging the 9/11 victims. The political correctness that was thought to be dead is now—

Oh, it’s back stronger than ever. I don’t pay that much attention to it. I mean, you don’t want to piss off the people that are paying you, obviously, but otherwise I’ve just been really good at ignoring it. Honestly, it’s not that people were offended by what I said. They get offended by how much fun I appear to be having while saying it. You could literally take everything I said on Saturday night and say it on Meet the Press, and it would be a general debate, and it would go away. But half of it’s because they think they can hurt comedians

...

>When did you start to notice this?

About eight years ago. Probably a couple of tours ago. It was just like, This is not as much fun as it used to be. I remember talking to George Carlin before he died and him saying the exact same thing.
posted by Nevin at 1:07 PM on June 9, 2015 [7 favorites]

Since constraints are the foundation of creativity, it always makes me wonder why I see so many (mostly older white dude) comedians bitch about them.

I imagine it could being frustrating to try to work within constraints that you only sorta understand, and when you get it wrong people get mad at you and say you're a bad person.
posted by aubilenon at 1:10 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

About eight years ago. Probably a couple of tours ago. It was just like, This is not as much fun as it used to be. I remember talking to George Carlin before he died and him saying the exact same thing.

which to me adds support to "comedy can be the sort of thing you age out of, especially if you've found astronomical success."
posted by nadawi at 1:12 PM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

I am not that old (30) but I have a college age brother and, sorry folks, in his world Seinfeld was his mom's favorite TV show. In the 90's. Before he was born. He has never lived in a world where Seinfeld was "contemporary". I have to wonder if this has more to do with the anti-college circuit.

Also , I think the "Internet/ tumblr just feeds off outrage" is the technological equivalent of "maybe you're just on the rag". The newest version of dismissing valid concerns as overreacting.
posted by nakedmolerats at 1:13 PM on June 9, 2015 [39 favorites]

I was just despairing a bit about another circlejerk on the Reddit front page about "Tumblrinas" and trigger warnings. I never could understand why there was so much constant rage and bile about it

I can. I don't feel so strongly about it, but I do feel a bit of an eye-roll and a groan whenever the whole business comes up; it strikes me as an example of solving the wrong problem at the wrong level of abstraction.

So why not just ignore it? Well, because to whatever degree it has become part of the accepted metafilter normal culture, use of "trigger warning" puts me outside that culture, because I don't, never did, and am not intending to. Which is a bit of an odd feeling, given that I've been here longer than pretty much everyone else - it's kind of lonely to feel like the group culture one was once part of and helped establish has moved in a direction that rejects you.

now... I'm not generally going to get in people's faces about it, but I can understand why someone whose emotions run hotter than mine might choose to rant about it: because saying "trigger-warnings are part of our rules for politeness around here" is the same thing as saying "if you don't do the trigger-warnings thing then you are not being polite".
posted by Mars Saxman at 1:15 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

Chris Rock already says basically the same thing Seinfeld does.

which to me adds support to "comedy can be the sort of thing you age out of, especially if you've found astronomical success."

Here's the Metafilter discussion of the Frank Rich interview with Chris Rock. This interview was posted here about six months ago.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:17 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also , I think the "Internet/ tumblr just feeds off outrage" is the technological equivalent of "maybe you're just on the rag". The newest version of dismissing valid concerns as overreacting.

I don't think that's what Seinfeld is saying, though. He's saying that a joke is a joke if it makes people laugh. If it doesn't make people laugh it's not a joke. That's what the criteria should be. And unlike other comedians (like Russell Peters, for example) I can't recall Seinfeld ever having a schtick that depends on racist content.
posted by Nevin at 1:18 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

all the people on [Seinfeld's show] were the kind of person I would not want to get trapped with at a party - thank you for articulating exactly what's bothered me about it. (See also: Friends.)
posted by epersonae at 1:18 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

He's saying that a joke is a joke if it makes people laugh. If it doesn't make people laugh it's not a joke. That's what the criteria should be.

Well, then if 'non-PC' jokes aren't making the kids laugh anymore...
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:20 PM on June 9, 2015 [12 favorites]

given that I've been here longer than pretty much everyone else - it's kind of lonely to feel like the group culture one was once part of and helped establish has moved in a direction that rejects you.

One theory of mine, on this: nostalgia is inversely proportional to how much attention one was paying at the time.

As always, YMMV.
posted by Dark Messiah at 1:20 PM on June 9, 2015 [7 favorites]

I imagine it could being frustrating to try to work within constraints that you only sorta understand, and when you get it wrong people get mad at you and say you're a bad person.

Is this brilliant, understated commentary on how it feels to be a woman or person of color? I hope so! That is how I feel a lot of the time (especially vis a vis dating and sexuality before I was married, now it's more how to be assertive at work) and it is indeed very frustrating!
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 1:21 PM on June 9, 2015 [42 favorites]

If people seem more outraged now, maybe it's because sometimes we are more outraged, not because we think it's a fun hobby but because we have greater access to a wider variety of perspectives than we used to. I've been a raging lefty for as long as I can remember and thought I understood the racist brutality of american police, but the #blacklivesmatter movement has opened my eyes to how ignorant I was. So, yes, I'm more outraged now than I was before, but because I was ignorant before. Dismissing this outrage as recreational is bullshit. I think the same thing happens with feminism, trans issues, etc. Many 14-year-olds are not going to recognize the sexism in the mom's statement, but many will, maybe because they read Lindy West. When I was growing up, I would not have had access to a Lindy West or a @deray.
posted by Mavri at 1:23 PM on June 9, 2015 [39 favorites]

I don't think that's what Seinfeld is saying, though.

I'm pretty sure that nakedmolerats and catchingsignals are referring to the discussions both here (multiple times in this very thread) and on places like Reddit, which has multiple forums dedicated to mocking people this way to an extent that even their creators call them "a circlejerk of hatred and borderline bigotry mixed with generic shitposting."
posted by zombieflanders at 1:24 PM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

right, maybe that was the wrong way to phrase it. I'm not trying to complain, actually, more trying to communicate a point of view which would allow understanding of people who get upset about cultural changes which don't include them. why does it bother them? well, I imagine because it's alienating to have the culture around you change without any clear idea why! Not so hard to understand. You're in a big group of people and they all shift sideways a bit and it's not clear why, and you didn't shift, and you don't really want to shift but you don't want to lose track of the people you're with, and that's stressful. So people freak out, and the way people express that freak-out depends on maturity and the way they frame their relationship to culture at large (to what degree they think of themselves as part of the mainstream, etc).
posted by Mars Saxman at 1:26 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

A few comments deleted; maybe people can continue the discussion about trigger warnings here over email - the short version is they're not required here, see the FAQ for more. Let's not pursue that issue in here though. Thanks.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:26 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

If people seem more outraged now, maybe it's because sometimes we are more outraged, not because we think it's a fun hobby but because we have greater access to a wider variety of perspectives than we used to.

This this this this this this this.

Our circle is expanding, our connections multiplying in number and in diversity. We are becoming more and more in touch with the lived experiences of a wider and wider array of people. It is amazing and it is the future. If you are open to it what you feel is a greater sense of outrage yes, but also a greater sense of communion and, maybe, a greater sense of hope.

Love alone can unite living beings so as to complete and fulfill them... for it alone joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth.
— Teilhard de Chardin

posted by wemayfreeze at 1:31 PM on June 9, 2015 [10 favorites]

more trying to communicate a point of view which would allow understanding of people who get upset about cultural changes which don't include them.

Please spend a little time reflecting on whether women, people of color, LGBTQ people and members of other marginalized groups need you to hold their hand about what it feels like to not be included in the dominant culture.
posted by kagredon at 1:31 PM on June 9, 2015 [23 favorites]

The "jokes are whatever make people laugh" business is so strange to me. It's the argument put forward by notorious asshole, sexist, and web bully Kurt Metger, but it just seems to misunderstand how laughter works, which is surprising from a comic.

I mean, people laugh for all sorts of reasons, and shocking them is a notoriously easy (and historically seen as a cheap) way to do it. Because people laugh for a variety of social reasons unrelated to something being funny, sometimes just to indicate that they understand something, sometimes as a way of covering for awkwardness, sometimes to make someone else feel good, sometimes just because someone else is laughing. People may respond to an unfunny joke as though it is hilarious because of the context, when, in another context, the joke will bomb. And you would think a comedian would get that and not blame his or her audience when a joke doesn't go well.

But, beyond that, mean jokes will often get mean laughs, and, if that's the sort of humor you want to do, go for it, but there are going to be people who don't like it.
posted by maxsparber at 1:32 PM on June 9, 2015 [11 favorites]

The idea that people enjoy being outraged and aren't actually, you know, just pissed about some injustice has always seemed so self-evidently stupid that I continue to be surprised that it continues to be dragged out and flogged in discussions like this.

Some people do enjoy living in a state of outrage though. I'm not sure why it's picked out as a particularly liberal or young person thing though, it's something a minority of people from all walks of life engage in. I don't see it as any more common among young people, maybe less common. The world is full of easy, fun distractions nowadays. Why use anger for fun?

Look at conservative talk radio. Millions of people just tuning in day after day for hours and hours of outrage. Do they genuinely feel the things they are mad about are unjust? Well yeah, I think so, but that doesn't explain the choice to bathe your mind in the outrage over and over. To go actively looking for the things you find most offensive and wrong when you know most of the time all you can do about it is experience impotent anger just makes no sense to me.

Maybe they just perceive the state of anger differently than I do, I don't know. Maybe it makes them feel strong or righteous in a way that helps support them in the face of what they perceive as injustice. To me feeling angry for an extended period of time feels like acid in my brain melting away the things that are happy and good. So, I'd rather waste my time listening to comedy instead. You know, as long as the comedy doesn't make me angry too.

Why would I pay a comic to make me angry and upset when the world is full of things that will get me angry for free? If that's how your audience is responding to you as a comedian, I don't think the problem is really with the audience. You are bringing the wrong material.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:34 PM on June 9, 2015 [10 favorites]

Sorry if this is considered a derail now (I didn't see anything otherwise) but there's a difference between Seinfeld making a joke like "men drive like this, women drive like this!" and saying you wouldn't go into a building that may be a potential target for terrorists. I like Chris Rock's joke more, because I can identify with that feeling, and I think it is a little overblown to think it's being rude to the victims of 9/11 because it has nothing to do with them really, it has to do with you and your fears and apparently the fears of others and how they identify those fears together. Seinfeld has some jokes like this, and I enjoy those. There's a big difference between saying "people are being uptight over a joke about being afraid of going into the new World Trade Center" and "people are being uptight about stereotypes about women".
posted by gucci mane at 1:34 PM on June 9, 2015

I'm not talking to "women, people of color, LGBTQ people and members of other marginalized groups", I'm talking to catchingsignals and anyone else who shares that sense of "I never could understand".
posted by Mars Saxman at 1:34 PM on June 9, 2015

Apologies for not modifying that Teilhard quote's use of "men." A vestige, and I hope if he were with us today he would have modified it himself.
posted by wemayfreeze at 1:36 PM on June 9, 2015

Those two groups are not separate and I'm not sure why you would assume that they are.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:36 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

When Jerry was in college did he dig comics 40 years older than him?

In this day of not being able to say funny things about gays, women (I am one) and people of color I thank my lucky stars that I can still offend Older Americans with impunity! Because hey - they're so out of touch - Amirite??

and yes I have absolutely NO DOUBT that Seinfeld was heavily influenced by Jack Benny, Henny Youngman and George Burns - all many decades older than himself.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 1:38 PM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

I hope this isn't too much of an aside, but I wonder how his daughter feels to know she was held up as an example of "ignorant young people saying things they don't understand." I remember how much it sucked to be shut down by my parents; I can't imagine what it's like to have that shared with a huge audience of people who respect and adore the person shutting me down.
posted by teponaztli at 1:38 PM on June 9, 2015 [23 favorites]

more trying to communicate a point of view which would allow understanding of people who get upset about cultural changes which don't include them.

I just think Seinfeld is acting like a parent. I am sure I was an insufferable teenager. I constantly challenged my parents' cultural assumptions. And they had to put with it. My son, who is not quite 14, will probably be doing the same thing to me very soon.
posted by Nevin at 1:39 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

I like the operas of Richard Wagner, so I'm well-practiced at separating the quality of the art from the loathsomeness of the artist.
posted by The Big Foist at 1:42 PM on June 9, 2015

you left out "shitty". "acting like a shitty parent".
posted by NoraReed at 1:42 PM on June 9, 2015 [11 favorites]

And dammit, I don't even like Seinfeld anyway. I can barely tolerate standup. So unsophisticated. You always know when you're supposed to laugh.
posted by Nevin at 1:42 PM on June 9, 2015

Nonsense. That's a complainy talking point that has been completely unproven, and it's the same whine that I've heard about students since I went to school in the Eighties. It's a perennial whinge, not a genuine criticism.

The idea that reams of objective data exist that can refute the simple and demonstrably true statement that people misunderstand and misapply terms and concepts—regardless of their intentions—is utter horseshit. I've experienced it first hand—in the classroom (both undergrad and graduate) and on the Internet. Hell, I've been guilty of it myself. What you think you gain by denying it I have no idea. In fact, your and others' defensive tiger crouch at the mere hint of criticism is inexplicable to me, especially given that nobody is saying racism doesn't exist, that sexism doesn't exist, that these aren't important issues, and that they don't deserve thoughtful discussion and action.

the flamethrower of righteous indignation is especially dangerous now that young people, women, and POC have gotten their hands on it

If I could roll my eyes any harder, my fucking skull would collapse. The woman who tries to redefine "mansplain" to mean "any time a man condescends to explain anything to a woman, period" isn't doing shit to further the goals of equality. She's redefining a word that has a very specific meaning in order to win an argument. The person who labels something "racist" or "sexist" without qualifying it in any way, as if we're all Potter Stewart intuiting the meaning of things based on how they make us feel, is doing nothing to further the goals of equality.

This. Shit. Happens. Constantly. And you know what? Pointing it out as problematic isn't an indictment of the worthy goal of equality. It's a description of patterns of behaviors that actually serve to undermine the efforts of equality activism.

But that's a nice soundbite you've got there.
posted by echocollate at 1:43 PM on June 9, 2015 [8 favorites]

The idea that reams of objective data exist that can refute the simple and demonstrably true statement that people misunderstand and misapply terms and concepts—regardless of their intentions—is utter horseshit.

The unproven point is that this phenomenon is somehow uniquely applicable or common among to people calling something racist or sexist. Your attempt to move the goalposts is noted, though.
posted by kagredon at 1:46 PM on June 9, 2015 [23 favorites]

The woman who tries to redefine "mansplain" to mean "any time a man condescends to explain anything to a woman, period" isn't doing shit to further the goals of equality. She's redefining a word that has a very specific meaning in order to win an argument. The person who labels something "racist" or "sexist" without qualifying it in any way, as if we're all Potter Stewart intuiting the meaning of things based on how they make us feel, is doing nothing to further the goals of equality.

And the people not made of straw; what's the verdict on them?
posted by griphus at 1:46 PM on June 9, 2015 [34 favorites]

Most super famous parents tend to not bring their kids into the limelight, period, much less talk about how stupid they are.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:46 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

I've experienced it first hand—in the classroom (both undergrad and graduate) and on the Internet.

Yeah, I haven't. Neither has my father, who was a career academic. Neither have my friends, who are career academics. Your experience doesn't define how things happen on campus, and for you to claim that this is unassailable true is nonsense. You don't have evidence of any widespread, pernicious trend. You have a couple of anecdotes, which is precisely what Seinfeld has.
posted by maxsparber at 1:46 PM on June 9, 2015 [11 favorites]

"all the people on [Seinfeld's show] were the kind of person I would not want to get trapped with at a party "

I think that was kind of the point of the show - that these were all pretty shallow, petty people. It was observation comedy writ large: these buffoons and their hang-ups are us, and we laugh at them to the degree we see ourselves reflected in them. Of course we would not want to hang out with the worst parts of ourselves at parties.
posted by jetsetsc at 1:47 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

Most parents don't go onto a nationally-available radio program and talk about how their children are wrong about things.

Unless of course ... they're a comedian.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 1:47 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

And dammit, I don't even like Seinfeld anyway. I can barely tolerate standup. So unsophisticated. You always know when you're supposed to laugh.

clearly you have not seen any good standup
posted by JimBennett at 1:48 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

Couldn't he, you know, stop being such a massive massive baby about it?
posted by fullerine at 1:48 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

Pointing it out as problematic isn't an indictment of the worthy goal of equality.

And holding marginalized groups to the higher standard of having to always use their rhetoric for the optimized service of equality under threat of derision from those who, cough, totally have their best interests at heart was the point of my sound bite, and thanks, yes, I was pleased with how it came out
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:50 PM on June 9, 2015 [15 favorites]

I think that was kind of the point of the show - that these were all pretty shallow, petty people.

The point of the show was "no hugs no learning" which apparently has become less conceit for a show and more life philosophy in his dotage.
posted by edbles at 1:50 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

The unproven point is that this phenomenon is somehow uniquely applicable or common among to people calling something racist or sexist.

This phenomenon is common to any subject for which the modern intellectual foundation was incubated in an academic setting. Have you read any critical race theory? Taken a feminist studies class? A good majority of it is barely accessible to someone with an actual background in the material.

Your attempt to move the goalposts is noted, though.

I never claimed the point was unique to racism or sexism. I said it was endemic to discussions or applications of such. But burn that straw man all you like.
posted by echocollate at 1:51 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

augh can we stop with the "let's just make assumptions about everyone and everything on tumblr and use the word 'tumblr' as a dogwhistle that basically means 'people who are younger than me and smarter than me about social justice in a way that makes me uncomfortable'"
posted by NoraReed at 1:52 PM on June 9, 2015 [52 favorites]

A good majority of it is barely accessible to someone with an actual background in the material.

So? That should be true of almost any worthwhile college course. Goalposts moved again, though.
posted by dialetheia at 1:53 PM on June 9, 2015 [11 favorites]

idk what parts of tumblr you're hanging out in where people are overjoyed about rape but it sounds really terrible and you should maybe think about following different people.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:53 PM on June 9, 2015 [33 favorites]

I just made a "That's racist/sexist Soundboard" app on iOS. It's pretty cool. It uses a young siri voice.
posted by srboisvert at 1:53 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

there's some 14 year old on tumblr who thinks he's actually a dragon, therefore any argument that has ever passed through their servers is invalid
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:54 PM on June 9, 2015 [31 favorites]

echocollate, you are coming out swinging in here, and I'm asking you to dial it back some.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:54 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

It's one thing to weave your kid into your comedy bit, in a way that they aren't beneath you, but are an individual with flaws like you. It's quite another to bring them up as the anecdote about how colleges are too PC. After listening to the interview, he doesn't say anything of substance. It's just complaints that don't really prove his point at all.

What Chris Rock was saying is that people don't want to risk offense at all, which is a completely separate problem from Seinfield not getting racism and sexism. Also, he says racist audiences are much worse. I don't think any college ever threatened him enough to make him drive to the next town to sleep.

and can we STOP ACCUSING EVERYONE OF BURNING STRAW
posted by halifix at 1:55 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

Jerry might not have been able to date a 17 year old when he was almost 40 without somebody saying something.

Howard Stern busted his balls so hard on that topic that he stopped appearing on his program.
posted by Renoroc at 1:55 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

I always come out of these discussions (Young People Today: They Suck, Right Fellow Old Persons?) wanting to run out and find a random teenager to hug and give 50.00 to. But that would be creepy so I don't.
posted by emjaybee at 1:55 PM on June 9, 2015 [19 favorites]

There does seem to be a sick element of people seeming almost gleeful when someone famous does/says something shitty. Less of a disgust or sadness that they're flawed but more of a "haha, someone people respected or cared about turned out to be awful, SCORE"

There was a lot of sick joy when it came out that Bill Cosby was a rapist, or when Josh Duggar was revealed as a molester. People reveled in it.

Maybe I'm misidentifying the source of that, but it seems especially prevalent in tumblr-esque circles. It's less of a PC thing and more of a cultivated cynical superiority to take happiness in other people doing wrong.

But it's such a small thing that a group of people maybe revel in that. Especially compared to, like, the actual things Cosby and Duggar did. I had this discussion with a friend not too long ago when he was making some loltumblr references - sure, there are overzealous people everwhere, but whyyyyy does it matter so much? It's such a distraction to focus on it.
posted by jason_steakums at 2:00 PM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

clearly you have not seen any good standup

Standup is okay in small doses. I saw the Amy Schumer thingy yesterday and that will last me for another week.\

There is actually a really great South Asian (Sikh, I believe) comedian from New York who cracks me up... he has big glasses and a handlebar mustache and wears a knit cap. Any New York MeFites know who I am talking about?
posted by Nevin at 2:02 PM on June 9, 2015

Also, to be clear, I think this is something that cuts across all age groups. The reason I think it's especially common among younger people is because it's easier to make mistakes when concepts are new to you, and most people I'd wager come to be exposed to the themes and nomenclature of social justice—via college or involvement with online communities—when they're relatively young. I know that was the case for myself.
posted by echocollate at 2:04 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

the Talking Funny video linked above is really pretty enlightening on this subject, because there's a point in it where the other three comedians are riffing on the idea that good comedy only 'punches up', but Seinfeld doesn't get this, and they all realize that yes, he is immune from this rule.
Part of this is his pedigree -- he's exactly what he set out to be: 'one of those guys'... a smart aleck jewish stand-up in the old school tradition. he paid his dues until he made it. he's got standing in the comedy world because he appreciates the craft. again, watch the video to understand this.
The outrage quote that sparked this article is interesting because it almost sounds like a bit. pretty tone-deaf, but not really
Jerry doesn't work college campuses because he outgrew them 20 yrs ago, and even then he wasn't doing college humor.
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:05 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Also, the Cosby and Duggar examples are pretty shitty considering the joy may have been the fact that their crimes had been known for years or even decades, and someone was finally calling them on it.

On preview, what jason_steakums rightly points out about the willingness to focus on where people are "overjoyed" as opposed to the crimes that are a million times more disturbing is itself pretty gross.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:05 PM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

people who use tumblr as a shorthand generally seem to only see tumblr through "can you believe this shit" outrage posts. i don't know about y'all but mine is mainly beyonce, jokes, gifs, fanart, porn, and cheese fries.

as for the glee at duggar/cosby/whatever. i actually brought this up in the duggar thread, from the point of view as a survivor, and i find it being repeated here to score some some of points against liberals to be gross. should people examine their schadenfreude, sure, of course. is it the thing killing liberalism or political correctness gone maaaaaaaaaad or whatever the fuck? no, of course not.
posted by nadawi at 2:06 PM on June 9, 2015 [10 favorites]

I think part of it though is an actual structural failing of tumblr as a communication platform. The way it structures discussions and conversations is much better at talking at people versus with them. I'm not taking about social justice as a movement, it's a great thing that's helped move the ball forward for a lot of people, I'm saying that tumblrs very structure of sharing and response threads is much more suited for anger porn and tends to float schadenfreude to the top.
posted by Ferreous at 2:07 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

And dammit, I don't even like Seinfeld anyway. I can barely tolerate standup. So unsophisticated. You always know when you're supposed to laugh.

Some of the standup is where you're not sure if you should be laughing. Or you feel terrible, at some level, for doing so. Or a mixture of the two.

It's playing on a delicate balance of the taboo, the profane and the downright hilarious. Good standup is, anyway.

It can be nuanced and sophisticated. The wrong cadence or timing and a joke that's otherwise funny can snap back on the teller and fall flat.

Well-wrought standup jokes that unwind for several minutes and then snap into place with perfect timing or an out-of-left field punchline that references something they were talking about fifteen minutes ago in another joke are impressive to watch, and it takes work to get to that level with the art.

YMMV.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:08 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Then again, I think Bob Newhart is a genius.
posted by Nevin at 2:10 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Bob Newhart is a genius.
posted by el io at 2:12 PM on June 9, 2015 [15 favorites]

I just realized the audience of children who failed to make Bee Movie a beloved family classic would just now be around college age. Maybe that's why he's salty.
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:17 PM on June 9, 2015 [26 favorites]

people who use tumblr as a shorthand generally seem to only see tumblr through "can you believe this shit" outrage posts.

If you think about it, isn't that comparable to how people use reddit as a shorthand?
posted by Apocryphon at 2:18 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

Unless "Tumblr culture" or whatever repeatedly gets called out for a corporate culture that allows kiddy porn, harassment, rape and death threats, and extensive amounts of bigotry to not just exist but thrive and grow, no.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:22 PM on June 9, 2015 [17 favorites]

Reading reddit or tumblir is like looking for a diamond someone tossed into 2000lbs of human waste. There's something valuable to be found for sure but you're going to have to wade through a ton of shit first.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 2:22 PM on June 9, 2015

In my experience, you have to actively seek out the outrage stuff on Tumblr, whereas on Reddit it takes huge effort just to avoid coming across bigotry and hatred (and I've yet to look at that site without coming across something awful).
posted by teponaztli at 2:23 PM on June 9, 2015 [30 favorites]

If you think about it, isn't that comparable to how people use reddit as a shorthand?

sure - except there is far more of an overarching culture on reddit i've found. i have accounts at tumblr and reddit both. it's far easier to have communities that aren't at all the site's stereotype on tumblr imo. on reddit i regularly have to unsub from places that were once neutral but have been taken over by vocal members of the manosphere. part of that is on tumblr you follow one person's stream and on reddit subs contain a bunch of people - so it's probably less likely that a tumblr which was once all cheese fries and jokes about hornets suddenly becomes about how awesome the anti-choice cause in. meanwhile, on reddit - all it takes is a few really dedicated loudmouths with hanger ons who follow them around and upvote them for a sub to suddenly change tenor.

on preview : yeah, what teponaztli said
posted by nadawi at 2:25 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

I’ll take the overly earnest tumblr teens over the website with the very popular group created specifically to make fun of them any day.
posted by griphus at 2:26 PM on June 9, 2015 [32 favorites]

Tumblr is as homogeneous as, like, Blogger or WordPress or Livejournal or Xanga or whatever... it's just a platform. I, for one, really wish people were getting all het up about Xangas instead because that's way more fun.
posted by jason_steakums at 2:30 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

and that's the other thing! there are awful horrible disgusting communities on tumblr - ones who take images from body positivity blogs and reposts them for mockery and masturbation. there are big ole manosphere circlejerks going on. there is a lot of really tedious awful bullshit - but, it doesn't raise to the top and when people mock tumblr they're pretty much always mocking teen girls. hmm. weird that.
posted by nadawi at 2:30 PM on June 9, 2015 [23 favorites]

Tumblr doesn't even really have a "top" though, does it? It doesn't present the kind of default experience that Reddit does.
posted by jason_steakums at 2:31 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

The closest thing to a 'top' on Tumblr is specific and popular tags, I guess. Like if you follow the "Hannibal" tag you get everything tagged with that on your dash.
posted by griphus at 2:34 PM on June 9, 2015

yeah - that's my point - that their different structures give different experiences and that those experiences do shape the userbase more on one platform than the other. in other words reddit is a lot more alike than tumblr.

anyway - here is one of the funniest things i've ever seen on tumblr
posted by nadawi at 2:36 PM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

I had literally no idea Andrew Dice Clay was still alive at all. Or that Jerry Seinfeld was once "edgy" and "un-PC," for that matter. Anyway, he's wrong to think his legacy isn't relevant to the kids today. It's just that they repurpose it to make weird videogame fan fiction.
posted by byanyothername at 2:38 PM on June 9, 2015

One comment deleted; getting into whether reddit should censor things is really far afield from the thread here. Maybe we can kind of steer this whole tumblr vs reddit thing back around to the actual post?
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:38 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Just want to point out that Lindy West succesfully anticipated the "outragefilter" argument and the "we just like watching people on the top fall from grace argument, in the linked post.

It’s absolutely true that some individuals use political correctness to disguise what is, in reality, a regressive devotion to propriety. There are people who simply have no sense of humour. It’s possible that a small few just relish the takedown but don’t care about the politics. But none of that has anything to do with whether or not it is correct to treat people with dignity and care; to call them by the names they’ve taught you; and to remain open, elastic and humble enough to catch up when you’re behind and apologise when you’re in error. No one is required to do any of these things, but that doesn’t mean they’re not good things to do.

posted by edbles at 2:40 PM on June 9, 2015 [26 favorites]

This is the first time I've ever said this, and I'm certain it'll be the last: lol @ Seinfeld.

Literally the least funny funny person out there. I watch bootleg copies of his dumbass show to fall asleep (seriously, I do, like every night). Him talking about anything losing its edge is just too much. He's about as edgy as mashed potatoes, the rich gassy little fuck.
posted by still bill at 2:45 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

Jesus Christ. JERRY SEINFELD IS NOT NOW, NOR WAS EVER CONSIDERED EDGY. Seriously. His show, stand-up, and general comedic persona were about as edgy as a bran muffin.
posted by stenseng at 2:51 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

In all fairness 25 years ago the Simpsons was considered edgy humor.
posted by Nevin at 3:00 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

Defrauding the state of Michigan with New York aluminum cans using a mail truck...dunno.
posted by clavdivs at 3:18 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Here's the Metafilter discussion of the Frank Rich interview with Chris Rock. This interview was posted here about six months ago.

Woah. MetaFilter was almost unanimous in it's praise for Chris Rock in that interview. In context, it looks like he meant something very, very different from what Seinfeld is talking about here.
posted by straight at 3:45 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

It's easier to be sympathetic to Chris Rock's statement about this. Because sure, he has material that explores the complexity and contradictions of race in a multi-layered way, and if the audience doesn't have the patience to sit through the introduction of superficially offensive ideas then he loses them. And he's presumably more sensitive nowadays than most comics (besides Dave Chappelle) about certain ways his work might be misunderstood and misappropriated. On the other hand I suspect he probably actually gets more, and much fairer, criticism, on grounds of sexism.

Woah. MetaFilter was almost unanimous in it's praise for Chris Rock in that interview. In context, it looks like he meant something very, very different from what Seinfeld is talking about here.

Much of the rest of his interview was lucid, sharply funny commentary about institutional racism. I'm not sure what he said about "PC" is totally different from what Seinfeld said - it's just much more plausible that he knows what he's talking about.

Seinfeld just seems like a really out-of-touch old rich guy. As people keep saying here, his comedy isn't about confronting racism or sexism. All he's lost is a few hackneyed jokes about gender roles and immigrants in New York and at least one argument with his daughter.
posted by atoxyl at 3:54 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

The Simpsons were edgy and subversive. Seinfeld never really was that edgy even to the contemporary audience. I've never been crazy about what I saw from his standup but I love the sitcom and Curb so maybe I'm just a Larry David guy more.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:56 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

There's also the whole issue of people skimming through Chris Rock's insightful interview and the only thing they get out of it is "Chris Rock doesn't like playing colleges! They're too PC!" which Reason and Limbaugh did.

I can only find the two minutes of the Seinfield interview. Are the other 20 minutes somewhere?
posted by halifix at 3:57 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

The worst thing I regularly joke about is children with fatal diseases. I live a couple blocks away from one of the best children's hospitals in the country, and with that comes nearly daily helicopters, often with shit like the "Baby on Board" triangle stenciled on the bottom of them. And I totally support, you know, not having babies die. I think that's a good thing in general. If it were my kid, I'd want them getting airlifted to get new lungs or whatever.

But they hover for like 20 minutes, and I can't hear the TV. That's what it comes down to, that I can't hear the TV even if I turn it up because some kid with leukemia is getting new marrow. It happens so often that I have to blow off that irritation: I imagine they're all Make A Wish kids with shitty, helicopter-based wishes.

Some of them, the kids are terrible so I feel less bad about hating them. Like, some kid is getting his Make A Wish to just throw a homeless guy out of a helicopter. "No one who will be missed," writes little Johnny Terminal on his application. Make A Wish lets him have a guy in a sack up to his neck and Johnny uses his electric wheelchair to nudge nudge nudge him until he plummets. No one can hear his scream above the blades. Or some little girl just wants to hunt hipsters with a rifle before she dies, and Make A Wish is like, sure, 30.06? It's somehow easier to stomach missing five minutes of Blackish if you can imagine a kid with a rifle playing the Most Dangerous Game with every mustachio'd dickbag in line for artisanal churros.

Other times, the ride's a let down. Like little Suzy keeps asking Make A Wish for a viable two-state solution for Palestine and Israel. "Peace in my time," she wheezes out. Or to solve global warming. I imagine kids with terminal illnesses read a lot of newspapers, that they keep up with current events. Make A Wish knows that isn't happening, but Suzy's getting weaker every day, so how about a trip around LA in a helicopter? Maybe she keeps wishing for, you know, a cure for her disease. Make A Wish tells her, "That's like wishing for more wishes. How about a helicopter ride? Whee."

Sometimes their wishes are just petty. Like, "I'm not gonna live six months, they're not going to be able to hear the NBA playoffs for 10 minutes." Instead of the beatific children wanting a home run from Matt Kemp, or learning to play tiny harps so they can be better angels, they're spiteful little monsters like regular children. They don't even care where the helicopter goes, so long as their brother can't come with. They want to look for naked people in backlit windows. Their whole wish is to make people spend 20 seconds rewinding a DVR because fuck you.

I know any reasonable person would be aghast to hear me complaining about the goddamned Make A Wishers — innocent children! They're suffering! Make A Wish probably has exactly zero to do with the actual helicopters! — especially if they came in cold. I don't just lead off with it, it's not an icebreaker at parties ("Hi, I'm Josh. You know what I can't stand? Terminally ill children"). But if I am at a party, talking with people I know about the terrible burden of living in a pretty nice neighborhood with walkable streets and good Thai food, and somebody hears me complaining about the latest Make A Wish kid who got charity to fund living my dream of taking a shit out of a helicopter — it's not PC madness if they think I'm an asshole. It's not oversensitivity if, god forbid, they've actually lost a kid to terminal illness if they don't think it's funny to joke about that stuff. The whole point is that I feel bad for being inconvenienced for something that undoubtably serves the greater good. If the joke is that you're an asshole, you can't be that mad when people think you're actually an asshole.

And this is still arguably better than joking about women or minorities. If I do say, "Man, I hate terminally ill children. Kids on the way to get lifesaving transplants? Worse than Hitler," no one is going to think that I really hate terminally ill kids even though it's pretty much the epitome of punching down. But if you start out with, "You know what I hate? Women," there are always going to be assholes in the room who are nodding along. "Oh, you also hate women? High five!" I mean, you don't even have to say that. If you're a straight white dude, you must have had the experience of another straight white dude just assuming that you also hate women or black people or gays or whatever. They'll come up to you and launch into some rant about Mexicans or their girlfriend, like you already agree — like your very existence has validated their fucked up feelings. And women, people of color, LGBT people, they notice that too. So if you're leading with, "Man, my 14-year-old daughter sure is stupid," or sharing some dumb State Farm Caitlyn Jenner meme, or trying to get laughs out of the premise that black people are thugs for protesting violence against them, it's not PC oversensitivity to think that you're probably racist or sexist or transphobic or whatever. It's a combination of recognizing what plenty of other straight white dudes will hear and playing the odds. They don't owe you props for the frisson of ambiguity. It's not PC gone mad if your audience isn't as indulgent as you'd prefer. If your whole set is, "Did you ever notice fuck you?" it's not PC gone mad if you bomb, or if people say fuck you right back.

It's weird, too, because the people who are most frequently complaining about oversensitivity are so amazingly thin skinned. Like fucking Tosh and the rape jokes. "Oh, I can't tell rape jokes because everyone's so oversensitive!" Motherfucker, you can tell them all day long. How come you can't take people on fucking Tumblr calling you a rapist? People with so much less power complaining is PC gone mad? It's fucking hypocritical.

It's not oversensitive if someone gets pissed off about me joking about dying kids. I'm being oversensitive for being bothered. But at least they have a way to get even: Donate to the children's hospital. "I'm buying you guys another 'copter. Can you spray paint 'Fuck You Klang Klangston' on the bottom? No, no, he'll see it. He'll understand. Serves him right."
posted by klangklangston at 4:02 PM on June 9, 2015 [109 favorites]

Full interview. Just started listening.
posted by halifix at 4:03 PM on June 9, 2015

byanyothername: I had literally no idea Andrew Dice Clay was still alive at all

I heard him on Howard Stern a few years back where he was talking about how the "Diceman" is just a character he portrays on stage.

I'm not sure if he's retrofitting his act with the post-modern "I'm an artist performing, don't take this shit literally" tack or if he really was this way all along.
posted by dr_dank at 4:17 PM on June 9, 2015

"Can you spray paint 'Fuck You Klang Klangston' on the bottom? No, no, he'll see it. He'll..."

Profanity may violate local ordinance in your community...I can, however get you a winch at wholesale.
posted by clavdivs at 4:20 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

If your free speech is getting chilled because you're worried some kid on the twitters might get mad or make fun of you, man, I don't know what to tell you
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:26 PM on June 9, 2015 [18 favorites]

Seinfeld isn't against anti-racism , anti-sexism or giving minority voices the greater profile they deserve.

As long as those minority voices aren't on his shows with him.
posted by jeather at 4:27 PM on June 9, 2015 [16 favorites]

Not sure if it's been pointed out, but blaming college and high-school students for so-called "political correctness" is especially symptomatic. For if the ones responsible for inculcating this are, say teachers, or liberals, or academics, or politicians, or other media, then Seinfeld should have made his argument with and about those sources. But he didn't, because he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.
posted by polymodus at 4:36 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Funny that Chris Rock made this same point but didn't get nearly as much grief from social justice warriors.
posted by jpe at 4:41 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

Jesus Christ. JERRY SEINFELD IS NOT NOW, NOR WAS EVER CONSIDERED EDGY.

I suppose that's true if you discount his co-creating a show which parodied the vapidness (the nothing?) inherent in 1990's yuppie "I've got mine" culture to such a degree that most people didn't even realize the characters were awful people until the end of show finale. Yeah, I suppose if you discount that one bit of his then there's nothing edgy about him at all.

Of course Rolling Stone would have disagreed with you in 1994 or Salon in 2002 but hey this is 2015 - almost 13 years later (!) and edgy now means insulting a whole different category of people than it did back then.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 4:42 PM on June 9, 2015

So in the whole interview, that question about Jenner was part of a discussion about climate/audience for comedians. Most of the rest of the show is just talking about sports coverage, a ridiculous amount is about cars, but there was this segment at the end:

COWHERD There’s a connective issue with the tempo and the audience. It’s not gonna attract my son, he’s 9, he’s not into it. So I think the sport, I think the sport needs kinda a senior statesman. I watched the MLB network for like 20 minutes every night, and I like the perspective of older guys. Do you ever tell a joke and… you never told a joke and feel bad though, right?

SEINFELD Feel bad?

COWHERD Yeah because you’d weed it out. You’d be like “I’m not, I’m gonna weed this joke out.” I mean, you think a lot about your jokes.

SEINFELD Yeah, um, no, I’ve done stuff and felt bad. I mentioned Tiger Woods, I do this thing about how much I hate golf. And I go “The guys who spend their whole life playing this can’t even do it. And I dunno, Tiger Woods was struggling in some tournament and I mean, Tiger Woods, and everyone gets upset. I mean, we’re so goddamn sensitive; we’re just too sensitive to live anymore. I hate it.

COWHERD I know. Charles Barkley came on my show yesterday and said he’s been arrested 8 times for punching fans and they all deserved it. And I loved it. It was my favorite thing. It was great. And people were like “that is RUDE” and I’m like, “well, no, he’s six five, two seventy, he’s going to punch you right in the forehead, so don’t be a jerk. I loved it. I thought it was great.

SEINFELD It’s guys like that, We need some guys to be men, to stand up and go “I’m not apologizing, I meant it.” It’s just the apology culture. It’s just sick. I dunno where it comes from. What’s all the guilt? It’s probably the good economy. Guilt! We’re guilt-ridden. This culture.

COWHERD Yeah, it’s funny. When the economy’s good, we look for adventure sports. When we’re at war, we want mashed potatoes and ice cream for comfort. So you could be onto something. The economy’s good now, so we’re worrying about little stuff that doesn’t matter.

SEINFELD That’s right. We need a bigger problem.

COWHERD Yeah. We just figured out a sociological issue globally. That was amazing.
posted by halifix at 4:47 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

The economy’s good now
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:50 PM on June 9, 2015 [22 favorites]

I'll never understand the concept of being hostile to the idea of apologizing. Apology is one of the most amazing things about humanity to me. It's like a hack. It's magic words. I just did something dumb and offensive and all I do is say these words without caveat while doing my best to sound sincere and a lot of the time...people just forgive you! And it costs you nothing!
posted by Drinky Die at 4:51 PM on June 9, 2015 [15 favorites]

And it costs you nothing!

Just like common courtesy and bare-minimum going through a single day without being a total dick, the cost is apparently too damn high for a lot of people.
posted by jason_steakums at 4:56 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

Well, to quote Billy Sol Hurok: "That blowed up real good."
posted by CincyBlues at 4:57 PM on June 9, 2015

people are too sensitive about being punched by real men because the economy is good

ok
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:59 PM on June 9, 2015 [36 favorites]

Funny that Chris Rock made this same point but didn't get nearly as much grief from social justice warriors.

Do you still find it funny after reading the quotes in context?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:06 PM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

Funny that Chris Rock made this same point but didn't get nearly as much grief from social justice warriors.

Mostly because I'd rather listen to a famous black man than you and another whiny white dude.
posted by Kitteh at 5:20 PM on June 9, 2015 [25 favorites]

Lindy West may not be a comedian in the stand up comic sense (or, according to someone above, maybe she is sometimes) but she's one of the funniest people I've ever read. She's proof you don't need racist and sexist garbage to be hilarious.
posted by Mavri at 5:25 PM on June 9, 2015 [10 favorites]

It’s guys like that, We need some guys to be men, to stand up and go “I’m not apologizing, I meant it.”

This reads like the opening monologue of a new Aaron Sorkin show.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:29 PM on June 9, 2015 [15 favorites]

Also - this whole "social justice warrior" thing as epithet, I do not get. That's like calling someone "thoughtful, gentle, and kind to animals and children" as a pejorative.
posted by stenseng at 5:34 PM on June 9, 2015 [25 favorites]

I think you do get it then.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:36 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

The intended insult is kind of like "keyboard kommando." The implication is that such people just whine online, they don't actually do "real" activism.
posted by Drinky Die at 5:37 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

This reads like the opening monologue of a new Aaron Sorkin show.

"and then she goes on the 700 club! and i'm upset!!!" yes yes aaron we get it. you're still really mad at kristin chenoweth who has out matched you in every way. this isn't creepy at all by now. please. do go on.
posted by nadawi at 5:40 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

The intended insult is kind of like "keyboard kommando." The implication is that such people just whine online, they don't actually do "real" activism.

Even though it's often said while complaining about how "the SJWs" are too effective.
posted by kagredon at 5:43 PM on June 9, 2015 [10 favorites]

AM I OUT OF TOUCH?

NO. IT'S THE CHILDREN WHO ARE WRONG.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:47 PM on June 9, 2015 [15 favorites]

I'll never understand the concept of being hostile to the idea of apologizing.

A coerced apology abjectly humiliates the apologizer, and signals the dominance of the coercing individual or group.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 5:59 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

care to point to an example of a coerced apology?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:01 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Funny that Chris Rock made this same point but didn't get nearly as much grief from social justice warriors.

Do you still find it funny after reading the quotes in context?

I don't know that the full context for Chris Rock - the context of his act - is totally different. He's been called out on sexism lately and it's not undeserved. In the context of the interview though his examples are more about a retreat from examining race and fraught subjects, followed by a bunch of really forthright commentary about race. And he also calls out sexism in media and voices support for women in comedy. Whereas all Seinfeld has to say about that is "I don't think there are any barriers."
posted by atoxyl at 6:02 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

SEINFELD Yeah, um, no, I’ve done stuff and felt bad. I mentioned Tiger Woods, I do this thing about how much I hate golf. And I go “The guys who spend their whole life playing this can’t even do it. And I dunno, Tiger Woods was struggling in some tournament and I mean, Tiger Woods, and everyone gets upset. I mean, we’re so goddamn sensitive; we’re just too sensitive to live anymore. I hate it.

[...]

SEINFELD: It’s guys like that, We need some guys to be men, to stand up and go “I’m not apologizing, I meant it.” It’s just the apology culture. It’s just sick. I dunno where it comes from. What’s all the guilt? It’s probably the good economy. Guilt! We’re guilt-ridden. This culture.

This is just comedic complacency on his part. I mean, aside from his estimable material comfort, Seinfeld doesn't do risky comedy.

It's kind of like there's some internal joke in even including Chris Rock and Seinfeld in the same conversation about standup.

When you hear Chris Rock talk about how he worked out the stuff on Bring the Pain, for example, he says that he worked out that material over and over in small rooms.

He knew he was playing with fire in that there was a very fine line between terribly funny and cringeworthy with what he was doing.

Meaning he had to back up tweak jokes over and over and over because some of them were just hurtful, period, and not actually funny.

But that takes work and time and - guess what? His stuff is held to a higher level of scrutiny than, say, Seinfeld's because of who he is and the material he chooses to chase.

Seinfeld has to worry about...what, exactly? "Hey, you made fun of GOLF!"

Now, I'm a huge fan of Seinfeld the show, but Seinfeld's standup has never done much for me. The balancing act he's working with in his standup material, IMO, is the tipping point between "amusing" and utterly banal.

Some Seinfeld.

Some (NSFW) Rock.

Only one of these two is at any risk of going "too far" or "too soon" with a joke.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:02 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

Seinfeld (whose comedy I neither love nor hate) is actually famous for putting a ton of work into jokes. But not for the same reasons.
posted by atoxyl at 6:04 PM on June 9, 2015

Only one of these two is at any risk of going "too far" or "too soon" with a joke.

I dunno, messing with the Post Office can actually get you in a lot of trouble.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:11 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Seinfeld (whose comedy I neither love nor hate) is actually famous for putting a ton of work into jokes. But not for the same reasons.

Yeah, no argument there. What I was getting at is that it's kind of rich that he's worried about people being offended when he's not swinging that particular hammer in his work.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:13 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I can barely tolerate standup. So unsophisticated. You always know when you're supposed to laugh.

You'd love Dane Cook.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:31 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

Dane Cook is such a brilliant comedian he actually shed his physical existence to become a literal joke.
posted by byanyothername at 6:34 PM on June 9, 2015 [14 favorites]

In A.I., Spielberg addressed this problem by shooting Chris Rocks' character out of a cannon early at the Mecha corn dog and flamethrower event symbolizing that an intolerant society shoots their minority comedic robots out of cannons first.
This is why only Robin Williams could direct a machine to the Blue Fairy and robo teddy becomes the last tie to humankind.
posted by clavdivs at 6:37 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Funny that Chris Rock made this same point but didn't get nearly as much grief from social justice warriors.

a) that might be because he's actually funny and so he gets more slack
b) a fun fact about the phrase "social justice warrior" is that anyone who uses it unironically is someone whose opinions you can completely disregard forever and lose absolutely nothing
posted by NoraReed at 6:41 PM on June 9, 2015 [30 favorites]

a) that might be because he's actually funny and so he gets more slack

I think it's more that, unlike Seinfeld, Rock is not a smug condescending asshole. He knows that some of his comedy may offend some people, he owns it, and he's willing to accept that.

Rock frames his decision to not perform in colleges around his own feelings, not the alleged inadequacies of the audience. It's far more nuanced. It's not, "they're stupid", it's "I don't enjoy this any more". For example:

What do you make of the attempt to bar Bill Maher from speaking at Berkeley for his riff on Muslims?

Well, I love Bill, but I stopped playing colleges, and the reason is because they’re way too conservative.

In their political views?

Not in their political views — not like they’re voting Republican — but in their social views and their willingness not to offend anybody. Kids raised on a culture of “We’re not going to keep score in the game because we don’t want anybody to lose.” Or just ignoring race to a fault. You can’t say “the black kid over there.” No, it’s “the guy with the red shoes.” You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.

When did you start to notice this?

About eight years ago. Probably a couple of tours ago. It was just like, This is not as much fun as it used to be. I remember talking to George Carlin before he died and him saying the exact same thing.

posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:03 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

care to point to an example of a coerced apology?

An attempt much discussed here was the Brendan Eich affair - threats of boycotts and job loss were used to try to coerce him into apologizing and recanting his beliefs against same-sex marriage. He refused and took the punishment, losing his job but keeping his dignity.

Here is a good written example. "Team Harpy," two female librarians, accused a male librarian of sexual predation. He filed a defamation suit and apparently forced these apologies as part of the settlement. To read them is to cringe.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 7:03 PM on June 9, 2015

To be fair I think Rock is equally as ridiculous as Seinfeld.
posted by bleep at 7:07 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Seinfeld is an entitled garbage comic with no perspective who says dumb shit like this on the regular. I grew up on comedy going back to Steve Martin and George Carlin and Seinfeld was always a second-rate hack. That he has demonstrated himself to be tone-deaf and clueless is no surprise. I did like his show, mostly because of the George and Elaine characters.

Unfortunately Chris Rock can be pretty clueless too, he has some old bits where he doesn't seem to understand what society is and why it costs money, and says a lot of judgmental sexist shit about women to boot. I do like him a bit more, but only because he always seemed to be a real comic instead of a hack who struck gold.
posted by aydeejones at 7:09 PM on June 9, 2015

The economy’s good now

Who the fuck are these people.
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:11 PM on June 9, 2015 [13 favorites]

I mean most of Seinfeld's jokes are of the sort where "if you think about it a little, he just sounds ignorant and clueless." He has this whole "everything is so stupid" shtick where it's all about how god damned ignorant he is.
posted by aydeejones at 7:13 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

maybe we just think he sucks? and that current comedians are doing a fine enough job navigating these waters? and that maybe he's a bad person to give advice about sexism? nah - can't be - we're just over reactors looking for outrage.

Yes, there is an enormous raft of good comedians going back into Seinfeld's era and beyond who handle all of this shit much better and without the off-stage entitlement issues. I remember when he was asked why Seinfeld didn't have more people of color and just tended to stereotype immigrants and the like and he went into this whole pissy rant about how is show isn't supposed to solve World Problems. Nobody asked you why you aren't solving Major World Problems, you pissy little man, they're asking about the blatant racial stereotypes and white-washed "Friends-style" cast. It's not that you excluded POC and the like, you ridiculed them at every turn, or ridiculed people who might worry about their own internal "subtle racism" like the one where George keeps offending his boss for saying things like "you look like Sugar Ray Leonard!"

I listen to a ton of comedy, and there are only a handful of comedians who get exposure who are truly cringe-worthy, and when Seinfeld comes across the radio dial, it just rings hollow and dumb as hell. He really does this "people are idiots!" thing that shows that he puts very little thought into why things are the way they are.
posted by aydeejones at 7:17 PM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

To be fair I think Rock is equally as ridiculous as Seinfeld.

I have affection for Rock's work, even though I find his attitude to the 'kids are too PC' issue and some other things problematic.

But I can also see how going into college campuses and talking about racism as he is wont to do might get pushback from oblivious privileged young idiots, and how that might get tiresome. For example,I can see some idiot fratboy vociferously objecting to this:

"Here’s the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before."

Whereas Seinfeld seems to think that institutional prejudice is imaginary. He sounds more and more like this guy.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:19 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

and without the off-stage entitlement issues

Might be helpful to recall that Seinfeld is Jewish and grew up (started his career) in a time where Jewish comedians were barred from certain clubs and in fact a time where Jews were barred from many universities.

So not everything is as one might think it to be.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 7:20 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don’t need femisms Jerby Seinmenld is right! political correctness is awful it makes straight white men have to try harder to be funny :(
posted by NoraReed at 7:22 PM on June 9, 2015 [8 favorites]

So not everything is as one might think it to be.

like..woah
posted by threeants at 7:27 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

ul to recall that Seinfeld is Jewish and grew up (started his career) in a time where Jewish comedians were barred from certain clubs and in fact a time where Jews were barred from many universities.

Exactly how old do you think Seinfeld is?
posted by kagredon at 7:35 PM on June 9, 2015 [10 favorites]

Indicating that a teenager might be interested in going out to meet members of the sex they are attracted to is not sexist. Whether or not Seinfeld is correct in general, I believe he is right about that. It's not like the same thing would not be said to a boy with the genders switched.

I get how it would be heteronormative (which is still not sexism), but it's not beyond the pale for the parents to assume that she is in the 90%, not the 10%. Providing an environment where a gay teenager feels comfortable is not about making the correct assumptions -- it is about showing compassion and openness to having assumptions violated. It's an environment of acceptance, not a turn of phrase.
posted by smidgen at 7:38 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

Henny Youngman weeps
posted by clavdivs at 7:40 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don’t need femisms Jerby Seinmenld is right! political correctness is awful it makes straight white men have to try harder to be funny :(

Well, that seems rather bigoted. What does him being a straight white male have to do with anything?

1. That twitter feed, Women Against Feminism, is a parody account.

2. Seriously? What does being a straight white male have to do with his smug condemnation of women and minorities objecting to sexism and racism? Try again.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:51 PM on June 9, 2015 [10 favorites]

Folks, if this conversation is going to stay civil it needs to not descend into snark and shouting. Thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 7:53 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

Providing an environment where a gay teenager feels comfortable is not about making the correct assumptions -- it is about showing compassion and openness to having assumptions violated. It's an environment of acceptance, not a turn of phrase.

This is sort of neither here nor there w/r/t the main topic of the thread, but I really really disagree with this. Being on the receiving end of assumptions of any type can be so damaging to kids, even if the parents project a general attitude of "acceptance". The message sent in these cases is "It's theoretically okay to be X or Y, but phew, you're clearly not!"
posted by threeants at 8:02 PM on June 9, 2015 [7 favorites]

So why not just ignore it? Well, because to whatever degree it has become part of the accepted metafilter normal culture, use of "trigger warning" puts me outside that culture, because I don't, never did, and am not intending to.

Oh, FFS. I've been lurking since 2001 and think you have to be deliberately obtuse or looking for something to be outraged about to take offense to trigger warnings in any way, and somewhat of a bad egg (in action, in the moment) to refuse to employ them yourself after having some basic understanding of their purpose. That said, I wonder if any of my posts should've had one...*looks*
posted by aydeejones at 8:15 PM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

Providing an environment where a gay teenager feels comfortable is not about making the correct assumptions -- it is about showing compassion and openness to having assumptions violated.

So, saying in the national media that your teenager "doesn't know what the fuck [she's] talking about" when she challenges you--where does that fit into "compassion and openness"?

Whether or not the kid used the exact right word in an argument with her parents is sort of immaterial ("not a turn of phrase", indeed), but what he's doing with that anecdote is a pretty common tactic for shutting down people talking about oppression, and you see it here in this thread with the coded use (and subsequent discussion of) "Tumblr" as synecdoche for "overwrought teenage girl yelling about the kyriarchy". It's shitty on at least two levels: (1) it's meant to be infantilizing and disparaging to adults who care about this and (2) teenagers deserve understanding and compassion when they talk about oppression, especially those who still don't have all of the right words and rhetorical flourishes down.
posted by kagredon at 8:18 PM on June 9, 2015 [12 favorites]

"Might be helpful to recall that Seinfeld is Jewish and grew up (started his career) in a time where Jewish comedians were barred from certain clubs and in fact a time where Jews were barred from many universities. "

1976? Are you talking about Bob Jones?
posted by klangklangston at 8:19 PM on June 9, 2015

There was a lot of sick joy when it came out that Bill Cosby was a rapist, or when Josh Duggar was revealed as a molester. People reveled in it.

We revel in it when people who sanctimoniously promote their own self-righteousness demonstrate themselves not only to be "only human" and flawed, but COMPLETELY TERRIBLY AWFUL. Seems like a pretty basic social mechanism to me...hypocrisy, pointed out? Oh noes
posted by aydeejones at 8:27 PM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

i think a lot of the "sick joy" is actually "oh thank god this issue is finally being paid attention to"
posted by NoraReed at 8:33 PM on June 9, 2015 [17 favorites]

So, saying in the national media that your teenager "doesn't know what the fuck [she's] talking about" when she challenges you--where does that fit into "compassion and openness"?

Ok, that's fair. I would say that we don't actually know how she is reacting to this. Like any public figure, what he's telling may be a summarized version of a longer conversion -- not a true textual snapshot -- so it's both not wrong to think that might be a possibility, but also not really correct to assume that either.

The message sent in these cases is "It's theoretically okay to be X or Y, but phew, you're clearly not!"

I thought of that, but I stand by my assertion that it would be obvious what the parents mean given the environment beyond this one phrase. If they have never talked about how they would react if they had a gay child, it would leave a curious empty space, I agree. But, if they were explicitly positive, saying "meet boys" would just be seen as a mistake, or it could be completely accurate based on professed desires on the part of the daughter.

Anyway, I don't want to be seen as making excuses for everything Seinfeld might say. I just didn't feel comfortable using that one example as a exemplar of his cluelessness, because it didn't feel so out of bounds to me.
posted by smidgen at 8:51 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

1976? Are you talking about Bob Jones?

Google "Harvard Jewish quota" klang.
I know, from personal experience, it was active up through the mid 70's.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 8:52 PM on June 9, 2015

Lots of members of minority groups end up holding up the status quo once they're accepted into whiteness. Irish and Italians are a great example. Now it's happening with Asians, in certain ways.

Just because Seinfeld is a member of a minority group doesn't make him automatically sympathetic to other groups or women.
posted by sweetkid at 8:59 PM on June 9, 2015 [18 favorites]

Here's Danny Hoch, so aptly quoted by kmz above, describing those events in his own words. I'd be happy to view prison appearances by Jerry that rebut Danny's story.

Every time I encounter a shitty accent played as a pathetic attempt at humour, I hear the words "it's funnier that way". And then try to leave the room.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 9:03 PM on June 9, 2015 [7 favorites]

Please don't anybody tell him that Seinfeld's show was popular because he and his characters were totally ridiculous caricatures, more cartoony than The Simpsons. He thought (and still does, based on his current material) he was doing "slice of life" comedy.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:06 PM on June 9, 2015

Well, Larry David really did some of the outrageous George stuff.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:16 PM on June 9, 2015

FFS where are the righteous punching up jokes Jerry? Toxic shitlords gonna toxic shitlord, I guess! I feel like quoating George from Seinfeld" "I'm Getting Upset!"
posted by todayandtomorrow at 10:13 PM on June 9, 2015

He needs to rewatch some of his parts in Comedian, specifically the part where he bombs onstage and realizes it's him and the material, contrasted with the other NYC comedian who bombs, walks offstage and says "the audience sucked."

That Seinfeld was trying to be funny. This Seinfeld is saying "you will find funny what I tell you is funny, which is what was funny before you were born."
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:05 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Also - this whole "social justice warrior" thing as epithet, I do not get.

it's the "$SLURlover" of the 21st century. like yes, as a matter of fact, i do love people who are black. or gay. or trans. or jewish. or just plain women. the fact that people think this is bad tells you all you need to know about them.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:23 PM on June 9, 2015 [17 favorites]

i thought it was the new "PC police" but apparently there are still people unironically complaining about political correctness. get with the times, cloud-yelling old men
posted by NoraReed at 11:29 PM on June 9, 2015 [8 favorites]

FFS where are the righteous punching up jokes Jerry.

Dude's worth like $800 mil. Who's he gonna punch up at—the Sultan of Brunei?
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:55 PM on June 9, 2015 [8 favorites]

Dude's worth like $800 mil. Who's he gonna punch up at—the Sultan of Brunei?

What's. The deal. With oil barons? And do you really need an 'aviation prince'?
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 12:11 AM on June 10, 2015 [15 favorites]

So why not just ignore it? Well, because to whatever degree it has become part of the accepted metafilter normal culture, use of "trigger warning" puts me outside that culture, because I don't, never did, and am not intending to. Which is a bit of an odd feeling, given that I've been here longer than pretty much everyone else - it's kind of lonely to feel like the group culture one was once part of and helped establish has moved in a direction that rejects you.

That sounds more like the group culture one was once part of and helped establish moving in a direction that you reject.

If I could roll my eyes any harder, my fucking skull would collapse. The woman who tries to redefine "mansplain" to mean "any time a man condescends to explain anything to a woman, period" isn't doing shit to further the goals of equality. She's redefining a word that has a very specific meaning in order to win an argument.

There's another definition? Because you've just paraphrased the one on the wikipedia page for example. Or do you mean to have an argument over the extent to which individual interactions are separable from the societal forces that shape interactions generally? Because you have to accept that that is possible to take a definition that says 'sometimes when a man explains something condescendingly to a woman because of this it is mansplaining, sometimes when something that is completely identitical to that but which we choose not to blame on the underlying causes occurs, it is not'.

I get how it would be heteronormative (which is still not sexism)

Weeeellll... heteronormativity does rather rely on a bunch of gendered assumptions, so the extent to which it can be viewed as entirely distinct from sexism is at least worth considering, I'd've thought.
posted by Dysk at 5:49 AM on June 10, 2015 [9 favorites]

The interesting thing is that Seinfeld was never as edgy as a lot of comics were (and are), and, as far as I know, no one ever got offended by his work. He got famous with clever, dry observations of the world around him (his catch phrase "what is it with ..." percolated into the vernacular) and the TV show, while a bit misanthropic, had a gentle, surreal, and slapstick quality to it.
posted by theorique at 6:03 AM on June 10, 2015

Million dollar auto...
posted by clavdivs at 7:44 AM on June 10, 2015

Metafilter: a kid with a rifle playing the Most Dangerous Game with every mustachio'd dickbag in line for artisanal churro
posted by theorique at 8:04 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

There is actually a really great South Asian (Sikh, I believe) comedian from New York who cracks me up... he has big glasses and a handlebar mustache and wears a knit cap. Any New York MeFites know who I am talking about?

No but now I really want to!

And dammit, I don't even like Seinfeld anyway. I can barely tolerate standup. So unsophisticated. You always know when you're supposed to laugh.

Anyone else who wants to explore this topic more could do worse than Steve Martin's Born Standing Up excerpt from Smithsonian Magazine.

I'm an Indian-American woman who grew up enjoying Seinfeld and old Erma Bombeck columns, and raced to the TV at ten till the hour during 60 Minutes every Sunday evening for a few minutes with Andy Rooney. I loved observational humor and the first stand-up I did was observational comedy, like what I'd seen Seinfeld do on TV. In the early 2000s I saw Will Franken and he blew my mind with his super cerebral one-man skits -- and he made fun of the super-left Berkeley crowd BUT HE WAS FUNNY, which makes a huge difference. Recently I've been loving Kumail Nanjiani and Hari Kondabolu and W. Kamau Bell.

When I came back to doing standup a few years ago, I started doing jokes for my own slice of the audience -- hippie nerds, basically. A few weeks ago I did a little show in Brooklyn with about 20 people in the audience, and they laughed at my jokes about FoxConn workers and the iWatch, about being street harassed and internet harassment, about Agile being a bit like polyamory, about trying to start reading romance novels when I'm used to scifi, and yeah, about the social taboos of the NYC subway. It was 30 minutes long and I got a pretty reasonable laugh-per-minute rate. I'm doing a set at AlterConf in Portland in a few weeks and, like my Brooklyn show, it's not gonna be sexist or racist or homophobic or transphobic. It's so much fun to make people laugh, and to know that all of them can let their shields down, that they can have a good time and nothing's gonna come out of left field to sting them -- no "you thought you were a person? haha nope!" like I've felt before, in the audience.
posted by brainwane at 8:09 AM on June 10, 2015 [27 favorites]

hari kondabolu has a great bit up on the moth : not too sensitive, just sensitive enough
posted by nadawi at 8:22 AM on June 10, 2015 [8 favorites]

... about Agile being a bit like polyamory...

OK now you're just teasing.
posted by lodurr at 8:29 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

“They keep moving the lines in for no reason,” Seinfeld said. “I do this joke about the way people need to justify their cell phone. ‘I need to have it with me because people are so important.’ I say, ‘They don’t seem very important, the way you scroll through them like a gay French king.’” The 61-year-old then made an exaggerated hand gesture.

From someone who is known for polishing a joke to within an inch of its life, it says a lot about Seinfeld that he thinks "gay" is critical to that joke.
posted by Etrigan at 9:20 AM on June 10, 2015 [21 favorites]

And that flouncing is a mark of gayness.
posted by maxsparber at 9:21 AM on June 10, 2015 [12 favorites]

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

wow

such imagination

very political correctness

so dystopian
posted by kagredon at 9:24 AM on June 10, 2015 [21 favorites]

an iPhone joke with a setup from the 00s and a punchline from the 80s

and he thinks the audience is the problem
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:36 AM on June 10, 2015 [24 favorites]

Also, to be honest, even if we're to accept the premise that "gay French kings scroll like THIS", I'm still sort of thinking "What are you doing? What do you mean?" The joke lacks focus. The set-up makes it sound like it's supposed to be about some perceived hypocrisy of people on their phones, but the punchline is that phone scrolling can be exaggerated into an effeminate gesture. Why a gay French king other than that Seinfeld wants to make absolutely sure that everyone knows he's talking about being effeminate, and why didn't he choose a more economical way to express that (I submit "like Liberace summoning a waiter")? Or extend it, turn it into a joke about what a gay French king would do with a smart phone.

As it is, he sounds like he was leaning on "gay men are effeminate and 'normal' people don't want to be like them, haha", as the punchline, and is just mad that people don't find that funny anymore.
posted by kagredon at 9:40 AM on June 10, 2015 [25 favorites]

“I did this line recently in front of an audience, and comedy is where you can feel an opinion,” Seinfeld said. “And they thought, ‘What do you mean gay? What are you talking about gay? What are you doing? What do you mean?’ I thought, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

The premise here is that Seinfeld is upset that people are thinking at him
posted by Greg Nog at 12:46 PM on June 10 [1 favorite −] Favorite added! [!]

Get your thoughts off me, you damned dirty young people!
posted by edbles at 9:47 AM on June 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

Contemporary pop comedy criticism is killing independent Jerry!
posted by cortex at 9:51 AM on June 10, 2015 [13 favorites]

Or extend it, turn it into a joke about what a gay French king would do with a smart phone.

That could actually be funny, if it was coming from someone who I thought had some standing on the issue. You know, like descendants of French royalty.
posted by lodurr at 9:51 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

As a gay French king, I think Seinfeld should keep to making the jokes about Jewish dentists like he used to do back in the day.

Let me and my lineage make all the jokes about gay French kings by royal decree as is our divine right.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:53 AM on June 10, 2015 [7 favorites]

(Wow I should have previewed but thanks for the set-up lodurr)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:54 AM on June 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

"Hey, they found the lost Dauphin! He forgot to turn off the location reporting on Facebook Messenger."
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:02 AM on June 10, 2015 [15 favorites]

*checks twitter feed*

2 notifications

Marie Antoinette mentioned you in a tweet.
Let them eat cake amirite?!! @versailles @gayfrenchking
#sorrynnotsorry
posted by edbles at 10:07 AM on June 10, 2015 [12 favorites]

"Here is seamless, the place where I order food. I am going to order some thai food. this is so convenient"

If you wanted to make it really retro (80s era), or really avant garde, you'd have to give him a sort of hybrid French-gay lispy accent. I don't think Seinfeld does impressions though.

"'Ere ees theam-less, zee place where ah order zee food. I am going to order thome thai food. Zees is tho convenient"

I'm not sure that's actually funny. Might need workshopping to actually turn into humor?
posted by theorique at 10:07 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Kings don't carry money, documents, or phones. They have an army of servants to do all that.

A gay French king would presumably have squire to scroll through Grindr for him, or whatever the French version of Grindr might be.

Squire, appelez-moi un hustler sur l'Grindoir.
posted by maxsparber at 10:20 AM on June 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

appelez-moi un beau cul, surely
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:23 AM on June 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

Did you ever notice, straight French kings scroll like "dum-de-dum-dum..."
While gay French kings scroll like "doo-de-doo-doo..."
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:23 AM on June 10, 2015 [8 favorites]

*trouvez-moi, probably, derp
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:24 AM on June 10, 2015

I don't know how kings talk.
posted by maxsparber at 10:28 AM on June 10, 2015

Just heard an audio up on NPR - boy, the delivery doesn't make his whining any better.

Also his material is bad and he never was the funny one.
posted by Artw at 10:29 AM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Now when a Capetian king sees a picture of his niece posted online, he clicks 'like.' But when a Habsburg king sees one...he swipes right."
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:34 AM on June 10, 2015 [30 favorites]

Traditionally French kings would have extensive bedtime routines with all kinds of ceremony and courtiers competing for various rolls such as bringing the royal cocoa and helping put on the royal nightie etc... And then when all that public ceremony was done they'd slip out of the back of the ceremonial bedchamber and hop into the actual nice cosy bed in a smaller room around the back.

I imagine gay French King hookup-app procedure would follow some variation of this.
posted by Artw at 10:35 AM on June 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

one imagines the word 'discreet' would appear in the profile somewhere
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:44 AM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

And that flouncing is a mark of gayness.

There was a funny moment on Curb riffing on that. Paraphrasing:

Jeff: My brother-in-law's going to be there. I got to warn you. He's a [flounces wrist]

Larry: Republican?

Jeff: Yeah.
posted by riruro at 10:48 AM on June 10, 2015 [12 favorites]

I feel like we have mined the gay French king thing for far more comedy here than Seinfeld managed. Where's my vintage car collection, Jerry?
posted by maxsparber at 10:50 AM on June 10, 2015 [24 favorites]

so a while back I read an article (by Amanda Marcotte? Sady Doyle?) that brought up in passing an old Seinfeld observational humor bit from the early 90s, wherein Seinfeld was talking about laundry detergent ads. And the centerpiece of the routine was Seinfeld being deeply confused about why ads would tout their detergent's ability to get bloodstains out of clothes, Jerry all "Bloodstains?? On your clothes?? Who's so worried about getting blood on their clothes that they'll buy a detergent that's good at getting bloodstains out? what is this, a detergent for serial killers? I mean what's with that?"

And this article (I wish I could remember who it was by) noted that the fact that Seinfeld could think up, develop, test and deploy this bit without anyone around him telling him the obvious thing he was missing says pretty much everything that can be said about both Seinfeld and his circle.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:03 AM on June 10, 2015 [41 favorites]

Le roi? C'est moi!

Jerry, some notes on yer act. This is how you make an actual joke out of "Wow, people and their phones these days amirite."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:04 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

It just occurred to me that most contemporary French nobility are worth far less than Seinfeld is.
posted by maxsparber at 11:16 AM on June 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

"Google "Harvard Jewish quota" klang.
I know, from personal experience, it was active up through the mid 70's."

"Did you have any personal experience of anti-Semitism, in admissions or in college?

By the time I was an undergraduate at Harvard in 1972, the Jewish issue was in the past, but I think my father did experience anti-Semitism."

From a Tablet magazine interview with Jerome Karabel, author of The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
posted by klangklangston at 11:19 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

“And they thought, ‘What do you mean gay? What are you talking about gay? What are you doing? What do you mean?’ I thought, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

Whether you like Louis CK or not, as a gay dude I can listen to him use "faggot" in his act and not feel like he's doing it maliciously because to me it seems like he thought through how he was going to approach it.

So Seinfeld's "What do you mean gay? What are you talking about gay?" sounds to me like "How dare you make me feel like I should think through using it as part of a weak joke."

So yeah, it just sounds lazy and complacent.

kagredon: like Liberace summoning a waiter

Yeah, see - that's going somewhere with the funny. But that's because Liberace was an over-the-top walking caricature of a figure and that moves the joke away from "effeminate hand gestures are a metonymy for gay men everywhere, who are in turn ridiculous" - which is where, to me, Seinfeld was going with the gay French king thing.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:22 AM on June 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

... the centerpiece of the routine was Seinfeld being deeply confused about why ads would tout their detergent's ability to get bloodstains out of clothes, Jerry all "Bloodstains?? On your clothes?? Who's so worried about getting blood on their clothes that they'll buy a detergent that's good at getting bloodstains out? what is this, a detergent for serial killers? I mean what's with that?"

I saw this bit when it made it onto Seinfeld, and I had a very different interpretation of it than I would have if I saw it in standup. In-situ, I saw it as another in a long series of examples of how 'Jerry' was a very sophisticated and yet mean-spirited, narrow-minded bastard.

That was actually my working view of the show itself, when I could stand to watch it. It was about a group of what I like to call "bad clowns": People who exist as negative behavioral examples.

Overall I still think that's the only way to make sense of most of it. They really are horrible people, mostly. But there is also this degree to which they knew it, and reveled in it. I came to see it as pandering to the schmucks in the audience. And indeed I saw many examples over the years of people basically justifying their schmuckiness by name-checking Seinfeld.
posted by lodurr at 11:30 AM on June 10, 2015

And this article (I wish I could remember who it was by) noted that the fact that Seinfeld could think up, develop, test and deploy this bit without anyone around him telling him the obvious thing he was missing says pretty much everything that can be said about both Seinfeld and his circle.

What's the obvious thing?
posted by theorique at 11:35 AM on June 10, 2015

A gay French king would presumably have squire to scroll through Grindr for him, or whatever the French version of Grindr might be.

Squire, appelez-moi un hustler sur l'Grindoir.

Not to be confused with Girondr.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:35 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'd respect him more if his whole act morphed into insane rich person observational humor "What's the DEAL with the private chefs on charted flights to Mont Blanc?!?"
posted by The Whelk at 11:35 AM on June 10, 2015 [21 favorites]

women. periods.
posted by twist my arm at 11:36 AM on June 10, 2015 [10 favorites]

As a gay French king, I think Seinfeld should keep to making the jokes about Jewish dentists like he used to do back in the day.

Let me and my lineage make all the jokes about gay French kings by royal decree as is our divine right.

I have a suspicion that King MCMikeNamara seized the throne just for the jokes.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:38 AM on June 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

women. periods.

Am I right, people??
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:40 AM on June 10, 2015 [13 favorites]

Whether you like Louis CK or not, as a gay dude I can listen to him use "faggot" in his act and not feel like he's doing it maliciously because to me it seems like he thought through how he was going to approach it.

I believe this scene basically sums up his feelings on it. To my reading, it's "If you're gonna use it...you should know what it means and the joke better be funny enough to be worth it." Definitely a very arguable point, but I do feel like he's thought about it at least.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:41 AM on June 10, 2015

women. periods.

Holy shit this never occurred to me. Now that I think about it...

"Gets out grass stains!" [image of dirty little league outfit]
"Gets out tough grease and dirt!" [image of grimy mechanic]
"Gets out blood stains!" [ ... ]
posted by Room 641-A at 12:13 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

[blue liquid poured from a beaker]
posted by twist my arm at 12:20 PM on June 10, 2015 [43 favorites]

The premise here is that Seinfeld is upset that people are thinking at him
posted by Greg Nog at 12:46 PM on June 10 [1 favorite −] Favorite added! [!]

That's what struck me too, it wasn't anything about something actually said, he could just feel them being weirded out by 'gay.'

When I saw Michael Che he used the word 'nigger' a lot and the mostly white audience was definitely weirded out, but that was kind of the point.
posted by sweetkid at 12:20 PM on June 10, 2015

yeh, the space was there to do something interesting with it -- ellipses like that are often where the funniest, most penetrating stuff can happen in comedy. And I think I read that into it when they used it on the show. now that I know it was used without apparent irony in his act, I'm reframing it as clueless idiocy.
posted by lodurr at 12:20 PM on June 10, 2015

I heard him on Howard Stern a few years back where he was talking about how the "Diceman" is just a character he portrays on stage.

That's true. He did standup through the '70s and did several characters, and the "Diceman" was the only one he did after that character became famous. He's not quite the same person, but his character is sort of an exaggeration of who he is. His character was an un-PC button-pusher, or a bully, a throwback, etc., where a lot of the buzz around him when he was popular was outrage and backlash. It worked for a while, but it's not the kind of character or publicity that's sustainable for a comedian. I occasionally caught a glimpse of self-awareness from him, but nothing that would make his act purely ironic.

I heard something about the infamous talk show host Morton Downey Jr. from someone who was a guest on his show, that when the cameras weren't rolling, he was a totally nice person to everyone, but there was something of an understanding behind the scenes about his on-screen personna as being just an artifice for show business- and it did work, as he made a living doing that character for several years. Andrew Dice Clay isn't quite on that level with the separation between his real personality and his character, but it's along the same lines as to the buttons he's trying to push.
posted by krinklyfig at 12:23 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I like edgy comedy. And its sharpest edge is insightfulness.

Most "edgy" comedy is dull. Because it lacks the sharpness of actual insight.

"Edginess" is not a value unto its own.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 12:40 PM on June 10, 2015 [11 favorites]

And having watched a bunch of clips because of this thread, yeah, Hari Kondabolu seems to be one who actually uses the sharp edge of actual insight.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 12:47 PM on June 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

An Open Letter to Jerry Seinfeld from a 'Politically Correct' College Student
posted by andoatnp at 1:00 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

A gay French king would presumably have squire to scroll through Grindr for him, or whatever the French version of Grindr might be.

I realize now that my purpose in life is not, as I did earlier, pretend to be the heir to the gay French kingdom; being the Grindr-scroller for a monarch is why I was put on this earth.

(Note: For the right salary, I would also do this full time for moneyed commoners.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:05 PM on June 10, 2015 [7 favorites]

Gay French Nobility Grindr would be called Vicomte, surely.
posted by The Whelk at 1:13 PM on June 10, 2015 [10 favorites]

(Oh hey the current Duke Of Anjou is a looker)
posted by The Whelk at 1:14 PM on June 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

*adds "but for gay French nobility" to @likeuberbut*
posted by NoraReed at 1:17 PM on June 10, 2015 [14 favorites]

Some people do enjoy living in a state of outrage though.... Maybe it makes them feel strong or righteous in a way that helps support them in the face of what they perceive as injustice.

My neighbor (a white, racist, sexist, 500 lb retired police officer) spends all day re-posting right-wing outrage porn on FB and emailing it for good measure. The culture has left him behind and he's simultaneously: a) infuriated that his views have become passe; b) enraged by his loss of power as a cop and as a white man; c) scared shitless and bewildered, especially because his children no longer share his POV; d) reliving his glory days while convincing himself that he doesn't want to belong to the world anymore.

Could extinction burst be in play? Now he's trying even harder to provoke his liberal friends, who mostly stopped engaging with him because he's not capable of nuanced discussion and doesn't respect other viewpoints. Once a week I'll bite, just because I feel sorry for him having nobody to play with. Eventually he insults me as a person and I withdraw. I'm sure he's addicted to the little dopamine hit he gets from the har har and the occasional thumbs up he gets from the like-minded (fewer all the time)... but his toxic schtick used to work so much better and he can't understand why it doesn't anymore.

As it happens, this guy loves Jerry Seinfeld. The other day he moaned about how PC ruins everything, including college kids' ability to see the "hands down best comedian ever." LOL
posted by carmicha at 1:19 PM on June 10, 2015 [7 favorites]

I'm going to regret sticking my wang into this wasp's nest, but: I'm a comic in NYC. I'm at the bottom rung, and I'm not even close to Hari's career, much less Michael Che or Seinfeld's.

I've been in shows with the first two guys, but we'r not exactly touring together. And yes, I'm white, and I'm a straight dude. So maybe it is my privilege talking here, but here's my point:

With certain audiences, if you make any mention at all of race, gender, sex, anything - even if it's on the way to make a bigger point in an effort to subvert the shitty standards - those certain audiences shut down.

The reality that Seinfeld, Rock, Kondabolu, and almost any comic experiences is really pretty far removed from the reality that most audiences experience. I don't see this as Seinfeld saying "Whaa, the unfair advantage that I've enjoyed is now being stripped away," especially since Chris Rock said the *same thing* months ago and nobody complained.

But if comedy is a tool that we use to upend racism, we've got to be able to talk about race without an audience shutting down. If we want to work against sexism, we've got to be able to talk about it. It's fine for people to say "you know, I really didn't think that joke was funny," but it's helpful if that audience listens to the whole joke first.

Or even hears the joke live versus reading someone type about it the next day.

I'll hear it if someone doesn't like my idea - but a central tenet of being open-minded involves listening to an entire idea before rejecting it.
posted by chinese_fashion at 1:20 PM on June 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

That's what struck me too, it wasn't anything about something actually said, he could just feel them being weirded out by 'gay.'

The audience are the real homophobes!
posted by Artw at 1:21 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

chinese_fashion, you said: "With certain audiences, if you make any mention" -- have you noticed whether this effect strengthens or wanes with the comedian's gender, ethnicity, and sexuality? I know I personally am not noticing this effect in my audiences, but I think they see a woman of color and reflexively trust a bit more that I'm not about to say something sexist or racist; building that trust with an audience probably takes more effort if, for instance, I (a cis woman) am talking to a bunch of trans people, and bring up a gender topic.
posted by brainwane at 1:24 PM on June 10, 2015 [15 favorites]

(also I am probably below you on the comics fame/success ladder; if you are at the bottom rung then I am like a slip of cardboard that someone sticks under one foot of the ladder to keep it from wobbling)
posted by brainwane at 1:25 PM on June 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

brainwane - Totally. Like I said, I'm a straight white guy, and I look like the Hell's Angels social media guy. People DON'T want to hear me talk about my ex, or tell stories about dating/sex in general. Even if I mean well, it's gonna have a hard bro-spin on it and I'm not interested in opening that jar.

I find that you (the general you) have got to know who you are, and how an audience perceives you - and work within those parameters or subvert them in a surprising way. People draw conclusions about you when you're on the way to the microphone, and you've got to meet them where they are and bring them to your side.

Which gets a lot harder when there are shutdown words that prevent you from fully expressing an idea.
posted by chinese_fashion at 1:31 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I like Jerry Seinfeld's comedy, both stand-up and sitcom, but he doesn't go too deep with any of his material. He's very good at his craft, and he is self-aware and honest, but he's not great at self-examination. I think it's kind of a shame, because that's where the best material comes from, but it's not really his style. He doesn't get too philosophical beyond whatever is needed for the joke.

It's too bad that he can't find empathy for his daughter's point of view, because that's just not a great relationship to have with kids as they become more independent and push back. I'm sure he feels alienated, which is why he talks publicly about it, but failing to hear what his daughter is telling him about his own sexism is a missed opportunity. It's not that he's a terrible person, but we're all sexist and bigoted in many ways, and we all should be willing to root it out of ourselves whenever it's brought to light. Well, ideally, we should be, and plenty of people react with defensiveness, but it's sure easier and more fulfilling to be willing to grow as a person than to fight it. Maybe he'll at least learn to respect her boundaries about the subject, otherwise he's going to have ongoing problems communicating with her.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:31 PM on June 10, 2015

Isn't one of the rules of performing not to blame the audience if something doesn't work?

Maybe if you mention racism and sexism, and the audience doesn't like it, do a better job?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 1:43 PM on June 10, 2015 [14 favorites]

@MisanthropicPainforest - how has this worked out in your experience?
posted by chinese_fashion at 1:45 PM on June 10, 2015

I like Jerry Seinfeld's comedy, both stand-up and sitcom, but he doesn't go too deep with any of his material.

He'sthe kind of person I think of when thinking of a philosophical zombie.
posted by Artw at 2:00 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Even if I mean well, it's gonna have a hard bro-spin on it and I'm not interested in opening that jar.

Not if you take the bro-spin off. It's absolutely possible to make jokes about sex and dating without having them fall into tired old stereotypes.

And to answer your question to Misantropic_Painforest: I'm not a comedian, I cook--I'm equally dependent on an 'audience' to make a living. If I continue to make the same thing and very few clients like it, that's on me to change. And it's made me better at sussing out a client's wants and delivering on them, rather than imposing what I have decided they must have. So if the audiences are shutting down when you say certain things, it's on you to examine that and deliver a better performance. Whether it means building more audience trust, dropping the material, or reworking it is not all that important. Maybe it's worth really interrogating these things that shut down audiences, and looking at whether it's the subject matter or the delivery that's really the problem.

Look at Seinfeld's thing about 'gay,' above. He's going to get the same shutdown because he hasn't established trust that he's going to go for a reasonable resolution. Instead he's just going "gay is funny amirite."

Whereas someone like Margaret Cho has a bunch of trust built in because of her intersectionality and because of the material she's been doing consistently for years and years. She did a hilarious bit recently that was riffing on the same basic "gays are funny" thing--and nailed it because the actual joke was about straight(ish) female best friends of gay men and why they should be called dickwidows instead of fag hags. Brilliant.

Seinfeld just doesn't bring the same depth. He's not slicing through to some really core weirdness and ugliness in our society; his humour--which, I should add, I really like most of, and the sitcom is among my favourites--is entirely surface. And, arguably, it's entirely a sense of humour built around privilege/#firstworldproblems/whiteness (modulo being Jewish in America and the elastic definition of 'white' over time).

So when someone who is privileged along several axes (white, male, heterosexual, cisgendered, well-off) starts making jokes about situations or people that display a lack of privilege along one or more axes, they need to be really careful, and brutally self-aware, of exactly what they're saying and why they think it's funny. And sometimes jokes by the privileged about privilege fall really flat because they're not quite getting that the exact same privilege they're trying to mock is what's causing them to word the joke that way.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:13 PM on June 10, 2015 [7 favorites]

@MisanthropicPainforest - how has this worked out in your experience?

Not MisanthropicPainforest, not a comedian, but I give lectures at a uni, and following the principle of "not to blame the audience if something doesn't work" actually works wonders.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 2:17 PM on June 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

Blaming those who are the recipients of my goo if they don't like my goo and then throwing more goo at them is how we've always functioned, and if you don't like it I'm just going to throw more goo at you.
posted by bleep at 2:20 PM on June 10, 2015 [12 favorites]

Where is the line between blaming the audience if something doesn't work, and knowing that the audience hasn't given the thing a chance to work or not work? Could someone with no experience in comedy offer me a definitive solution?

This is the sort of thing that Seinfeld and I are both referring to.
posted by chinese_fashion at 3:00 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's not really a question of who is to blame, only one party is trying to earn a paycheck. They can be frustrated if the audience is at fault, but it's still their job to adjust.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:03 PM on June 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

Mmmmm, free goo.
posted by epersonae at 3:06 PM on June 10, 2015

@feckless fear mongering: To make an analogy in your field - sure, it's on you to change what you make to fit the audience tastes. But I'm talking about someone coming to your restaurant, ordering, then sending the plate back without first taking a bite, chewing and swallowing.
posted by chinese_fashion at 3:08 PM on June 10, 2015

Do you honesty think that's what happened in the link you just put up? Because that's not what happened. A comedian wrote a joke calling women in niqabs and burkas 'beehives' and 'ninjas', and a fellow woman also talking at TEDx, who was a muslim, was offended. Its not lke your analogy at all.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:12 PM on June 10, 2015 [11 favorites]

There's just absolutely nowhere to go with the blaming-the-audience thing. You can't argue your way to making people appreciate your comedic sensibilities. It's a complete and total dead end.

This is the sort of thing that Seinfeld and I are both referring to.

tl;dr woman gets dropped from a TEDx talk after going to the mat for a burqa joke and getting all snarky with the organizers. Nothing about oversensitive college students or comedy club audiences here -- the issue she had was with the people running the talk and the muslim speaker she was, apparently, to immediately precede. So kinda not the same thing
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:14 PM on June 10, 2015 [7 favorites]

But I'm talking about someone coming to your restaurant, ordering, then sending the plate back without first taking a bite, chewing and swallowing.

I would say, "Oh my god, I must have royally screwed something up if this is happening in my restaurant. Why don't they trust me? What can I do to win back their trust?" Those people came to my restaurant to enjoy my food; I didn't force them in my gunpoint. But then something made them stop. What was it? I could fold my arms and stamp my feet and blame them for being closed minded, but then I would just go out of business. And it would be my own fault for throwing a tantrum instead of trying to fix whatever I screwed up.
posted by bleep at 3:17 PM on June 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

she wasn't even doing stand up. it's a really bad example unless the thing you're trying to prove is that comedians who complain about things being too pc, especially as it relates to their own act, just come off sounding like they can't read a room.
posted by nadawi at 3:35 PM on June 10, 2015

I mean, if it were one person, I'd say "Oh well, different strokes." If it were every single person who was coming into the restaurant, I'd maybe start rethinking how I was doing my plating. If I was really attached to my innovative plating of a chocolate mousse/pomegranate coulis dessert to look like a bowl of bloody turds, then I'd start to accept that there were going to be some folks who were put off by that no matter how delicious it was.
posted by kagredon at 3:35 PM on June 10, 2015 [13 favorites]

But I'm talking about someone coming to your restaurant, ordering, then sending the plate back without first taking a bite, chewing and swallowing.

It's my fault if what they've ordered comes out looking like a plate of vomit. Whether or not it's actually stew, if you've been served vomit a bunch of times before, you're likely to be a bit leery the next time; if looks like a duck (another straight/white/cis/privileged dude), and is also quacking like a duck (starting jokes that virtually all the time go nowhere funny or interesting or incisive), it's highly likely that what we have here is another aquatic fowl situation, and I for one have no ducking time.

So, shutdown. And it's not possible to control the audience, to keep them engaged if they don't want to be. That's really what the whole "never blame the audience" thing is about; your (that's the general 'you,' not you specifically) talent at something only gets better when you are constantly questioning and refining, learning from feedback, and focusing on the things you can actually control. "Man that audience/customer sucked for not liking my thing" completely shuts down the ability to learn anything from the situation.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:37 PM on June 10, 2015 [8 favorites]

This is the sort of thing that Seinfeld and I are both referring to.

A lot of white people aren't super culturally savvy. This is a joke about white people. I am white.

I can't.

Was this a scene originally written for Michael Scott?
posted by catchingsignals at 5:14 PM on June 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

I think I get what chinese_fashion is getting at. And I'm sympathetic. I'm straight, and if I wanted to make a joke about homophobia, I could imagine setups that would cause the audience's guard to go up. So it's my job as the comedian to find fast, disarming setups that help the audience trust me. And it's possible.

I have also, of course, attended scores of stand-up comedy performances, as an audience member. And I eventually just got fed up with the sexism and the racism and the homophobia and the cissexism and the ableism (if I never hear another midget joke in my life it'll be too soon), and now I just don't go to most shows. I'll go to all-women shows, or all-people-of-color shows, or shows that indicate implicitly or explicitly that the comedians are less likely to laugh at me for thinking I exist. If a cis straight white man comic were the headliner for a "80% Fewer Isms" comedy night, I'd go, and I'd let my guard down. I would trust that he had imagined me as part of his audience.
posted by brainwane at 6:44 PM on June 10, 2015 [14 favorites]

Re-written plot: When a journalist thinks Seinfeld and George are in a same-sex relationship, Jerry just lets it slide because he doesn't know how to bring it up without making sound like there's anything wrong with it.

okay, but can you really not imagine how hilarious that would be
posted by kagredon at 8:27 PM on June 10, 2015 [14 favorites]

and number 5 just straight up shows the author has no clue what political correctness is and, indeed, totally misses the point of why "Festivus" was so funny to begin with
posted by kagredon at 8:28 PM on June 10, 2015 [14 favorites]

1. Being gay

Plot: When a journalist thinks Jerry and George are in a same-sex relationship, Jerry tries to convince her they're not gay (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course).

Re-written plot: When a journalist thinks Seinfeld and George are in a same-sex relationship, Jerry just lets it slide because he doesn't know how to bring it up without making sound like there's anything wrong with it.

Yeah I'm not sure people no longer finding an episode centering on homophobia as funny as they did in the '90s, is the giant fucking tragedy Hunter Schwarz thinks it is.
posted by edbles at 8:34 PM on June 10, 2015 [15 favorites]

This Washington Post piece reminds us how very very funny Seinfeld's sitcom was and is - it is also a really smart rebuttal of Lindy West etc.

this is sarcasm, right?
posted by NoraReed at 8:38 PM on June 10, 2015 [17 favorites]

Jerry's entire career was based around being able to completely avoid all controversy whatsoever.

Yeah, I can't picture Seinfeld being actually overtly racist or sexist on stage, though I guess he might dabble in a bit of, uh, horseplay or whatever, and may very well be a huge bigot IRL. My generous guess is he is conflating (presumably genuine) college-age anger over sexism and racism with general outrage over everything and anything.

I don't doubt that college kids are indoctrinated in various things to varying degrees but I also have to assume they know their own minds to an extent. It just sounds to me that he's simply written them off because he's a rich-as-fuck old white guy and can't relate to them in any way, and therefore can't make them laugh, and therefore the fault is theirs somehow because he can't tell his best racist jokes, which he never did anyway (according to reports).
posted by turbid dahlia at 9:21 PM on June 10, 2015

A lot of comedians are going to get left behind by audiences if they can't adapt to the times. This is probably always been the case but it's accelerated by the internet. This is what Seinfeld means by "PC", which is a telling insight into the exact ways that audiences and expectations are changing.
posted by cell divide at 10:15 PM on June 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

Jerry Seinfeld hates political correctness. So we ruined 7 Seinfeld episodes by making them PC.

Aziz Anzari, Hari Kondabalu, Margaret Cho, Wyatt Cenac, Jen Kirkman, Amy Schumer, Eddie Izzard, Key and Peele - all these comedians (and many many more besides) are able to talk about difficult subjects including sexism and racism and bring the audience along with them. Because they are joking about sexism and racism, and not just saying sexist and racist things and waiting expectantly for laughs. They're still funny, and they're still successful.

If this WaPo excuse for a journo can't see the difference, then he should consider another line of work (judging from the writing in that article, he definitely should)

If Seinfeld can't see the difference, then maybe he should just fuck off to his private island or whatever where he can yell at clouds without bugging the rest of us. Nobody owes you laughs, dude.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 11:46 PM on June 10, 2015 [17 favorites]

For the 90s, saying that there wasn't anything wrong with it was kinda progressive for network TV. Remember that our current President held the bigoted position that gay people should not be allowed to marry throughout almost his entire first term and most of a decade after that Seinfeld episode.

Times change. Good comedians change with them unless they think "Old man yells at cloud" is a respectable routine.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:50 AM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

If this WaPo excuse for a journo can't see the difference....

This raises a surprisingly salient point: a lot of the people writing the "best" clickbait bullshit like this are junior content-farmers with jumped-up titles, hired & compensated on some variant of the Gawker/AOL content-farm models. Look at Hunter Schwarz's output, for example -- 3-4 stories a day seems to be his quota (so he's got a somewhat better deal than your average Gawkerite or AOL content-famer, but still). He's got to go for the lede and slightly scandalize; he's been trained and conditioned to not resolve the tension, because all his continued employment cares about is whether he gets the eyeballs.

Sometimes this works out great for them. Vis the idiot at Salon who on Tuesday decided to pretend she thought Joyce Carol Oates thought there was a problem with Triceratops poaching.
posted by lodurr at 3:20 AM on June 11, 2015

I'm married to a comic and we spend an awful lot of time talking about comedy, how jokes work, and why. He is firmly committed to punching up not down, and whenever he worries he's crossing a line, he runs a joke by me and we talk about it. He is continuously reworking stuff that didn't work, trying to figure out why, and always always always trying to improve his material. Sometimes he finds himself in a country music bar in the exurbs, and even then, when he knows most of his standard material won't work, he is still committed to punching up and to trying to make them laugh.

Also, we're seeing Hari Kondabalu this Saturday, and I'm super excited.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:32 AM on June 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

So we ruined 7 Seinfeld episodes by making them PC.

This person doesn't seem to understand Seinfeld, and that's a nice PC straw man he set up so he could knock it down.

I always thought the joke in the "not that there's anything wrong with that" episode was that they recognized and were uncomfortable with their own homophobia, while continuing to be homophobic and trying, but failing, to hide or mitigate it. So, like many Seinfeld episodes, the joke revolves around the main characters being assholes. I think this dumb article illustrates why it's weird for Seinfeld, of all people, to get all het up about this. His observational humor is usually pretty innocuous, and when it does have a spiteful target, it's the vapid, petty main characters. His other episode selections also miss the point pretty thoroughly.

And he seems to think that stripping out isms means never having any conflict or negativity. Has he read Lindy West? Or heard Margaret Cho's stand up?

Lindy West remains safely unrebutted.
posted by Mavri at 5:37 AM on June 11, 2015 [12 favorites]

I remember feeling even at the time that "not that there's anything wrong with that" was a political correctness joke.
posted by Trochanter at 5:38 AM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Gay French Nobility Grindr would be called Vicomte, surely.

"Jacobin? I don't even know him!"

Wait. What were we talking about?

Or, right. That stupid WaPo article. Ok, so what I'd say to this:

But what if Seinfeld was on today, and what if our aggressive PC culture was taken to its extreme? Could the show even be on television without boycotts and MoveOn.org petitions calling for its cancellation?

...is that Jerry Seinfeld is still cashing some epic royalty cheques because IT'S STILL ON TV and will likely remain so in syndication until the end of recorded history. The networks airing it have not, to my knowledge, been set upon with boycotts and petitions dreamed up by the thought police.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:56 AM on June 11, 2015 [10 favorites]

women. periods.

Makes sense. As a man, I tend to think in a darker direction when people mention bloodstains. As, I suppose, Seinfeld did.
posted by theorique at 8:03 AM on June 11, 2015

I remember feeling even at the time that "not that there's anything wrong with that" was a political correctness joke.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that" seems to function as a magical incantation that absolves them of their homophobia with each utterance.

I personally have never found that episode offensive in any deep way, but it's one of the less funny episodes because of it. Maybe because it's a one-note joke that goes on a little too long and wasn't that great to begin with. It's weak as a joke that deal with homophobia, its tacit validation of it aside.

So maybe Seinfeld can take a page from his own script:

Jerry: I wanted to talk to you about Dr. Whatley. I have a suspicion that he's converted to Judaism just for the jokes.

Father: And this offends you as a Jewish person.

Jerry: No, it offends me as a comedian.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:06 AM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Colin Quinn rebukes Jerry Seinfeld’s P.C. police theory — much to the disappointment of “Fox & Friends”
"Do you feel more restricted in your freedom?" they asked. "No," he replied, again and again and again
"Elisabeth Hasselbeck tried to compel Quinn to admit that the problem of political correctness is getting worse, but he wouldn’t take the bait. “Do you feel that you’re being more and more restricted in your art, your profession, and what you do, and your freedom?”

“No,” he replied. “The whole point of being a comedian is that you’re not supposed to — we don’t listen to the crowd. We need the crowd, but what’s more insulting than someone who panders to the crowd? That’s the worst thing you can be in comedy, somebody who comes out and says, ‘Hey! I want to make everybody happy!’ That’s not our job. Our job is to make people unhappy.”

Steve Doocy continued to press the Fox News narrative of PC ascension, asking Quinn “what has changed? It used to be people could take a joke, but now it’s like people have no sense of humor.”

“Look,” Quinn said, “people still have a sense of humor, but it depends on where you’re coming from. You can’t just [throw your hands in the air] and say, ‘it’s just jokes,’ because it’s not a free pass.”"

posted by zarq at 8:11 AM on June 11, 2015 [32 favorites]

There are few better responses to this than Colin goddamn Quinn coming out with a more nuanced view of political correctness and the relationship between comedian and audience than Jerry Seinfeld.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:31 AM on June 11, 2015 [26 favorites]

"Not that there's anything wrong with that" seems to function as a magical incantation that absolves them of their homophobia with each utterance.

I read that phrase as nervous and socially aware, wanting-to-do-the-right thing straight people, reassuring themselves and each other than they could talk about controversial (at the time) things.

Jerry and George needed to set the record 'straight' with the reporter interviewing Jerry, that they weren't gay, but also reassure the reporter that they weren't denying their gayness so fervently because they were actually anti-gay.

A similar theme arises in the episode where Elaine thinks her boyfriend is light-skinned black, and he thinks she's light-skinned hispanic. The discomfort of the white characters as they tiptoe around the sensitive issue of race is reminiscent of the gay episode.
posted by theorique at 10:42 AM on June 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

>>I remember feeling even at the time that "not that there's anything wrong with that" was a political correctness joke.

>"Not that there's anything wrong with that" seems to function as a magical incantation that absolves them of their homophobia with each utterance.

But I also felt it was the show giving itself that absolution. Or the show itself making the PC joke.

And also, it was doing whatever they called "trying to go viral" in those days.
posted by Trochanter at 10:43 AM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

A gay French king would presumably have squire to scroll through Grindr for him, or whatever the French version of Grindr might be.

Le Royale with Cock.
posted by phearlez at 10:58 AM on June 11, 2015 [10 favorites]

And also, it was doing whatever they called "trying to go viral" in those days.

"You kids these days. You just push a button and your stuff goes viral. When I was a young'un you had to repeat things so many times to get something to go viral that your throat would be raw by the time other people started saying it."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:59 AM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

But I also felt it was the show giving itself that absolution. Or the show itself making the PC joke.

I often felt they were trying to have it both ways: to make fun of what horrible people they were, and get people to identify with them at the same time (while wearing a superior smile all the way to the financial institution).

So much more sophisticated than what Chuck Lorre does nowadays.
posted by lodurr at 1:24 PM on June 11, 2015

I dunno, I feel like "...not that there's anything wrong with that" captured that period in the 90s really, really well.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:48 PM on June 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

"1. Being gay

Plot: When a journalist thinks Jerry and George are in a same-sex relationship, Jerry tries to convince her they're not gay (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course).

Re-written plot: When a journalist thinks Seinfeld and George are in a same-sex relationship, Jerry just lets it slide because he doesn't know how to bring it up without making sound like there's anything wrong with it.
Yeah I'm not sure people no longer finding an episode centering on homophobia as funny as they did in the '90s, is the giant fucking tragedy Hunter Schwarz thinks it is."

Well, especially since it's easy to think about how to update that routine:

A reporter mistakes Jerry and George for boyfriends, which they only find out about once it runs. While George worries that the woman he's just started seeing doesn't realize they're dating, Jerry gets booked to do five minutes on Anderson Cooper with Andy Cohen, which goes great until they start pressing him to come out publicly. He dances around it while George seethes watching at home with his new girlfriend. She thinks George has misled her about being straight; he's irate because "Jerry?! I could do better! I could do better!" Jerry enters talks to get a show on Bravo, but is undone when Cohen catches him kissing a woman goodbye. B-lines: Kramer was always been bi; tries to teach Jerry hanky code. Elaine looks up the college girlfriend whose heart she thought she broke, only to be chagrinned that her ex is about to be married; only comes around to supporting gay marriage after finding out her ex is engaged to a embezzler who she rats out after the wedding.

Still has the mistaken identities, the main four are still self-involved assholes, doesn't have endless panic at being gay.
posted by klangklangston at 4:41 PM on June 11, 2015 [23 favorites]

We asked a handful of people from across the world of comedy to talk about outrage culture, the media's echo chamber, and what's "ok" to joke about.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:28 PM on June 11, 2015

klangklangston, i for one would love it if you could explain to us why you don't have a job writing this stuff. seriously, get that job and do it for our good, if not your own.
posted by lodurr at 6:14 AM on June 12, 2015 [3 favorites]

How Seinfeld became a bad joke: The threat of a hyper-vigilant left-wing outrage machine has been greatly exaggerated (Arthur Chu nails it again)
posted by naoko at 7:52 AM on June 12, 2015 [8 favorites]

Shutting Up

If 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.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:34 PM on June 13, 2015

You wouldn’t say that music or fiction are “supposed” to be anything....

[shrug /]

People say that all the time. This idea that we're not supposed to say that is itself a cultural value, and it's going to be quite rare indeed that you find someone who's willing to go to the mat to support it in all cases.

But I think Schwartz gets that, FWIW, because he goes on to say:

This isn’t a problem, nor is it a crisis. The redefining of “funny” for each generation is a constant of our humor. And it’s not censorship. Local vaudeville theater managers once had the authority to censor and blacklist comics at every level from the 1870s through the 1930s, on the basis of nothing more than purely whimsical local tastes. Movie studios, TV networks, magazine editors, newspaper critics (when they had weight), and even other comedians (see David Letterman versus Bill Hicks)—have all done far more to censor comedy and damage careers than anyone on Twitter or college campuses can today. Comedy has never had more venues, more outlets, more diversity than this moment, right now.

posted by lodurr at 9:14 PM on June 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

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?

I'm seriously weirded out by the attempts to divorce comedy and meaning - or really any creative endeavor and meaning. People create out of what we value from our perspective on the world and what we wish the world was like. Nothing cultural exists in a vacuum.

The entire point of "edgy" comedy is to transgress over boundaries; people do and will push back from that from a variety of angles. The narrative that individuals who want to be "edgy" should simultaneously be protected from any negative feedback, like the narrative that it is a violation of free speech to critique creative endeavors and so people critiquing shouldn't speak freely, is incredibly strange to me.
posted by Deoridhe at 10:55 PM on June 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

Deoridhe: Definitely read the whole of the Schwartz piece, if you haven't already. I think you're on close to the same page.
posted by lodurr at 5:10 AM on June 14, 2015

The entire point of "edgy" comedy is to transgress over boundaries; people do and will push back from that from a variety of angles. The narrative that individuals who want to be "edgy" should simultaneously be protected from any negative feedback, like the narrative that it is a violation of free speech to critique creative endeavors and so people critiquing shouldn't speak freely, is incredibly strange to me.

Excellent point. The idea that now-beloved "edgy" icons of past comedy were universally accepted is a fiction. You aren't edgy unless you're actually upsetting someone - if everyone either likes you or grudgingly puts up with you, you're pretty mainstream.

I'm thinking of guys like George Carlin or Lenny Bruce here. Their comedy faced obstacles in its time, even if it is now recognized as genius work.
posted by theorique at 7:04 AM on June 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hari was awesome, y'all.
posted by hydropsyche at 11:18 AM on June 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

Against Students - "Complaining, censorious, and over-sensitive, university students are destroying their own institutions. Wait, seriously? People think that?"
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:57 PM on June 29, 2015

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