14 DAY TRIAL // Jerry Seinfeld is echoing the thoughts of many other comedians in saying that political correctness is hurting comedy by forcing those who write jokes to steer away from many issues that might be deemed “controversial.”
This is why he doesn’t do college tours, he says in a new interview with ESPN, promoting the latest season of his comedy web series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” You will find this segment of the chat below.
Young people these days are too sensitive
The problem isn’t that society strives to be politically correct, but that some people have taken the concept of political correctness and ran with it, forgetting to come back. They see in everything a possible cause for offense, which, in turn, forces everyone else to censor themselves.
Seinfeld says he doesn’t play at colleges because his audience is different, but if he were to consider it, he would probably opt against it because students tend to be too PC.
Even worse, they’re not so because they believe they’re doing something right, but rather because they have been taught to see an offense whichever way they turn.
“Let me give you an example,” Seinfeld says. “My wife says to [my 14-year-old daughter], ‘Well, you know, in the next couple of years, I think you’re going to want to be hanging around the city more on the weekends, so you can see boys.’ And 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 [expletive] they’re talking about.”
Humor is subjective
Seinfeld isn’t the only comedian to complain about pressure from the PC crowd. Others who have offended ended up apologizing or explaining themselves for a joke after being backed into a corner, but Seinfeld chooses to steer clear of potentially offensive topics altogether.
Still, there are comedians who will not bend their humor to suit the taste of a particular group, and they are the people who know that humor is very subjective: what is hilarious to one can be frightfully offensive to another.
Perhaps a solution is in knowing the audience you’re making a certain joke for. The late Joan Rivers knew this better than anyone, which is why she’d gotten to a point where there was not a thing she was afraid of cracking jokes about.
