The woman who owns the corner store by me is rude and annoying. I choose not to give her my business. Cancel culture?
Nestles promoted baby formula needlessly to 3rd world mothers. People boycotted. Cancel culture?
I brought it up because you didn’t seem to know the definition of pedo.
Ah, you wanted to clarify that technically he was only a statutory rapist not a pedophile. got it.
Goalposts again. Dating a 17yo may be creepy, but it does not fit any definition of pedophilia and therefore is not considered perversion.
Hang this one up. You are losing by every measure.
Yes, you did. For the ‘pedophile’ accusation you have listed a post where someone references the verifiable fact that he had a 17-year-old girlfriend at one point. They don’t use the word ‘pedophile’, and the situation doesn’t fit the standard definition of the word pedophile. Further, it’s not even an accusation - Seinfeld dating a 17-year-old was well documented (though largely not considered controversial by anyone other than Bobcat Goldthwait) at the time, and continues to come up in news articles. If it wasn’t true, he could easily sue them for libel.
For the ‘homophobic’ accusation, you have a post that doesn’t say anything about him being homophobic, and instead criticizes the joke for being out of touch. The fact Acsenray points out that it’s clear in the joke that ‘gay’ and ‘French’ are supposed to be intrinsically funny is just pointing out that it’s dated and might have gotten laughs decades ago.
I know Bacon_cheeseburger is banned so won’t be back, but I want to point out that sort of outrageous hyperbole is really common in ‘Cancel Culture’ claims. Someone doesn’t get one gig, and ‘their career is ruined’. Someone gets insulted on a message board, and ‘they’re being crucified’. Jumping from ‘it’s a well-documented fact that he dated a 17-year-old’ to ‘you’re accusing him of being a pedophile’ or ‘trying to make a joke expecting “gay” to get a laugh is out of touch’ to ‘you’re accusing him of being a homophobe’ is the same sort of thing.
You mean 1990 (that’s when the Anthem thing happened)
Anyone else still kind of grappling with the idea that Jerry Seinfeld thinks his material is “too edgy” for college campuses? Seinfeld? Edgy? Seinfeld? Does he have some really brutal material about airline food, or an especially edgy take on how bad elevator music is?
He claims he was taken out of context when he spoke about doing shows at colleges.
Yikes - yes.
There’s nothing in that article indicating that Jerry Seinfeld claims he was taken out of context, and the only point of contention with reporting on the comments seems to be that they used the word ‘boycott’ and he didn’t. It also has some weird speculation that Seinfeld talking about words that black people use but white people don’t like ‘Hawk’ for wind’ “would probably be met with gasps – if not tears” if performed on a college campus. But I’m not sure what they’re basing that on other than legends and myths, since I’ve never heard of people on a college campus breaking down in gasps, much less tears, at the idea of a white person politely discussing dialect/slang differences. I wouldn’t be surprised if people left a Seinfeld comedy act based on that topic, but that’s because I don’t see how you’d make that funny.
Do any of the people complaining about ‘cancel culture’ use real events, or is it always stuff like ‘if he talked about this, they’re be gasps! and tears! from those triggered college kids’ with no real example of it happening?
There’s usually some hyperbole involved.
Get a dirty look, it gets called breaking down in tears.
Someone leaves because they don’t find you funny, they just can’t handle non-PC.
Someone actually voices an objection, and it’s hysteria.
Two or more people voice an objection, and it’s a mob.
If they talked about it in honest terms, they’d get no traction. But, even though Seinfeld isn’t that funny, and Rowling doesn’t tell that intriguing of a story, they both actually do have more rhetorical tools at their disposal than the vast majority of the public.
That they have to rely on hyperbole bordering on fabrication does not persuade me that they have an actual case here.
When I was reading up on the ‘dating a seventeen-year-old’ bit, I read about his beef with Bobcat Goldthwait, and it seems relevant here. Seinfeld said “He [Goldthwait] used to rail against me 'cause they weren’t as wild and dangerous as he was. 'Cause he sucked. He wasn’t funny. And that’s why he didn’t get anywhere… 'Cause in comedy, nobody gives a fuck if you’re cool, if you’re lame. If you’re funny, you. If you’re not funny, you don’t. And he’s not funny. That’s why he had to do that stupid fucking voice. 'Cause you have no fucking act."
The thing is, the joke that Seinfeld is angry about is a bit from Goldthwait’s act 30 years ago. The funny voice he’s talking about is also something Goldthwait moved away from, and 20 years ago decided not to do even a little bit of for people. Goldthwait moved out of stand up comedy into directing, and has directed a number of successful comedic movies, TV shows, and stand-up specials, and occasionally does stand-up without trouble (though without the old voice and persona). Goldthwait didn’t even know there was a feud going on, and seems amazed that Seinfeld would rage so much about something that far out of date. Which seems to support the idea that Seinfeld is out of touch, hanging on to his ‘glory days’ for dear life, and unwilling or unable to come up with humor to connect with today’s audiences.
Also, here’s a modern comedian parodying Seinfeld by doing observational humor about (17-year-old) girlfriends:
Meant to add: I think that it really ties back to the earlier conversation about him being out of touch and unwilling to write for newer audiences. It’s easy to blame ‘these snowflake college kids’ for being too sensitive to get him, but being stuck in the 90s is a big problem if you’re trying to write comedy to appeal to people who weren’t born then. This is especially true since his primary schtick is observational humor - a Baby Boomer is coming at ‘did you ever wonder why…’ from a completely different starting point than a Millennial or Zoomer, especially since Seinfeld is a rich and famous guy so never had to deal with a lot of ‘just getting by’ things that a typical college-show-goer is familiar with.
Ever watched Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, his 20 minute show collection on YouTube where Jerry interviews other famous comedians? It’s relatively recent and quite good, depending on the person he has with him. Informational about cars too.
Watch the episode where Jerry interviews John Mulany, it’s embarrassing how out of touch Jerry is.
The Trevor Noah one is also cringeworthy.
Maybe, but the one with Obama was awesome!
Because Jerry didn’t feel threatened.
Ugh, I just looked those up, and yeah. In one, Mulaney talks about how his wife is better at interior design than him, and Seinfeld turns it into ‘She THINKS she’s better’ when… she’s an actual professional interior designer. In the Noah one, he says “You’re gonna do just fine. You are a purebred. Despite your mixed ethnic heritage, your comedic heritage is very purebred.”.
Yeah, I don’t think the problem is that college audiences are hyper sensitive, it’s that playing to traditional prejudices just isn’t funny unless your audience shares those prejudices, and people generally aren’t going to pay to see you reinforce your own prejudices.
John Mulaney’s wife is not a professional interior designer. She’s a makeup artist.
I watched both those episodes. I didn’t find Seinfeld completely clueless in those. But it’s clear he has a very defined outlook on life and he doesn’t step outside it. He looks at everyone else’s life from that perspective.
Seinfeld has a very interesting personal history. Both his parents had grown up in orphanages and they were very hands off parents. Seinfeld was an outsider as a child, always the observer and laser focused on comedy.
He recently was on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast and Maron found him very hard to crack and suggested that Seinfeld is protected by strong emotional armor that doesn’t admit examination and introspection easily.