Would the phenomenally popular 1990s television series Seinfeld stand a chance in the 2010s?
Jerry Seinfeld doesn’t play colleges and has no plans to do so in the near future because of how politically-correct kids are these days.
Seinfeld talked with ESPN’s Colin Cowherd on Thursday, and the radio host asked him about how PC the culture has become these days, citing comments from other comics about how colleges are way too sensitive.
Seinfeld agreed, saying that he has been warned to avoid college campuses because of how PC they are.
As an example, he brought up how his wife told their daughter, “In the next couple of years, I think maybe you’re going to want to hang around the city more on the weekends so you can see boys,” and their daughter responded by saying that’s “sexist.”
Seinfeld said, “They just want to use these words. ‘That’s racist, that’s sexist, that’s prejudice.’ They don’t even know what they’re talking about.” [Sources: ESPN, Huffington Post, mediaite.com 6-6-15]
Last year, Jerry Seinfeld made similar comments about how self-conscious political correctness is tainting or ruining humor:
Oh, this really pisses me off…People think it’s the census or something. This has gotta represent the actual pie chart of America? Who cares?
Funny is the world I live in. You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m not interested. I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that.
Psychologically, humor is a mental and emotional release. It’s arguably the best form of psychotherapy. Many people have said to me, “As long as I could still laugh, I knew I was going to make it through that difficult time.”
A sense of humor is not enough, and it’s not the most important attribute, of a healthy, well-rounded, intelligent person of high character. But it’s arguably a necessary trait. Why is this?
Because to have a sense of humor is to have a sense of perspective. It doesn’t mean you mock what’s important, or what’s valuable. That’s not humor. That’s cruelty. Or an indication of low self-respect. Or insecurity.
However, not all humor is bad, and much of it is good. It adds immense value to life. Because humor implies a sense of perspective, it implies the presence of a human being’s most fundamental virtue: rationality. Rationality gives rise to a sense of mental serenity and perspective, among many other things.
This is where political correctness and humor collide. People who see racism, sexism, or some other kind of offense around every corner resent laughter. The root of what we call “political correctness” is the victim mentality. Humor is a reminder that despite the presence of real or imagined injustices or hurt feelings that occur every day, we can retain a sense of perspective about these problems. In fact, we can even laugh at what’s irrational, while still taking it seriously. By laughing at something, you’re reducing its power. You’re saying, in effect, “You can only get to me so much.”
Proponents of the victim mentality don’t like the sense of perspective (even temporary) that humor provides. It gives them less power (politically, psychologically) over others. Victimhood keeps people low and down about life and themselves; power-oriented people like that. Sadly, those are the kind of people who dominate our government, media and academic institutions, and that’s why so many of the rest of us feel so intimidated, and like we have to walk on eggshells, all the time.
I find it so ironic. Much political correctness arises from a rebellion against bullies. The men who bully women, the haters who bully gays, and the like. Yet in their puritanical quest of intimidation, often backed by legal force, the anti-bully types are becoming the bullies themselves. Humor, a wonderful byproduct of life in a free and rational society, becomes diminished if not ultimately extinguished. By whom? By stern, unyielding and perpetually uncomfortable/easily offended progressive puritans now dominating the culture in which Jerry Seinfeld’s daughter has been growing up.
Liberty and perspective are what puritanical mindsets (“left” or “right”) cannot stand. They must have emotional power and control over others. Puritans come in different forms. There’s the puritanical mindset of traditionally minded people, but there’s also the modern day schoolmarm mentality represented by those who are constantly shaking their fingers at us, “Tsk, tsk, shame on you!” for not having the precise point-of-view they think you should have about some situation or another.
When Jerry Seinfeld’s daughter criticizes her mother for an innocent remark having nothing whatsoever to do with sexism, she’s probably trying to individuate herself from her parents (something most teenagers do); but she’s also parroting what she has learned from teachers and in the wider culture. Teachers and other “leaders” in the culture are training her not to laugh at anything, because doing so runs the risk of harming someone’s feelings somewhere or someplace. And we cannot have that, not ever.
Some seek to take this campaign against humor to legally enforceable levels. Venezuela, a socialist country facing a very non-funny situation as its economy heads for total collapse, has intensified its efforts to regulate or even outlaw comedians.
Consider this story from npr.org 5/5/15:
Laureano Marquez was performing a benefit at his old high school in the Venezuelan city of Maracay. The comedian dwelled on the absurdities of life in this oil-rich nation, where gas is cheaper than water but it’s hard to find milk, toilet paper and many other everyday goods.
In the supermarket, Marquez said, desperate customers will steal scarce items right out of your shopping cart.
“In Venezuela, you get robbed of stuff that isn’t even yours yet,” he said to a round of laughs.
Turning serious, Marquez tells the crowd that the socialist revolution, launched 16 years ago by the late Hugo Chavez, is collapsing under the weight of bad policies and corrupt public officials.
Humor often aligns itself with dissension. The unflinchingly authoritarian government of Venezuela gets this. In the heyday of Johnny Carson (of Tonight Show fame in the 1970s and 1980s), people used to say, “Check out Carson’s jokes about the current state of the nation [Nixon, oil crises, Jimmy Carter, Iranian hostages], and see what people laugh the hardest about, and applaud the most.” It’s not a scientific methodology, but it wasn’t without value, either.
Today, humor is expressed in a much greater and wider variety and style of mediums, as the Internet and other expansions in technology and related business have permitted. It’s all a beautiful thing.
If humor ever perishes altogether in America, then you can be absolutely sure the country is finished. But I still see a lot of people laughing and smiling, thank goodness. It may be the last form of dissension left.
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