Jerry Seinfeld No Longer Believes “Extreme Leftists” Are Ruining Comedy

Regrets? Comedy legend Jerry Seinfeld has at least one. While appearing on comedian Tom Papa’s current podcast, Breaking Bread, the Seinfeld star expressed remorse about saying earlier this year that people with leftist politics had “suppressed the art of comedy.”

“That’s not true,” Seinfeld clarified.

Seinfeld made his original comment during an appearance on The New Yorker Radio Hour this spring while promoting his recent Netflix comedy film, Unfrosted. At the time, he suggested that television comedy had suffered because of “the extreme left and PC crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people.”

But on Papa’s podcast, the Emmy winner took it all back. “I did an interview with The New Yorker, and I said that the extreme left has suppressed the art of comedy,” Seinfeld said. “I did say that. That’s not true. It’s not true…. If you’re Lindsey Vonn, if you’re a champion skier, you can put the gates anywhere you want on the mountain; she’s gonna make the gate. That’s comedy. Whatever the culture is, we make the gate. You don’t make the gate, you’re out of the game. The game is: Where is the gate, [and] how do I make the gate and get down the hill?”

Perhaps it was his Seinfeld costar Julia Louis-Dreyfus who helped the comedian see the error in his ways. When asked about Seinfeld’s comments during an interview with The New York Times, she disagreed with him. “I think to have an antenna about sensitivities is not a bad thing,” Louis-Dreyfus said. “It doesn’t mean that all comedy goes out the window as a result.”

On Breaking Bread, Seinfeld continued to explain his change of heart. “Does culture change, and are there things I used to say that I can’t say [because] everybody’s always moving [the gate]? Yeah, but that’s the biggest, easiest target,” he told Papa. “You can’t say certain words, whatever they are, about groups—so what? The accuracy of your observation has to be a hundred times finer than that to just be a comedian.”

He ended his mea culpa by “officially” taking back his claim that “the extreme left has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy.” He also refuted the idea that he wouldn’t perform at colleges anymore because students had become too politically correct. “First of all, I never said it, but if you think I said it, it’s not true,” Seinfeld clarified. “I play colleges all the time. I have no problem with kids, performing for them. In fact, I was just at the University of Indiana, Kentucky; we did [the University of Texas]. I mean, I do colleges all the time.” College kids: Now’s the time to pull a Deborah Vance–at–Berkeley and invite Jerry Seinfeld to do improv at your university.