Jerry Seinfeld Regrets His Comments About the “Extreme Left” Ruining Comedy: “It’s Not True”

Jerry Seinfeld walked back his comments about the “extreme left” killing comedy this week, saying he regrets his choice of words because “it’s not true.”

“I said that the ‘extreme left’ has suppressed the art of comedy. I did say that. That’s not true,” Seinfeld said on Tom Papa’s Breaking Bread podcast.

In April, the Seinfeld creator told The New Yorker that “P.C. crap” from the “extreme left” was hurting comedians.

“When you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups — ‘Here’s our thought about this joke.’ Well, that’s the end of your comedy,” he said.

Seinfeld’s comments gained lots of attention, and several other comics weighed in on the discussion. Seinfeld star Julia Louis-Dreyfus told The New York Times at one point, “I think to have an antenna about sensitivities is not a bad thing. It doesn’t mean that all comedy goes out the window as a result.”

This week, Seinfeld told Papa that he “did not know that people care what comedians say,” adding over laughter, “That literally came as news to me.”

He went on to say he regrets what he said and noted, “If you’re Lindsay Vonn, if you’re a champion skier, you can put the gates anywhere you want on the mountain and she’s going to 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 to get down the hill.”

Seinfeld continued, “Does culture change, and are there things that I use to say that [I can’t because] people are always moving [the gate]? Yes, but that’s the biggest and easiest target. You can’t say certain words, whatever they are, about groups. So what? The accuracy of your observation has to be 100 times finer than that just to be a comedian… So I don’t think, as I said, the ‘extreme left’ has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy. I’m taking that back now, officially.”

Elsewhere on the podcast, Seinfeld pushed back against claims that he said he would never perform at colleges because of students wanting political correctness. “First of all, I never said it, but if you think I said it, it’s not true. I play colleges all the time,” he said. “I have no problem with kids, performing for them. I was just at the University of Indiana, Kentucky, we did UT — I do colleges all the time.”