The day Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover was revealed, I made a joke about it. It wasn’t anything particularly crude or shocking, and it didn’t go any further than the mildest joke you would have seen on Twitter that day, but I still fielded text messages chewing me out for being “insensitive” and “transphobic” by chittering outrage squirrels who don’t understand what phobic means.
People in general have accepted that for the most part, comedy comes from a dark place. It’s the knee-jerk reaction that you repress, but that the comedian packages and splatters on the wall for the world to see. That being said, even the world’s most popular creative talents are getting the sense that, when it comes to comedy, the general population would much rather not laugh at the expense of the bubble-wrapped classes that the left so jealously shields from criticism.
On last night’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, comedian Jerry Seinfeld joined Seth and New Yorker editor David Remnick and unleashed on today’s PC culture that can’t even handle a lighthearted joke about social media that happens to have the word “gay” in it.
Watch:
From USA Today:
Meyers asked where comedians like Seinfeld have to draw the line, and Seinfeld bemoaned the ever-changing parameters of the “line,” especially when it comes to making gay jokes. “They keep moving the lines in for no reason,” Seinfeld said.He then described a joke he recently made about how people always need to justify how they’re always on their cell phone.”I say, ‘They don’t seem very important, the way you scroll through (your phone) like a gay French king.’ … I did this line recently in front of an audience, and comedy is where you can feel an opinion. And they thought, ‘What do you mean gay? What are you talking about gay? What are you doing? What do you mean?’ And I thought, ‘Are you kidding me?'”
It’s not just the general PC crowd that has Seinfeld down. Earlier this week, he made waves after a radio interview in which he explained that college crowds have become all but impossible to play to. One supremely offended student even penned a response to Seinfeld’s sins, proving once and for all that Seinfeld is right, and social justice warriors have absolutely no sense of humor. (Click here to expose yourself to a college student using phrases like “appropriately sexist.”)
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Seinfeld’s rant is one of the more important recent developments in pop culture. It’s not enough for scrappy bloggers to rail against the PC establishment; we need big voices to fill the void, to stand up and say no to the outraged classes who are so dedicated to the idea of being outraged that they’ll move the goalposts in an effort to convince everyone that if they’re not offended, they should be.
Saying no is all we can do—but if I can make people laugh while doing it, that’ll make the whole ordeal a lot more tolerable.
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