Julia Louis-Dreyfus, 63, slammed Jerry Seinfeld during an interview with The New York Times over the weekend after Seinfeld noted that the political Left has killed television comedies.
Dreyfus claimed that the show the two starred in, “Seinfeld,” could “probably not” be made today because “it’s hard to get anything different recognized” and “everyone’s sort of running scared.”
When asked about the remarks Seinfeld made about political correctness killing comedy, Dreyfus claimed that a lot of comedy “bits and pieces … don’t age well.”
Dreyfus, a staunch Democrat activist, said that she thinks having “an antenna about sensitivities is not a bad thing.”
“When I hear people starting to complain about political correctness — and I understand why people might push back on it — but to me that’s a red flag, because it sometimes means something else,” she claimed. “I believe being aware of certain sensitivities is not a bad thing.”
“My feeling about all of it is that political correctness, insofar as it equates to tolerance, is obviously fantastic,” she later added. “And of course I reserve the right to boo anyone who says anything that offends me, while also respecting their right to free speech, right?”
Seinfeld said in an interview in late April that the American people “need” to be able to come home from work and have comedy on television.
“They need it so badly and they don’t get it,” he said. “It used to be, you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, “Oh, ‘Cheers’ is on. Oh, ‘M*A*S*H’ is on. Oh, ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ is on. ‘All in the Family’ is on.” You just expected, there’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight.”
“Well, guess what — where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people,” he continued. “Now they’re going to see stand up comics because we are not policed by anyone. The audience polices us. We know when we’re off track. We know instantly and we adjust to it instantly.”
“But when you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups — ‘Here’s our thought about this joke,’” he added. “Well, that’s the end of your comedy.”
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