Jerry Seinfeld says the ‘extreme left’ has ruined sitcoms with ‘PC crap’

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld believes people will “always need” comedy but the current political culture has made things difficult.

In a recent interview with The New Yorker titled “The Scholar of Comedy,” Seinfeld said that the lack of comedies on television is a result of “the extreme left and P.C. crap.”

“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,” he told the outlet. “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 went on to say that fellow comedian Larry David was “grandfathered in” and that’s why he’s allowed to make what some might call off-colored remarks in the modern era.

“He’s old enough so that— ‘I don’t have to observe those rules, because I started before you made those rules,’” Seinfeld said, adding that “if Larry was 35, he couldn’t get away with” some of the jokes he’s known for.

Seinfeld noted that he believes television networks are “not smart enough” to figure out how to thread the needle between comedy and political correctness.

“HBO knows that’s what people come here for, but they’re not smart enough to figure out, ‘How do we do this now? Do we take the heat, or just not be funny?’ And what they’ve decided to be is, ‘Well, we’re not going to do comedies anymore,’” he said. “There were no sitcoms picked up on the fall season of all four networks. Not one. No new sitcoms.”

While Seinfeld said that no new sitcom shows were picked up this fall season, it should be noted that CBS is set to premiere Damon Wayans and son Damon Wayans Jr.’s sitcom “Poppa’s House“ later this year. While not a typical “taped in front of a live audience” sitcom, the network is also developing a “Young Sheldon” spinoff series.

He said the current culture is “too hard” for comedies and that today, he wouldn’t have done some of the jokes that made it into his famous sitcom “Seinfeld.”

“We’d come up with another joke. They move the gates like in the slalom (in skiing),” he said. “Culture — the gates are moving. Your job is to be agile and clever enough that, wherever they put the gates, I’m going to make the gate.”

Seinfeld said that stand-up comedians have it a little easier, as they can react to an audience in real time and have less oversight.

“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,” he said. “But 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.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com