Jerry Seinfeld is one of the legends of the stand up comedy industry.
But Seinfeld thinks he went too far.
And now Jerry Seinfeld has apologized for making this brutal insult.
Jerry Seinfeld apologizes to Howard Stern
Seinfeld’s been in the news recently as he’s been on a media tour promoting his new Netflix movie Unfrosted, a fictional account of a breakfast cereal war between Kellogg’s and Post as they fought to become the first to get the pop tart to market.
Seinfeld upset snowflakes everywhere when he told the New Yorker that the Left ruined comedy.
“This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people,” Seinfeld said of script writers now needed to sanitize their work to make sure no one with preferred pronouns wouldn’t rage post on social media after seeing their work.
“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…” Seinfeld added.
Seinfeld brushed off the backlash to that controversy as the whining of an online outrage mob that needed a new target for their daily two minutes of online hate.
But Seinfeld did feel bad about comments he made about shock jock king Howard Stern.
“I really feel bad for what I said about my friend Howard Stern in a conversation with David Spade and Dana Carvey, talking about the glut of comedy podcasts,” Seinfeld told the New York Post’s Page 6.
“I meant to say he must feel surrounded, but I said ‘outflanked,’ which sounded terrible and insulting. And of course, none of these little shows are any threat to his giant show. Anyway, it was bad and I’m sorry, Howie. I still love you. Please forgive me,” Seinfeld concluded.
What Seinfeld said about Stern
In an episode of Dana Carvey and David Spade’s Fly on the Wall podcast, Seinfeld discussed how the business of stand-up comedy evolved in the podcast era.
Podcasts are really just radio shows streamed online.
And Seinfeld explained that Stern invented the shock jock radio show in the 1980s but that the current crop of comedy podcasts took the genre to the next level.
“Howard Stern invented this, right? But we’re better than him now,” Seinfeld stated. “Howard is interesting. Howard is a great interviewer, but you know, comedy chops, I mean, can we speak candidly?”
In many ways, Stern is now a parody of himself.
For a time, Stern could claim to be “the king of all media” without irony, as his show grew massively as a result of a subversive interview style that got celebrities to let their guard down and reveal details of their most intimate experiences.
The show also challenged authority as Stern routinely positioned himself as the voice of the people against the stuffy corporate suits who ran radio.
But, nowadays, Stern is the voice of the liberal establishment.
Stern refused to leave his Long Island compound during COVID, and his recent interview with Joe Biden was something the Howard Stern of the 1980s would have described in graphic and crude terms.
Spade and Carvey were split on Seinfeld’s analysis of Stern’s current place in the comedy world.
“Sure,” Spade said in agreement whereas Carvey disagreed saying “No.”
Seinfeld pushed further saying stand up comics getting into the podcast space made Stern obsolete.
“Yeah, they’re all great, but let’s face it, he’s been outflanked,” Seinfeld stated. “This is the best [podcast] on the air. Because you guys play nice together, it’s smooth, you’re not jumping on each other, which is annoying to listen to.”
Seinfeld’s comments were harsh.
They weren’t wrong.
But Seinfeld also had no reason to start a fight and showed grace.
