Jerry Seinfeld regrets blaming 'extreme left' for killing comedy: 'You can't say certain words… so what?'

The "Seinfeld" star added that he "did not know that people care what comedians say."

Jerry Seinfeld is letting the woke mob off the hook.

During a recent podcast appearance, the Seinfeld and Bee Movie star walked back claims he made earlier this year about political correctness ruining the comedy landscape. "I did an interview with The New Yorker, and I said that the extreme left has suppressed the art of comedy," Seinfeld told Tom Papa on the latest episode of Breaking Bread. "I did say that. That's not true. It's not true."

Seinfeld was referring to an April interview with The New Yorker Radio Hour Podcast, wherein he explained why he thought stand-up comedy is more popular than network sitcoms nowadays. "This is the result of the extreme left, and PC crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people," he said at the time. "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. But when you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups, there goes your comedy."

But the comedian disavowed those comments while speaking with Papa. "If you're Lindsey Vonn, if you're a champion skier, you can put the gates anywhere you want on the mountain. She's going to make the gate. That's comedy," Seinfeld explained. "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? How do I make the gate and get down the hill the way I want to?"

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He continued, "Does culture change and are there things I used to say that I can't say that everybody is always moving? Yeah, but that's the biggest, easiest target. You can't say certain words, you know, whatever they are, about groups — so what?"

Seinfeld said comedians must strive for more precise cultural commentary than just making basic claims about large groups of people. "The accuracy of your observation has to be 100 times finer than that, to just be a comedian, to just understand," he said. "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. They have not."

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Seinfeld also clarified his comments about masculinity from the same time period. "I miss a dominant masculinity. Yeah, I get the toxic, I get it, I get it. But still, I like a real man," he told  Bari Weiss on her show Honestly in May.

"That was another thing I said, that I missed dominant masculinity, which is probably not the greatest phrase for what I was really saying was I miss big personalities," he clarified to Papa. "That's what I missed, and I mentioned Muhammad Ali and Sean Connery and Howard Cosell. You know. I mean, because these were all the people I wanted to be like as a kid. I wanted to be, I wanted to have that kind of authority and style. It was really a style thing."

Seinfeld said he does miss more bold, individualistic figures dominating pop culture. "Everyone conforms more to not offend. I miss George C. Scott," he lamented. "I miss these gigantic personalities, just because I thought it was a great flavor in my youth. That made a headline the next day that I was calling for a toxic masculinity to come back, which obviously, we don't need the toxic part, but the big personalities are fun.”

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The Unfrosted director noted that he hadn't been holding his tongue as he promoted his Pop-Tarts movie because he didn't think anyone was listening. "This was all press I was doing for Unfrosted — I did a bunch of it and I enjoyed all of it," he said. "I did not know that people care what comedians say. That literally came as news to me. Who the hell cares what a comedian thinks about anything? So the fun thing about being a comedian, I thought, 'Say whatever the hell you want. No one's listening, no one cares. And if it gets a laugh, you get to do another set tomorrow night.'"

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Watch the full conversation between Seinfeld and Papa above.

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