Jerry Seinfeld’s show at the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, Australia was interrupted by at least one pro-Palestine protester this weekend. The comedian, who has had several shows interrupted by protesters in recent weeks and has been an outspoken supporter of Israel during the ongoing war, riffed with the interrupter, “You’re back! They’re back! The protesters are back. I missed you!”
“You’re not doing well,” he continued. “It’s so hard for you. You’ve got to… yes, listen. Dude, listen. Listen. Let me explain something. You and I are in the same business. We’re in the same business. Our business is to get people to see things the way we see it.”
“The problem is, you’re in the wrong place. Do you hear how well I’m doing? This is what you want. You want to do well like I am,” Seinfeld added, noting the warm response to his act from the crowd. “Look at the people here. You hear me? Look at what happened to you.”
“Because context is very important for your message,” he said. “For example, if I was going to do my little comedy show that I do, if I went to a Australian rules rugby game and I told this guy, if I said to this guy, ‘You check out, I’m going to do my comedy act here,’ I would get that same reaction.”
“I would get kicked out on my ass, because that’s not where I belong,” Seinfeld said. “I think you need to go back and tell whoever’s running your organization, ‘We just gave more money to a Jew.’ That cannot be a good plan for you. That’s not what you want. That’s the whole problem that… you’ve got to come up with a better plan.”
In an April episode of New Yorker’s Radio Hour, Seinfeld reflected on a perceived lack of comedies on TV. “It used to be, you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, ‘Oh, ‘Cheers’ is on. Oh, ‘MASH’ is on. Oh, ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ is on. ‘All in the Family’ is on,’” he said. “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 PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people,” he added.
His “Seinfeld” costar and later “Veep” star Julia Louis-Dreyfus later pushed back on the idea, noting that people are still making jokes and that someone complaining about political correctness is a red flag.
