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→ Jerry Seinfeld: PC culture is killing comedy
Jerry Seinfeld has decried “PC crap” for “killing comedy”, saying the “extreme-Left” is worrying so much about offending people that there are no funny shows anymore. The 70-year-old former star of namesake sitcom Seinfeld lamented that the days of M.A.S.H, Cheers and The Mary Tyler Moore Show were gone, suggesting that shows now had to go through “four or five rewrites” from groups whose job it was to make sure they didn’t offend people.
Seinfeld was on The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast talking about his new movie Unfrosted, a fictionalised comedy of the creation of the American toaster pastry Pop Tarts. But the conversation turned to the importance of humour when interviewer David Remnick asked how the “weight of the world”, referencing the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, affects comedy. Seinfeld replied that “nothing really affects comedy” and that “people always need it”. Let’s hope the sensitivity readers don’t catch wind of this interview…
→ Right-wingers’ latest plot revealed: making babies
Right wingers have allied themselves with the unlikeliest of villains, warns Politico: babies.
The far right is so obsessed with making babies, they just held a whole conference about it.
Behind the scenes at the first “NatalCon” ⬇️https://t.co/kLHHmetUNr
— POLITICO (@politico) April 28, 2024
“The far right is so obsessed with making babies, they just held a whole conference about it”, the outlet declares, some five months after the Natalist Conference in Austin, Texas. Some of the women attending the conference were themselves tending to babies, who babbled throughout presentations in an ominous portent to the future pronatalists want. “Natalism is often about more than raising birth rates […] for many in the room, the ultimate goal is a total social overhaul, a culture in which child-rearing is paramount,” the article claimed.
Pronatalists were quick to defend the conference as a non-political effort to address declining birth rates, which they view as a civilisational threat. Luckily for NatalCon, the article may have won them a new patron.
→ FT strikes AI deal
Earlier today, the Financial Times made a discreet announcement about a new partnership with OpenAI. The deal will allegedly “help improve” Chat GPT’s “usefulness by incorporating FT journalism, and collaborate on developing new AI products and features for FT readers”. In addition, ChatGPT users will be able to see “select attributed summaries, quotes and links to FT journalism in response to relevant queries”.
Might this deal also open the door to publishing AI-generated articles? While the press release makes no mention of it, the FT wouldn’t be the first outlet to take the plunge. Earlier this year, Sports Illustrated was roundly attacked for secretly publishing AI-generated stories — a symptom of the heavy cuts the magazine has had to make in recent years. And before its news division shuttered, BuzzFeed was also using AI to write “SEO-bait travel guides”, which the outlet claimed was merely an experiment to help test new ways for people to contribute content. For a $75-a-month subscription, FT readers may not be hugely impressed…
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Subscribe“For a $75-a-month subscription, FT readers may not be hugely impressed…”
Ha ha. A nice little sting in the tail. I doubt AI will ever be able to do that.
PC culture is killing more than just comedy. It’s basically modern Puritanism, Jonathan Edwards without the hellfire and brimstone religion. Like Puritanism, it thrives on contracting the bounds of acceptability, tightly regulating the social sphere, and publicly shaming and excommunicating anyone who challenges or questions the dogma. Like Puritanism, it stifles thought, narrows the mind, and slowly kills the soul. Comedy is always an early casualty of Puritanical movements. Puritanism is one of the oldest threads in American culture. It can be traced back well before the revolution and it has existed in different forms in different places almost continuously throughout history. I’m reminded of that “American Gothic” painting or the many portraits and photographs that it was based upon, those old black and white family photos that show families staring stone-faced at the camera like lifeless zombies. It’s an Americanism, and I feel some obligation to apologize to the world for exporting this nonsense. The PC pushers have no idea of course and would probably strenuously object to being compared to intolerant religious bigots, but it was never about the religion, even back then. It’s about how people have some deep need for controlling others and sanitizing their environment. I can’t say I understand it at all but it’s pervasive in America and always has been. Whether the excuse is God’s will or the injustice of systemic racism, the results are mostly the same. If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck…
It’s not just an American thing. Misters Stalin and Hitler were pretty good at stifling dissent and promoting propaganda, by a gunshot to the base of the skull no less.
I completely agree with you here, and in fact have come to respect previous generations a little more on the basis that they were almost certainly smarter than we usually give them credit for, but were just as prone as we are now to the irritating habit of a shouty, morally tyrannical minority taking control of what can be thought and said.
For all our technological marvels, we haven’t solved this problem yet.
…indeed, having people of the birthing persuasion confine their mothering proclivities to their personal reproductive realm, rather than every facet of society looms as a monumental task
Puritanism began in England in the 16th century, long before America even existed. So I’m not sure how you manage to take credit for it; one can only conclude American exceptionalism holds no bounds. But please do have it, no one else wants it.
Pronatalists are a problem now? Ugh
Everything the ‘far right’ do is a threat.
Don’t make kids; threat.
Make more kids; threat.
Well to emphasise giving birth seem a tad transphobic . People might doubt that transwomen are actually women . Suspect that’s one issue .
“The far right is so obsessed with making babies, they just held a whole conference about it”
I’m pretty sure there are easier, more direct and more fun ways of demonstrating an obsession with making babies.
Love Jerry Seinfeld. I watch Seinfeld reruns all the time, just makes me happy. But I know so many episodes would be axed now. At least we have Ricky Gervais continuing to offend everyone – blessing that he is!!!
It’s certainly true, in my observation, that Democrats have no sense of humour.
One more time: US Liberals are not the ‘extreme left’. They are Centrists, usually members of the Professional & Managerial Class (PMC) with their younger portions playing with a new stick their elders handed to them.
Ask the beggars what should be done with the means of production and in the meantime stop smearing the likes of me by association with those tools.
I think it was a First Things writer who said that her fifth child was like a neck tattoo against the culture of death. Having lots of children is indeed a rebellion against the spirit of the age. Catholics and Evangelicals know this.
Once I retire I’m planning on being “out’ as an antiprogressive. Many of us GenX types were young punks. Long live John Lydon!
Old and past-it comedian shouts at the clouds saying everything was better in his day and these pesky kids have ruined everything.
Nobody listens or cares.
Everything certainly was better in his day, when people could survive ‘offense’ by simply not watching things they didn’t like … instead of shrieking for sensitivity readers to gut everything of any edge whatsoever in order to cater to the ever increasing number of special interest groups requiring their feelings to be babysat.
Of course, they actively seek offence, because without much else to say for themselves they would fall silent without it. God knows, a narcissist could hardly bear that.
But hey, you’re welcome to your opinion. Nobody listens or cares.