How Jerry Seinfeld Bombed His Legacy (with Emma Vigeland)

what's the deal with high school girls i'm not allowed to date them anymore palestine might not exist to me and you know what else doesn't the age of consent that's your seinfeld yeah it really it sounds like a golden girl i i was watching so much seinfeld over the last week and i feel like because he's not funny a lot of his quote-unquote comedy is just like instructing people to laugh based on the pitch of his voice exactly i mean it's it's hand-holding your way to a laugh it's kind of like when there are sitcoms that have laugh tracks for example although i do love seinfeld and i'm sure we'll be talking about this at some point it is a great show the man jerry seinfeld though is not so great jerry seinfeld is worth 1.1 billion dollars he is the richest comedian in the world i'm already annoyed i'm already annoyed because you know who the richest comedian in the world should be meg stalter honestly jerry seinfeld is the richest comedian in the world because for 10 years of his life three decades ago he played a semi-finalist fictionalized version of himself in the sitcom seinfeld which was written by someone funnier than him who also has better politics but let me not get ahead of myself if you were sentient in america in the 90s jerry seinfeld was basically a pillar of culture he was a pillar of home life seinfeld was routinely the most watched show in the united states and its series finale in 1998 drew 76 million viewers or a quarter of the u.s population at the time in that final season of seinfeld jerry was making one million dollars per episode which is two million dollars today adjusted for inflation i was born the year seinfeld ended and by the time i could watch tv we kind of moved on from seinfeld i mean a lot of people haven't i'm sure a lot of people would disagree with that but like in my house we just we didn't have seinfeld playing i wasn't really a big seinfeld guy but nevertheless jerry has always been a supremely famous person in my head and i think because of that i've always assumed that he's been working on a lot of things that i just don't watch because of like my taste preferences or whatever but he hasn't the most notable thing that jerry seinfeld has done since seinfeld is voice act as barry in the b movie which to be clear is notable there's a lot of things to criticize jerry seinfeld for but for me b movie will not be the same as the b movie will not be one of them except for its promotional tour we'll get to that nevertheless the magnitude of jerry seinfeld's 1990s celebrity is unfortunately for him no match for the person that he has become always has been i don't know today we're gonna look at the evidence and let you decide and to do that welcome back my dear friend emma vigeland always great to be with you matt bernstein my lovely lovely friend emma this episode is entirely about you and i'm so excited to be here with you and i'm so excited to be here with you and i'm so excited to be here with you and i'm so excited to be here with you entirely uh product of your texting me saying that we should do a jerry seinfeld episode i know that he has been pissing you off lately and the further i uh dug into the archives the we're in for a ride today i'm a huge fan of kerbier enthusiasm and larry davids and we will be talking about him as well but seinfeld just went viral recently i'm a huge nicks fan and he was at the game and when i think we're about to play this but he was asked about palestine and of course decides to be an absolute genocidal freak asshole and uh he has been that way for quite a while he is a rabid zionist and there's also stuff in his past that raise eyebrows that are not just connected to his politics so it's fascinating to look at somebody like this who is such a fixture of so many people's lives as you say to see really how rotten that core is and how he is one of the you know public faces in hollywood who is uh dehumanizing palestinians so uh regularly in coordination with the israeli government first things first uh as you mentioned jerry seinfeld recently attended one of the nba finals games at madison square garden and as he was leaving a tiktoker like man on the street soundbite type of guy i don't know there's so many of these guys you can't even walk through new york city anymore without someone running up to you with a microphone being like what's your income and what's your rent but this guy was doing some real journalism and he ran up to jerry seinfeld and the following transpired oh jerry what up seinfeld what up can we get a free palestine can we get a free palestine come on give me some free palestine it doesn't exist there you have it that is the position of pretty much everybody who still calls themselves a zionist but the fact that this immensely wealthy man took the time to laugh in this guy's face as a genocide is being committed to say that palestine doesn't exist an explicitly genocidal statement in and of itself it's just like keep walking dude but you can't because you're a fanatic i've known jerry seinfeld is a zionist he and his wife jessica have been doing israel advocacy for a long time but even with that in mind this was kind of a shock to the system for me the three words palestine doesn't exist and i think you're right that this is basically the mainstream zionist belief at this point because the movement has become so nakedly far right and genocidal however i do think it's worth unpacking for a second here we get we get about zero minutes into like seinfeld's life chronology and i'm like let's start unpacking sorry this is a leftist podcast you know back in the day when i think liberal zionism was still considered by many to be a tenable ideology you had kind of like the two-state solution people think about kamala's 2024 campaign run and what her party line was at the point which was like you know we want uh safety and security for israelis and safety and security for palestinians and i think there's a point that jerry seinfeld would have you know said i mean he supported kamala yeah and and joe biden and you know he's he's always kind of been an anti-trump guy don't know if that's still the case but that perspective seems to really have collapsed right and i think that anybody who hasn't gotten off the liberal zionist train at this point right now is complicit in this viewpoint that is based in erasure and it's also not theoretical erasure i think if you were saying this prior to the genocide of course when liberal zionism was a little bit more digestible for people and was a fairly mainstream movement it was a fairly mainstream movement and it was a fairly mainstream opinion it would be one thing but for us to be two and a half years into the act of genocide of the palestinian people to add to that chorus and to add to the bloodshed by contributing to the perception of erasure and saying that an entire people doesn't exist as they're being exterminated i mean what else can you call that except to be almost psychopathic and this is also i mean you have a lot of these like liberals who are like you know they're like you know they're like you know they're like you know they're like you know they're like you know they're like you know zionist figures in the democratic party still being like i mean even and love to bernie sanders but he still does this sometimes where he'll be like oh this is netanyahu's far-right government of israel and they'll kind of pin these like outwardly genocidal ideologies on netanyahu on ben gevier on smotrich but here's jerry seinfeld saying something as genocidal as ben gevier tweets on a random tuesday right i do not think that we should be catering the democratic party to the whims of these individuals just go vote for republicans if this is your pet issue but the reality is is that the party has no future and we don't have the ability to fight fascism if we can't stand up against genocide as tanahasi coates has said so eloquently in that we also the party has become so narrowed given this is such an aside i won't get into it but the active pursuing of affluent suburbanites in the coalition that has been a strategy of the democrats since 2016 that's why they're always going after the mythical republican that's leaving the party for them they have narrowed the party and a lot of working class voters have left narrowing it further just to appease wealthy zionist donors and make sure that guys like jerry seinfeld feel like they can still be woke and uh enjoy barack obama's like netflix series and stuff like that give me a break they should not be in the party they're not welcome here they are they should not be in the party they should not be in the party they should not be in the contributing to fascism because they are neutering the only opposition party that is exists in the country right now whether we like it or not i also just think a lot of people would hear those words palestine doesn't exist and it's like whoa that's really extreme like that's very extreme like i said within the discourse in israel i don't think it is i think it's the mainstream but jerry seinfeld what you have to infer from him saying this to some random guy on the street knowing that he's being recorded is that he's surrounded by this he is surrounded by this rhetoric all day he has a 40 million dollar home in the hamptons with his wife jessica as well as a home on the upper east side of manhattan where they are integral in these very high society sort of upper echelon Zionist, specifically Zionist, often engage with lots of Zionist activism communities. But to me, it's so revealing as to how some of these social groups operate. The fact that he's saying that openly means that he has said very similar things, if not worse things, many times over in private. That should not be surprising to us. However, I do think that it is worth it lingering on this for a second to just think about what it means when you say Palestine doesn't exist right now, as you have the Greater Israel Project underway in practice, not just the genocide in Gaza, but the constant settler attacks and violence in the West Bank. That is actionable erasure as well. He's essentially saying that all of the even land that Palestinians have and have been forced into, the smaller and smaller parcels as more stolen from them, that even that doesn't belong to them. What happens if they choose not to leave? The answer is that they die. And the idea that Jerry Seinfeld, with all of his wealth and influence and power, still finds a way to justify his viewpoint of extermination from a place of victimhood is a level of psychosis that is, I think, a combination of wealth, of having so much wealth, which, you know, I've said this before, I think, on your show, like, it doesn't matter if you have to be a sociopath to become a billionaire or a billionaire makes you a sociopath, regardless, that amount of wealth removes you from shared humanity. So there's that piece of it that informs his rabid Zionism. But there's also the kind of cult-like devotion to an ethnostate that is as racist as segregationists were in the South that did not want to mix, mix with Black people. It's that ideology right now, but it's one that is kind of like has a national security infrastructure here in the United States, but also groups of very wealthy private donors that help further that project. Should we talk about how Jerry Seinfeld became Jerry Seinfeld? Let's. This isn't going to be like a super, super biographical episode about the entirety of Jerry Seinfeld's life and work, because he's been around for a while and he's done a lot, a lot of things in the public eye, and it would be very difficult to cover all of them in the detail that some of you might desire. So I want to focus on a few things thematically throughout the episode to show how I think Jerry Seinfeld has just become so divorced from reality and the human condition to the point where it becomes very hard to stay in the good graces of people, no matter how famous or beloved he once was. Jerry Seinfeld was born in Brooklyn, in 1954, to a nice Jewish family. His dad was a sign painter who fought in World War II. I think that's quaint. He grew up, however, on Long Island in Massapequa as a 16-year-old. I don't know if you knew this. Jerry Seinfeld volunteered on a kibbutz in Israel, which is basically like a socialist-adjacent organized commune, which in the early days of Israel, life was sort of centered around these kibbutzim. I did not know that. It does not surprise me. I mean, I guess it's better than volunteering to fight in the IDF. Yes. I was wondering when I was seeing some of the more extreme pro-Israel stuff that Jerry Seinfeld has been saying, I was like, where did this come from? But that's kind of a dumb question for me to ask because I grew up, you know, in a synagogue with like the maps of Israel on the wall and you label the different parts and you know where Tel Aviv is and, you know, they, of course, indoctrinate and Jewish American life for you to feel like Israel is your second home and I could have only imagined that that was probably like times a thousand in Jerry Seinfeld's house given that like his dad was a Jew who like fought in World War II and that they were probably like, Jerry, like you're going to spend, you're a child and you're going to spend a summer in Israel because like, you know, you could have died in the Holocaust and this is where you're going to go to like not die in the next Holocaust or something. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I can understand that perspective. You got to wonder what the formative experience was for Jerry though, on that, on that kibbutz. Maybe, you know, he got his first BJ on that trip or something and that's why he's a Zionist to this day. I mean, no one ever knows how these formative memories come to be. Do you know the next time that he would return to Israel? No. Promoting the B movie. It was literally, Jerry Seinfeld went when he was 16, went his whole life without returning to Israel and then in like 2007, he was promoting the B movie. I was going to say this till later, but I can't help myself. If you scroll down in the outline and I'm going to throw this image on the screen, there's images of him doing press for the B movie in Israel. You see where the B movie is in Hebrew? It's very bizarre. It's very bizarre. Oh my gosh. I mean, as if they couldn't get the picture with B movie being the title, we've got to make sure this is in Hebrew in Israel. It's kind of self-explanatory. It's very strange. Also, I was looking into whether or not he went on like a truly like international tour to promote the B movie and he didn't. I think he did like a stop in Australia and a stop in Israel. As one does. Anyway, Jerry goes to college. He goes to a New York State school. He returns back to New York City where he tries his hand at open mic nights. This is in like the latter half of the 70s. And then his first, kind of breakthrough gig was he was a recurring guest on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and also had a recurring guest spot on Letterman. I don't know if you're familiar with any of this. I'm not. I start in the sitcom days. Well, so then comes the sitcom in 1988, Seinfeld and Larry David get together to create the sitcom that would become Seinfeld, which stars Jerry Seinfeld as a fictionalized version of himself alongside his three friends played by, of course, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards as they gallivant around New York City. Larry David was the head writer of Seinfeld and the showrunner for the first seven seasons out of the total nine seasons. Notably, Jerry Seinfeld only has writing credits on a total of 17 out of the 180 episodes of Seinfeld. Just saying. Just saying. All right, Emma, talk about Seinfeld because you're, you're, this is way more a part of your life than mine. Yeah, I mean, I love Seinfeld, of course. Everybody loves Seinfeld. I love Curb Your Enthusiasm more. I think that its unscripted nature is more fun and Larry is even more himself and it's more Larry, less pressure to fit into kind of a sitcom format. And frankly, Jerry Seinfeld in Seinfeld is the least interesting part of the show and the least interesting cast is the cast member, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is phenomenal and you know, hot as hell in that show. She's just killing it. She's hilarious. - And remains hot, by the way. - Yes, God, I mean. - And not only hot, but booked. Not everyone can say the same. - And by the way, Julia Louis-Dreyfus grew up really rich too. So she, it's not like Jerry is wealthy now so he doesn't need to work, but she never needed to work. She just did it for the love of the game and that's why we stan her. But Jason Alexander is great as the kind of Larry style character, of course, of George and Michael Richards, despite, of course, his deep racism. Kramer's a really hilarious character. But Jerry is the weakest part of the show. And I think that you can see how it really was Larry's brilliance that carried the show. One, in just how phenomenal Curb Your Enthusiasm is and two, how the show had a notable decline after Larry was like, "I'm out." - And how all of this stuff that Jerry has done since then, Sans B movie, putting respect on its name, is not good. Feel free to sound off in the comments if you disagree. But I was consuming so much Jerry Seinfeld in the last week and a half because I was like, I need a reasonably good handle on this to talk about it on a podcast. And I was like, my God, this is like pulling teeth. - You know, he makes a lot of money as a standup because he has enormous name recognition. - Yes. - His standup to me though is the kind of toothless funhouse mirror version of what Larry does, which is like, it's observational humor, I guess, but there's no teeth to it. I mean, Curb takes risks. Curb can be offensive. Curb can touch topics that might piss some people off. But what Jerry's standup is about is about appealing to everybody at all times. And I guess good comedy does that to a degree. And I'm not here to police comedy, right? Just 'cause I'm a podcaster, even though I guess that's the Joe Rogan experience model. But like, you know, it's so anodyne that I find the standup to be kind of boring. And I feel like without the edge that Larry provides, you can kind of see that get exposed. - I also think what you just said about Jerry Seinfeld's name recognition in relation to how much money he makes off of touring is so, so significant because I think in Jerry Seinfeld's mind He is one of the most profitable touring comedians today because he's so funny but it is because he is a nostalgia act yeah and what people are coming to see is like effectively like a meet and greet type of thing spend time in the same room as the guy that you loved in the 90s i watched a lot of seinfeld preparing for this i enjoyed it i enjoyed it i blocked out all the stuff i know about jerry seinfeld now and i enjoyed it and then i started watching basically everything he's done since seinfeld except for b movie and i was like oh this sucks but you know that you're listening and watching seinfeld so i guess that enhances the experience a little bit but not enough to make me laugh right and dude your last name is literally the title of the sitcom it doesn't get more name recognition than that there is one episode of seinfeld that i found fascinating and kind of instructive it's called the cigar store indian this is commonly named as like one of the most offensive episodes of seinfeld and it is but the plot revolves around seinfeld trying to woo this young woman who he wants to be his girlfriend not that young she's an adult woman not always the case it's a fictionalized version of him it's not exactly him he you know the real life guys going after teens yeah it's fictional it's fictionalized he goes for adults in this right right right but she is native american she's of native american heritage which he does not realize and he he basically shows up with this big wooden offensive statue of a native american you know he does all these like racist anti-native thing like he's mocking and of course calling them indians the whole time and then the sort of episode plays out and he just can't stop saying offensive things towards all groups of people and it's kind of like people are so sensitive these days uh-huh yes and i find it fascinating because that is the the position of like everyone's so woke you can't even say anything anymore is a position that jerry seinfeld would take up unironically later in his life the way that larry writes i think both jerry to less of an extent definitely george but but jerry often is that they're the asshole in the situation it is very interesting that he would unironically be so anti-woke uh later in life but what is not shocking to me is that seinfeld even in the fictionalized uh version of the show is insensitive to people who have been colonized the other thing i want to uh to mention about seinfeld before we get into the teenager of it all is just how much goddamn money he continues to make from this show which by the way i don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that he's making all this money from but like i think artists today should continue to make royalties in a way that right they are often robbed of in the streaming model but i do think it has changed the way that he engages or disengages with the world around him i mean he makes so so so so so so much money and has been so rich for so long so he was adjusted for inflation making like two million dollars an episode in the final season alone that's one of the nine seasons but also i have to fact check this but i believe he continues to make around a hundred thousand dollars a season million dollars a year today off of just like residuals from the show editing matt here it's actually reportedly between 40 and 60 million dollars a year depending on what source you look at gosh it's honestly criminal what streaming has done to actors in this country and look i know seinfeld residuals for that kind of show it's going to far exceed anything but we've really missed the mark on paying these actors that are entertaining us uh you know with big tech to get around that kind of thing i would like to take a quick break from the show to give a shout out to our friends at nord vpn for sponsoring this episode i recently did something very exciting i was in a documentary about elon musk for the bbc it is called the elon musk show i believe the episode that i'm in is called the next chapter now i was very excited to watch this and it did just that i was very excited to watch this and it did just that i was very excited to watch this the next chapter now i was very excited to watch this and it did just that i was very excited to watch this and it did just that i was very excited to watch this and it did just come out on the bbc but here's the thing with the bbc you need to be in the uk to watch bbc iplayer but do you really not if you have nord vpn nord vpn is this amazing tool with lots of amazing features and one of them perhaps my favorite is that you can access the internet as if you were from anywhere so if there's a show you want to watch really any content that is geo-restricted using nord vpn will allow you to essentially identify as part of the region that has the content you're trying to access nord vpn has so many benefits you can access the internet from anywhere it encrypts your internet connection so nobody can access your private information while you're using a public wi-fi network right now nord vpn is offering listeners of a bit fruity a huge discount and four free months on any two-year plan there is also a 30-day money-back guarantee so you don't have to worry about it if you're not satisfied you can check it all out and grab that big discount at nord vpn.com slash fruity that is nord vpn.com slash fruity i would like to also give a shout out to balessa for sponsoring today's episode balessa is a by women for everybody spicy toy company that has been supporting my work over on instagram and now on the podcast for a very long time and i'm really excited to be able to share with you guys a little bit about and this week balessa is supporting you because we are giving away free rose toys to every listener of this podcast yes all of you keep on listening you might not know balessa by name but you have almost definitely seen pictures and videos of their toys going viral around the internet on your social media feeds perhaps you've seen the air vibe their famous dual stimulation little red toy that comes in a very discreet case and it's a very popular toy and it's a very popular toy perfect for travel or you might be familiar or might want to be familiar with their whisper collection the first ever fully silent vibrators got a roommate don't need to worry about it this week we are treating you everyone who places an order through my link will get a free rose toy added to their order that is a free 99 value rose suction toy with every order all you have to do to get it you can find it in the description or head to bbvibes.com slash fruity that is bbvibes.com slash fruity thanks so much to balessa now let's get back to the episode so i know you've been waiting for it what's the deal with high school girl oh that wasn't good that wasn't good that was what's the deal with high school girls maybe that was a little i don't know you know i still think you're going for older girls you're going for older girls you're going for older girls more than you are going for seinfeld but you can't date him anymore i'm i honestly just love that you're attempting it some someone told me on instagram that if i do this episode i have to it's a requirement in 1993 jerry seinfeld was in his fifth season of filming seinfeld and he at the time publishes this book called sign language do you get it do you get it sign language that's my jerry emma has read excerpts from this book and so graciously clipped one emma do you want to read this excerpt sure um we had a viewer that wrote in about this and she i think found this book at some sort of secondhand store and was getting a real kick out of how awful it was you can go to page 133 if you want to get a copy of sign language yourself here we go my question about women's gymnastics is simple are we not supposed to be looking at their little rear ends while they're jumping around all over the place because i think that's pretty much all i've been doing and i don't know if it's wrong i mean if it's wrong i'll stop but no one's ever said anything about it the announcer never goes in judging this event they throw out the high score the low score and stop staring at their little rear ends they really do have the most unbelievable rear ends in the world and it's when i think of women's gymnastics i'm thinking win win what i think we have a winner right here you know how race car drivers and tennis players get paid to have a company name sewn onto their uniforms can you imagine how much money these women gymnasts could make if they sold advertising in the right spot on that little leotard all i would have to say is diet slice on one chic and she's set for life the greatest ad space ever we guarantee people will see your man in the message your product will be a household name in the qualifying round now um he says women there yeah yeah but given the history that we're going to get into what age are gymnasts typically yes their little rear ends how many times are you going to say it bro i think he said a little three times in in these three short paragraphs couldn't stop staring at their little rear ends this oh oh it's gross i feel dirty just reading it out loud. That's right. I mean, it really there's no word for it other than pedophilic, because we know that I think in gymnastics, in Olympic gymnastics, which I am a big fan of personally, the age to become what is, quote unquote, a senior gymnast where you're eligible for like senior Olympics, it's either 15 or 16. And that's also, by the way, they've bumped up that age, it used to be younger. And we know that historically, in the sport of gymnastics, that is around the age that women and girls tend to compete at their highest level, which is why countries send oftentimes the youngest possible athletes to the Olympics, which actually, Simone Biles and Team USA has done a great deal just in the last decade, to challenge the notion that they should all be that young. But that was not the case in 1993, when Jerry Seinfeld publishes this book. And so we just have to acknowledge that he is no doubt writing about girls. Yes. And the just sheer number of times that he said the word little, I think should be an indication. What kind of horndog is thinking about this that aggressively, and like seemingly unable to get off of this? I mean, these honestly, these thoughts that he's writing down are so half baked and creepy. It's just I don't know which to be more offended at which part to be more offended about how lazy and stupid the thoughts are or how gross he is. Yeah, and how unfunny it is. Right. It's like there's not even there's not even a moment in there as with so much of his quote unquote, comedy and comedic writing. There's not even a moment where you're like, Oh, I'm laughing. Oh, but I shouldn't be laughing. That's bad. No, we're not even laughing. What the joke is that brands should advertise on children's butts. That's the joke. I don't know the laughter has, I guess, escaped the studio. But anyway, the same year that Seinfeld publishes sign language, 38 year old Jerry Seinfeld is walking in Central Park in New York City, when he eyes a 17 year old Shoshana Lonstein, a high school student. Now, what are the logistics of this? You know, like, what is a nearly 40 year old man doing approaching a high school student in a park? Like, how does that work? How does that actually happen? On some tellings of this story, Seinfeld noticed Shoshana sitting on a park bench and decided to approach her. Other sources I've read say that Shoshana rollerbladed past him. And he stopped her, which I find to be, I don't know, like kind of particularly disturbing, just because I associate rollerblading as such like a, you know, a children's activity. Right, right. In any case, from an excerpt in People magazine, March 1994, quote, Real life, Jerry Seinfeld, comedian, TV star and life observer, which aren't we all? It's like how Riley Gaines is called former swimmer. It's like, yeah, I'm a former swimmer, too, bitch. Anyway. Also, human being was strolling through Central Park one day in May 1993, when he spotted a stranger he now calls the most wonderful girl in the world. Seinfeld, then 38, sallied over, made small talk and went away with the text. Telephone number of Shoshana Lonstein, then 17 and a senior at the private Nightingale Bamford School in Manhattan. So she was in high school. Yeah, she was applying to college and getting ready for prom. And Jerry Seinfeld was in the fifth season of his show, one of the most famous celebrities in America. Exactly. Like, just to pause for a second on that, it's already an enormous power imbalance. If Jerry Gaines is the most famous celebrity in the world, what's the point of him being at the coffee shop next door given his age and given her age? That is why sleeping with minors is wrong because of the power imbalance, because these are children with developing brains. Now look at the power imbalance of a random high schooler and one of the most famous people in the country right now or then on the most popular sitcom in the country at the height of its popularity with his money, with his fame, all of that. How coercive and prejudicial is that? How predatory that relationship is when you keep that in mind. Even as you say it, it really strikes me that this isn't a bigger story constantly surrounding Jerry Seinfeld and not relegated to like the corners of Reddit where people are like, didn't Jerry do something weird? Jerry did. Indeed. Yes. And it's not like he approached her and didn't know, oh, gosh, she looked so much older and then found out that she was 17 and backed off. As we're about to learn, that's not what he did. Nope, that's not what happened at all. So she was a senior at Nightingale Bamford School, which is an all girls K through 12 private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She was, of course, as high schoolers do, living with her parents. Now they begin dating and I hesitate to even call it dating, but, you know, walk with me here. They begin dating and the New York Daily News publishes an article titled High School Sweetheart for TV's Jerry Seinfeld with all due credit to Jerry Seinfeld. To New York Daily News, calling her his high school sweetheart. The whole thing's insane, but that is a clever title. Yes. They wrote Seinfeld, whose people wouldn't call us back and Shoshana were spotted together at Tuesday's Knicks playoffs game. The Knicks constant presence in this episode. He vociferously denied that she was 17 on the Howard Stern show and he was almost right. She will be 18 tomorrow. Oh, you know, it's like they've been dating for like two years. Three weeks. She's like in high school. She has to go to school the next day and he took her courtside to a Knicks game and there's a photo of it. The fact that he would have to drop her off at her parents place at her parents place. The fact the idea that you can get past that or that that's something that you're OK with is so mind boggling to me. I mean, he was what he was 21 when she was born. He was able to drink. Yeah. Also, in that People magazine, March 1994 story, Jerry said, quote, I am not an idiot. Shoshana is a person, not an age. She's extremely bright. She's funny, sharp, very alert. We just get along. You can hear the click. That can apply to anyone, any child. She's very alert. This is the standard for which we talk about the people that we're dating. It's like also just Shoshana. Oh, no. Sorry. Sorry. I interrupted. No, I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. No, it's like she's funny, sharp, very alert. That's like what your rover cat sitter would be saying to you, giving you an update about how your cat is doing while you're away. Yes. That's how he's describing his girlfriend like a pet. Makes the hairs on the back of my neck. Yeah, because this is I mean, this is what every pedophile. Yes, could say. And oftentimes does say, are we dehumanizing her by pointing out that she's underage? Is that what you're saying? We're dehumanizing her. We're stripping her of her individuality by pointing out that she's a child that you are taking advantage of. I read every article about this that I could find. Jerry Seinfeld, around the time that he started dating Shoshana, did an interview with Playboy. And I would like. I would like to read an extended portion of that interview because he says some things that I really cannot get past. You know, I think it's easy in the age of the Internet, which all of this preceded to be like, oh, it was 1993. He was 40. He was 40. Anyway, do you want to be Seinfeld or Playboy? I'm going to be Playboy. OK, great. Sorry. Sorry. Thanks. I get to be this lovely gem of a human being. Sorry. It's all right. The tabloids had a field day with. One of your recent dates with a 17 year old. I was in a tabloid rocket to the moon. I'm telling you, that was too fun. That was so much fun. That was just absolutely hilarious to me. Excuse us. We need to get a pan to catch the dripping sarcasm. I guess I haven't quite adjusted to celebrity hood because it's still hard for me to believe that anyone gives a damn who the hell I go out with or what I do. So anyway, I met this girl, Shoshana. She's a very sweet girl and she's very pretty. I didn't know how old she was. I knew she wasn't 40. I took her to a basketball game and that was the whole thing. Did you meet her in the park like they say? Yeah, but the rest of it is all. Is she 18? She's 18 now. You took her to the basketball game and now the tabloids are calling you a cradle snatcher. Cradle snatcher. It was a wonderful article. I couldn't believe how nice they were about it. Nice. Everyone was saying I don't see anything wrong with it. If they like each other, my manager couldn't believe it. He said I'm bulletproof even in the tabloids. They had every chance. They had every chance to really stick the knife in and they didn't do it. They could have said anything. I'm taking advantage of her. She doesn't know what's going on. Her parents are upset. My mother wants to disown me. They could have made up anything. How did Shoshana feel about all the attention? Didn't bother her a bit. Kids today. The great thing is you can go out on a date and pick up a little babysitting money on the side. That pays for the pizza. She's a very nice girl. Hold on. Okay, okay. Can we pause here for a second? Because I almost stopped it before. Yeah. First of all, he lists all of the things what they could have said, which he fundamentally understands are legit. admit yes he's got to or maybe he he doesn't think there are legitimate critiques i think they're obviously legitimate critiques and my favorite is him feeling exonerated by the tabloids you know the tabloids that famously love women and girls the tabloids you know remember how kind they were to britney spears and lindsey lohan and like any woman that was struggling and in the 90s god they were even more feminist is the playboy writer in you picking up on my fucking sarcasm yes uh no i mean it's it's it's insane it made me mad it made me mad it's insane he's like all these people around me they could have said i was taking advantage of her they could have said she doesn't know what's going on they could have said her parents are upset which reportedly her parents were very upset and yeah none of this seems to bother him because people magazine wrote a relatively kind article which of course they did because you know people magazine wrote a relatively kind article which of course they did because people magazine wrote a relatively morally neutral entity when he jokes about the babysitting money thing and the pizza yeah can i just read that again can i just read that again the great thing says jerry seinfeld is you can go out on a date and pick up a little babysitting money on the side what he's saying there is that this is his girlfriend and the girlfriend's parents are paying him a babysitting wage to take care of her can we all this is why jerry seinfeld cannot get me into a legal issue for calling him a pedophile because he's admitting it right here right anyway let's continue playboy says what have your friends said about this it's really strange the reactions ran the absolute gamut from horrified to just busting buttons with pride that they know me guys i hadn't heard from in years called to say congratulations good for you women i know wouldn't even call me back my assistant punched me she saw me and literally punched me she was so mad it was reviled by women in their 30s and by jay leno leno leno was just terrified to him any potential public relations imbroglio any appearance of impropriety is the most terrifying thing in the world he was scared for me just out of concern as a friend by the way it makes total sense that leno and seinfeld are friends total hacks did he do anything in the monologue no he wouldn't never do anything like that but my mother was thrilled because shoshana is jewish and syrian my mother's syrian and all my aunts and uncles on the syrian side this is what they expect they figure 15 16 is the right age for a woman for me because that's the way they do it in syria they're going 18 she's a little over the hill but if you like her my women friends some of them were really hostile about it they didn't like it first of all they think i look for this like this was an ambition of mine but the fact is i don't meet that many women i like period so when i like someone i don't care about her race creed or national origin if i like her i don't care i don't discriminate if she's 18 if she's intelligent that's fine when i like someone i don't care about her race creed or national origin well those seem like fundamentally different things in a situation of dating than age his framing of someone who wouldn't date a child as like oh well do you also judge your partners based on race jerry fuck you right that's an immutable characteristic age is quite literally the opposite because you grow up and you grow out of being a child and you grow into being an adult you're always going to have your same race creed and national origin you know for the most part also did you notice how he decides to be kind of racist towards syrian people there in that response yeah yeah of course and that's a preview for the future and he feels safe clearly in this playboy environment he knows he can be a little bit of a dog and talk about this relationship in this manner but he ends saying there if she's 18 if she's intelligent that's fine she was not 18 so you're lying through your teeth it's like what do these two people even have to talk about she's like studying for finals and he's one of the most famous people in the world like exactly disgusting they go on to date for four years shoshana graduates from high school and she initially goes to george washington university for a year which is in washington dc but she transferred to ucla to be closer to jerry seinfeld the relationship ended in 1997 when she was 21 and he was 43 partially due to constant press scrutiny there are videos uh that tabloids shot of shoshana like over you know over fences and stuff of her like lounging by a pool in a bikini and talking about her body reflecting on the relationship and how their lives quote weren't dovetailing jerry said in the 1998 interview with vanity fair seinfeld has a general idea think dolphin a great body and a nice disposition of what he's looking for in a wife i don't want my wife to work he insists i've had enough career for both of us the wife needs to be fun loving let's drive cross-country let's go to corfu let's have fun he takes another sip people aren't as fun loving as you think they have all kinds of other things they have to do lonstein and seinfeld no longer speak she has moved back to new york where she is often photographed at club or restaurant openings she's moved back to new york where she is often photographed at club or restaurant openings i mean you can hear it in there what he's looking for in a wife first of all it's very dehumanizing to i mean that's not the part that's in quotes but the article seems to indicate that he said that he wants his wife to look like a dolphin or be like a dolphin okay as an animal and he doesn't want his wife to work because he wants to have kind of control and dominion over her which is much easier to have also when you're dating a child that's the power dynamic that we're talking about there where you're able to essentially groom her the idea that this girl transferred colleges to be closer to him and that this man who was 40 at the time allowed for a girl to uproot her life just to be closer to him says everything about his like inability to treat her with humanity i can't even imagine what that must have felt like after they broke up for a girl who probably had this like extremely you know traumatizing and also transformational relationship and the power imbalance was that pronounced and he wants a wife who doesn't work that is what really stood out to me here because if you want to be with a woman who doesn't work why find a woman at all why not find a child who's in school who can't work and then oh look the moment she becomes an adult and is like jerry i want a career well now our lives aren't dovetailing so well together it's like yeah obviously because you want a child and i do find it interesting that who he's married to now jessica seinfeld is i mean we can define work she's a philanthropist meaning that they play with money so throwing galas and board seats and zionism yes that's that whole that is part of her philanthropy oh yes i mean how philanthropic is it to support the government that's slaughtering children shoshana seems to have been uh an entrepreneurial young woman she went on to build her uh a fashion line called shoshana i don't know if you're familiar with it but it seems to have done well good for her it's like dresses and swimwear and i don't know it's sold at places matt we already covered how little i know about fashion or anything like that in the last episode okay not to make like this like a shoshana lonstein episode uh my heart goes out to her but she yeah she goes on to form this brand she came from a wealthy family in the upper east side and continues to now have her own wealthy family in the upper east side she married a different wealthier man when she got older fascinatingly you know how this this 1998 piece says that she stays referred to as seinfeld's ex-girlfriend yeah shoshana lonstein uh who's now shoshana lonstein gruss she has a townhouse on the upper east side with her family okay also good for her uh yeah well i mean oh no oh no i think i know what's coming in 2015 20 years after her relationship with seinfeld ends one million dollars of jewelry is robbed from her home in new york city can you read what the new york post headline about it said thieves steal one million dollars in jewels from jerry seinfeld's ex-girlfriend this is a woman who is now 40 years old i know and i'm aware that even on this podcast she is reduced to jerry seinfeld's ex-girlfriend and i just want to take a beat on that because it's the thing that most people in the world who are aware of her will ever know her for and in all of these stories it's just so um funny when people are sort of reduced to a footnote in a much more famous person's story especially as a child especially as the victim i don't purport to know how she feels about that relationship at this point in her life but that must be immensely difficult in any way any way you slice it yeah and uh just to bring it full circle within the context of the a bit fruity cinematic universe like i said shoshana herself is now part of Manhattan high society and specifically she herself is very involved with the new york pro-israel activism community i went on her uh her instagram which is mostly to promote her fashion line but i was like flicking through some of her different content and she posted a photo of a lamppost with a sticker on it that says zionism is the radical idea that jews are people too well and who who is she friends with who do you think she's friends with i know you have the outline open no i i'm not i'm a page behind because i like or i don't like to be spoiled uh i want to guess some of this stuff i don't remember this girl's name uh the the the blue-eyed uh crazy bitch shoshana lonstein is now friends with lizzie savetsky oh right lizzie savetsky right right so that's unfortunate it's unfortunate and people contain multitudes and i don't want to do a perfect victim fallacy where i'm like well you screw her because her politics suck now it's just you know people contain multitudes exactly right this all leads me to my next portion of the episode what's the deal with me too you too no me too in 2018 jerry seinfeld had this to say when interviewed about the burgeoning me too movement let's talk about serious things then the me too campaign yes what what's wrong with the industry i mean are you asking yourself how how come all of this is not the industry honey it's the whole gender it's men and women this is about men and women you just call me honey yeah because you got to get with this it's not show business this is global did you see any of it because everyone's saying it was all around and everyone knew about it but then well which who are we talking about just things that were going on around in studios no i mean honestly i've never seen and uh during the years when i worked on my show and even in the nightclubs i mean a lot of the comedians uh there was a lot of uh activity let's call it frivolity uh comedians and waitresses and everybody i mean men and women you know chase after each other right right yes yes they do now i've never seen it done in a show i've never seen it done in a show i've never seen it done in a way that was uh that i thought that's not right so what that guy is doing so you're surprised with all this me too uh campaign and things that are coming out now no i'm not surprised but you asked me if i had seen it so i i i haven't one of them is also actually um your friend or someone you worked with louis ck that's terrible i mean these behaviors themselves don't even make sense sexually it's like i don't even understand why they would do that and is it something that will cause you not to listen to him anymore not to be i mean not to to listen to his material think it's right that they took him well he stopped he stopped working the problem for him will be no one will ever ever look at him without thinking about that and he knows that i don't understand the uh um the syndrome harvey the showering what fun is it to shower for somebody i don't even understand it we want to watch anybody shower where's the excitement of that only if it's on a movie set yeah i don't even understand the excitement of that i don't even understand it's a whole world of sexuality that's kind of caught people by surprise it's like you're doing what this is a horrible story it's not even a good story so him calling her honey there at the beginning as a way to diminish her is notable because he felt immediately uncomfortable when he's approached with the idea that men have been predatory in hollywood i wonder why that might hit close to home for him but when he says men and women chase after each other what is he referring to in particular because he's not a man he's not a woman he's not a man he's not a woman because what we're talking about in these instances are no like men chasing after women men sexually harassing women men using their power to coerce women into sexual acts that they did not consent to that's what we're talking about not a mutual chasing but a predation he's so uncomfortable when being forced to sit with that and how did you also notice how he immediately empathizes with louis and is talking about how he can't tour anymore he's not working anymore like he doesn't even it doesn't even register to him that he should have considered the victims in this situation his his mindset immediately goes to louis you could splice like every 15 seconds of that and i would have such a crazy diatribe first of all when he's like men and women chase after each other right right he leans in and it's so menacing and i just feel like in that two seconds you see how he thinks about women yes right woman validate me validate me right i'm i'm in control of this conversation am i not and what he keeps going back to in in various very mealy-mouthed ways is like well it's not hollywood and it's you know everyone's just discovering that people are sexual and that and that's what he's saying men and women chase after each other well first of all in your case men and women chase after each other well first of all in your case men and women chase after each other well first of all in your case men and women chase after girls so let's be very specific about that jerry but also then you know when louis ck is brought up in harvey weinstein and some of the allegations i mean louis ck alleged by many women is that he would masturbate in front of them harvey weinstein he invokes and and showers i think he's saying like that they would either shower in front of them masturbate in the shower in front of them force them to shower in front of them and what do you do you see what he says they're the kind of sleight of hand where he goes i don't even get it sexually that doesn't even make sense and what he's saying is encoded language those allegations aren't true because they don't make sense to me they don't turn me on ah that's interesting or did you get something else from it i saw it a little bit differently i saw him trying to move away from the uncomfortability of the lack of consent part into his trademark observational light style that's why he's trying to control himself he's trying to control himself he's trying to control himself he's trying to control the conversation he's steering it away to focus on the specific oddities of the way that these men chose to sexually assault slash harass women i mean he's literally doing a like what's the deal with these crazy allegations right he's literally doing a like what's the deal with forcing women to watch you masturbate what's the deal with that it's the same shtick it's as you say it is the same shtick and it's him feeling like he seems in that clip you can see how he's such a control freak like he really wants to make sure that this conversation is within the contours of where he feels comfortable operating and that's why in my view towards the end of the clip that's what he's trying to do so with this in mind much of the last decade or so for jerry seinfeld has been marked by his fraught relationship with the changing world around him you saw that very clearly in that clip and also by his fraught relationship with the changing world around him and also by his fraught relationship with the with his own ability to be funny to begin tackling that i think it's time for the gay french king interlude oh his favorite bit on june 9 2015 three weeks by the way before gay marriage became the law of the land seinfeld did an interview with seth myers where he complained that you can't i know people are fucking hating my seinfeld impression sorry it's not stopping comedy it's interesting comedy is i do think is the you know supposed to push the line push towards lines the medium there are more people now who will let you know if they think you went over the line than ever before i know i mean you have to feel the same way about comedy yeah but they keep moving the lines in for no reason right i i do this joke about um uh the way people need to justify their cell phone i need to have it with me because people are going to have to have it with me because people are so important right you know i said well they don't seem very important the way you scroll through them like a gay french king you know just well that's very offensive to the gay french kings yeah there i did this line recently in front of an audience and you can comedies where you can kind of feel like an opinion and they thought yeah what do you mean gay what are you talking about gay what do you think gay what are you what are you doing what is what do you mean you know and i thought are you kidding me i mean we can't even you i could imagine a time and this is a serious thing i can imagine a time when people say well that's offensive to suggest that a gay person moves their hands in a flourishing motion and you now need to apologize i mean there's a creepy pc thing out there that really bothers me uh creepy is an interesting word to use indeed it is yeah so he's saying that he made a joke comparing the way that people scroll on their smartphones to the body language of gay french kings you know those people that like we're always talking about homosexual french kings why not pick gay or french why gay french it's redundant he's basically saying the crowd went silent and from that i inferred that they were so offended that my joke is poking fun at gay people that everyone's just gone too woke now whereas i think that the joke makes no fucking sense it doesn't make sense also no one's scrolling like this we're doing i mean it is not good observationally in terms of even the motion that he's saying would indicate the gay french king part he's in such a prison of his own ego and like money that he can't conceive of the fact that his joke bombed it must be wokeness right everybody's just too sensitive these days my joke is funny and that is like a non-starter we're not we're not moving past that initial premise okay so if people don't react the way that i want them to react then it must be because the problem isn't me it's everybody else and notice again his fixation with controlling the room with controlling the conversation with being the guy that's in power on stage in a relationship with a with a girl or what have you like he can't even handle he's so fragile can't even handle his joke bombing without making it a screed on society i'm still sitting here processing what the crux of the joke is right and i've been thinking about it for three days he's he's used to going into rooms and like you say with the stand-up big you know i don't know stadium arenas whatever i don't know the where he tours but like yeah everyone is there laughing together based on mostly the rhythm of his voice and i guess he was in a room where that wasn't the case 100 of the time and his joke bombed and he can't emotionally handle it poor jerry which brings us to what's the deal with political correctness sorry it is getting a little grandma it is getting a little grandma i like it jerry has spoken many times at this point about his views on political correctness in ways that have positioned him interestingly as a right-wing culture war podcast darling for example dave rubin shared the video crowd roars at jerry seinfeld's message for woke students dave is like please call me a gay french king call it to call me a gay french king to my face i will not be offended you can throw a slur in there too please sir you know what's funny about that it's not like i'm a gay french king dave rubin posted that video two years ago and then he reposted the exact same video with the same commentary and the same thumbnail and the same title three weeks ago just because it's like graduation season again and i i think he dave rubin you know listen content creation's a grind and i think he was like well it's commencement season again so i'm just gonna throw out the same triggered woke students thing as two years ago but the speech is two years old yeah kind of lazy lazy job dave oh uh dave is infamously like a really really lazy guy even when he was at tyt he didn't want to work hard so this is something that everybody knows about him you're right on the money ben shapiro posted jerry seinfeld gets emotional while discussing his trip to israel we'll get back to that but speaking of that jerry seinfeld duke commencement speech from 2024 his message to students was clear privilege is not a bad thing quote we are embarrassed of things we should be proud of and proud of things we should be embarrassed about privilege is a word that has taken quite a beating lately privilege today seems to be the worst thing you can have i would like to take a moment to defend it again a lot of you are thinking i can't believe they invited this guy too late i say use your privilege i grew up a jewish boy from new york that is a privilege if you want to be a comedian thanks you went to duke that is an unbelievable privilege i now have an honorary doctorate a humane letters degree from duke university and if i can figure out a way to use that i will i haven't figured anything out yet i think it's pretty much as useful in real life as this outfit i'm wearing but so what i'll take it my point is we're embarrassed about things we should be proud of and proud of things we should be embarrassed about when i was writing my tv series okay writing writing we know who was doing the writing you know this isn't like the craziest thing he's ever said but i was watching this full duke speech and it's really interesting because you could start to interpret what he's saying in a good way and it's really interesting because you could start to what he's saying in a good way, which is like, it's not a bad thing to have privilege. Use it. Right. But that's not what he's saying. No. What he's saying to these graduate students at Duke is like, don't be ashamed. Exactly. That you're graduating from Duke. I meet all these people who go to Harvard and they are so bashful about being from Harvard. Don't be ashamed. Own it. And it's like, OK, first of all, in real life, no one's ashamed of coming from Duke. Like no one's ashamed of having gone to Duke. That's not a real thing. No. And Jerry Seinfeld, I think, is very clearly airing some personal grievances here about how he feels like, oh, you can't just be like a rich, straight white guy in society anymore without having to acknowledge that you started on third base kind of thing. And it reminded me a lot of how very recently Erica Kirk, who is doing a lot. Yeah. Told a group of young white college students, quote, don't let anyone disenfranchise you just because you're a young white male. Yes. Also, disenfranchise is a real actual thing. And that has never happened in the history of this country except, you know, before it was changed for just white men to be able to vote. It was only landowning white men. So yes. But but that's an aside. This is a hallmark of conservative media. You'll see this a lot. Don't let any doubt creep in. Don't let any empathy creep in. You see this on Fox News all the time because they'll disparage their opponents or say how weak they are and ineffectual they are for having empathy for others. They will emphasize this a lot because, of course, inevitably, conservatives are going to maybe run into like, hmm, I don't know. Is it cool that we're like warehousing immigrants like this and that we're abusing? No, no, no, no. This is for the greater good. And your, you know, non-binary granddaughter, the one who's completely insane. That's a very conservative construction of like how you view the world. And it's also not shocking, I think, as we're going to get to his Zionism, that he believes that there are hierarchies in this way and that he is a supremacist about his place in life, in addition to, of course, a religious religious and ethnic supremacist. Absolutely. The most famous example, before we get to the Zionism, of his sort of really yelling amidst the winds of change culturally, is when he went in 2024 on the New Yorker Radio Hour podcast and said this. Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly and they don't get it. 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 the family's on. You just expect it. 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. 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. They move the gates like in skiing 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. I'm not sure if you saw the Pop-Tart movie that came out. No, don't spoil it. Oh, that's coming up. But I think this was on the press tour for that. It was. You know how edgy the Pop-Tart movie was? All right. Fine. Well, if we're here. Yes, that that wasn't that was one of my one of my many dazzling reveals for the listener. Thank you for breaking it. It was it was a good breaking. I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, no. I'm saying you genuinely that was that was good. This complaint about how comedy can't be edgy anymore was part of the press tour for one of his the only things that he has made in the 30 years since Seinfeld aired, which was a movie called Unfrosted. It was a direct to Netflix comedy starring, obviously, himself and Amy Schumer and Melissa McCarthy. But we're going to leave her out of this. So we have to about the creation of Pop-Tarts, which was called by the Chicago Sun-Times, quote, one of the decade's worst movies. Yeah, it's like I get annoyed with the like Wokeness Guild comedy critique, even from like, you know, people who do actually make like edgy comedies. But also, like, I want to know in Jerry Seinfeld's mind what comedy he was making that he was making that he was making that he was making that he was making. You couldn't make any more observational airplane humor is just you can't do it anymore. I'm not sure if you're aware of this. matt bernstein but it's just way too offensive to talk about how the seats are so small yeah it's i mean it is so offensive because it isn't fucking funny i'm glad we can't do it yeah i mean there are so many like great comedies out right now um on streaming but also even movies i think about one of the maybe the funniest movie of the past five years was bottoms and like that had edge to it but it also was like inclusive and lgbtq friendly and and he's just lazy and it's just like that you're an old man ranting about cheers and mary tyler moore wow things were better back when you were a kid what a revolutionary thought that no one has ever had no one's ever experienced nostalgia but he's decided to make it like a whole political ideology because he probably is not hitting either at a hundred percent rate with some of his comedy and it is like driving him up a wall i came across this clip that i think really well represents comedy that probably wouldn't make it anymore that jerry seinfeld seems to think is missing from the comedic ecosystem and it comes from uh hbo's talking funny with jerry seinfeld chris rock ricky gervais and of course jerry seinfeld's close personal friend louis ck i laugh at the dumbest things i laugh at the years and years ago i saw a comic uh in some horrible club bombing with a guitar and he's saying uh sitting on a because i'm gay that's still yeah well i'm in the shower sitting and i just i can't laughing ironically funniest thing i ever heard ironically what he's saying is because he's gay he has to sit on some and it happens to fit beautifully over the template yeah well it's like another dog by the bay otis reading thought he was setting up yeah exactly the last thing he saw no he was i'm gonna help some guy say through the lame gay joke yeah by writing this anderson cooper's gonna beat our ass is he sitting on the is he just sort of sitting on the car yeah because he's gay or is he really sitting on the ball he's sitting on the balls but the is up right up but if you said sitting on some balls because the attached to them is inside of me because i'm gay does not otis reading didn't i was going to be laughing and they can't make it scan they they haven't got it let's walk away and they go no i've got it sitting on a car because i'm gay and he stops doesn't need the rest of the song there's no place to go he's there i love bits does he do the whistle i love the no one thinks about gay male sex more than straight men like i'm a gay guy i think about having sex with men i think like a healthy amount that's good but no one thinks about gay sex more than straight men in any case like why did they elaborate i mean they could have just let louie say two minutes like i okay louie was saying this made me laugh because it was dumb and then but they can't help but continue to talk about it it's just like god there is no feminine energy in that room and it's it's it's not for me not for me and i'm not to be clear i'm not offended i am happy to laugh at a joke where gay men are at the butt of it i'm happy to at the butt of it hey hey hey you just stumbled into that one but make it funny i know sorry i'm like i'm like screaming i just like but but it all comes back for me to like this is the comedy that jerry seinfeld is so pissed you can't even say it anymore you can't even riff for minutes on end about a gay man having sex anymore but what but also this is the joe rogan experience what are we talking about this is what they do all the time at the mothership on podcast there's these stupid awful comics that came up through rogan who are getting these huge specials and deals to say the dumbest ever it's less funny than that that louie's delivery makes it better they're saying things that are worse yeah i i just think you know and bill maher i would be lumped into this critique for me but it's like these moderately funny white men they just want to return to an era where the bar for comedy was so low but the hollywood gatekeeping was so high that they were uniquely poised to become successful and that era is gone kind of kind of we still have matt rife julia louie dreyfus responded to this clip of seinfeld complaining about wokeness in an interview with the new york times she said quote i think to have an antenna about sensitivities is not a bad thing it doesn't mean that all comedy goes out the window as a result when i hear people starting to complain about political correctness and i understand why people might push back on it but to me that's a red flag because it sometimes means something else i believe being aware of certain sensitivities is not a bad thing i don't know how else to say it get him again for me uh ah queen shall we move on oh oh right because we already did the pop-tarts thing yeah we did the pop-tarts thing what's the deal with genocide i support it you can't support it anymore because of wokeness so like i said jerry seinfeld he he went to israel as a child to like work on a kibbutz aka like foment a physical and emotional relationship to the land that he does not live on and does not belong to him hey he may have an apartment in tel aviv he may have an apartment in tel aviv okay he may have a second home oh well at this point i wouldn't be shocked he probably bought one of the gueneth paltrow apartments already probably put it down as his down payment but you know he he returned to israel to promote the b movie uh he went a couple times over the 2010s to perform his quote-unquote comedy and then in december of 2023 two and a half months after october 7th uh and into the ensuing genocide and at which point might i add israel had already murdered over 20 000 palestinians jerry and his wife jessica take a trip to israel his wife jessica who by the way there's just not enough time today but jerry met jessica like the week that she returned home from her honeymoon with the man that she had just married messy messica messica it's really a whole other thing and actually on principle i don't talk about like the morality of right people cheating because i don't i don't it's not my business and i don't it's just this is a let's keep it to the politics i i hear you i'm i'm in agreement but in any case jerry and his wife jessica take a trip to israel in december 2023 he visits the uh the site of the october 7th attacks he does a number of photo ops with idf soldiers have you seen these i'm gonna throw them on the screen really the happiest he's looked since he was uh i guess at the height of his career now it's he gets to experience new heights to travel with a bunch of guys and pose with a bunch of guys that they're gonna kill children he really does like he comes across as sort of perpetually miserable in most of his interviews these days yes and it is jarring how happy he looks to be standing with these soldiers could you speak to that though because i do think it's all part of the psychology of what israel wants from zionists which is this like fervent nationalism it's very nazi-like to me well yeah and and fervent nationalism can become a drug in and of itself i mean we see parts of it in the trump movement although i don't think it's uh you know fully accurate just to describe it just as a nationalist uh movement obviously zionism is is explicitly so but like you know the fact that he didn't really go to israel that much and went after october 7th of experience the high of the nationalism says how cult-like it is in its construction um it's about experiencing something that is shared amongst you and your community and that is what can be so tantalizing and addictive about zionism because it's a shared purpose but once it becomes abundantly clear what that purpose is anybody who has a conscience turns away from that kind of ideology but jerry ran right to it and i think that that says everything about his morals i also think often about the double standard of course that exists in american media with relation to supporting israel versus palestine yeah because to give people like a really honest comparison here jerry seinfeld doing these like fists up photo shoots with idf soldiers it is the equivalent of like if hassan piker went and did a photo shoot with hamas fighters i mean i mean the difference would be that hamas is not uh as immoral and dangerous as the state of israel in my humble opinion but but yeah no of course not of course it's it's completely hypocritical but and hassan wouldn't i mean he wouldn't be able to leave his house of course i'm just using hassan as an example because he's very famous and like you know the media loves to fixate on him but you know he's a person who loves to fixate on him but if he were to do equivalent photos with like hamas fighters it would never it would be the defining event of his career for the media they would bring it up anytime he ever appeared next to a politician i don't think politicians even ones who supported his mission would be able to appear next to him because this is the only thing that they would run Fox News, on CNN. Comparatively, most people don't know these photos of Jerry Seinfeld exist. And there's a lot of celebrities who have done this. Deborah Messing, Deborah Messing mentioned, hey, welcome to the Bit Fruity podcast. She did a very similar trip and has similar photos of her wearing an IDF uniform like as a costume. Which is hilarious. I mean, there was also a guy, I think it was Representative Brian Mass, Republican, who wore an IDF uniform on the floor of Congress. Can you imagine doing so for like, you know, the Chinese government wearing their military uniform or say the Iranian military fatigues? Like if Hassan did a photo shoot with Hamas, they would find a way to bring charges against him and say like, oh, you gave this guy a bag of chips. That's material support for terrorism. Obviously, we have this double standard where, of course, I don't hold Hamas to the standards that I would hold Israel to because. It's a nationalist movement that is born out of desperation and the circumstances that are created by the apartheid and genocide of Israel. Hamas wouldn't exist without Israel. So that's just the even my point is like it's even worse in my view. Yeah, right. Yeah. Nonetheless, Jerry has since become one of the most visible, vocal, shameless and unflinching Zionists in Hollywood. In May of twenty twenty four, Seinfeld reflected on his trip, to Israel with a one Barry Weiss on her Free Press Honestly podcast, which is very bad, by the way. No shade. Like I have a whole episode about Barry Weiss on Patreon. I'm very bad at promoting the Patreon. Go subscribe to the Patreon if you like the show. But she's not a good interviewer. You can throw shade on her. She can. She has all of that blood money that she can wipe her tears with. In this interview, which is happening amidst the campus protests for Gaza around the country, Barry casually describes student protesters for Palestine as, quote, Ivy League jihadis marching on campuses, which like we don't even have time to get into every little thing. But I do want to play you the clip of when Barry asks Jerry about the trip to Israel he took a few months prior. You were in Israel. Yes. Since the war started. How was that trip? The most powerful experience of my life. Really? Sure. Yeah. Why? You know, you just. Are you thinking of someone in particular? I don't know. Sorry. This is the only example I could find of him crying in public in his five decades of fame. I mean, he's kind of infamously aloof and a bit of a snide dick. Yeah. And yet this is what got him the experience of going to Israel and the collective experience of being in a state that was murdering innocent people just miles away. I think, you know, you kind of see how weak minded he is there. His inability to have any doubt or challenging thought creep into his mind. That's the through line with his relationship with women and with with his fixation on girls who are more powerless in conversations with him and in a relationship with him. Never having any doubt creep in and him being able to have a controlled environment for his feelings. He probably had such an emotional reaction to Israel because the nationalism was probably so empowering for him because you don't have to think about Palestinians. No doubt has to creep into your mind. Nothing has to challenge you. The girl doesn't challenge you. Your relationship with your Jewish identity doesn't need to be challenged. You can just get high off the drug of nationalism while you're there. And I also like I would imagine that when he goes there, being Jerry Seinfeld, being the richest comedian on the planet, that he's treated like royalty. And yet he's so moved by that as if he doesn't understand the propaganda value that he's providing. It's it's amazing. I guess when you're that rich and that famous for that long, you you kind of are an emotional child to a degree. And he has actually spoken about that. Calling back to the B movie press tour. Strings of words that I just never thought. There was one good thing that came out of that B movie press tour and that he is in a great episode of 30 Rock called Seinfeld Vision, which was a part of that promotion. And I got to say, he can perform OK when other people who are funny are writing for him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But he did say, in one interview that he had, like, not really thought that much about, like, what he means to the Jewish people, for example, until he went to Israel after Seinfeld had concluded to promote the B movie, at which point he was extremely famous. And he's like, I saw the way that they looked at me and the way that they treated me. And I realized that, like, I meant something to these people. There we go. We solved it. This is the smallest man on the planet who is addicted to validation that, like, if it doesn't come in every format, he breaks down. And so, like, when you have nationalism and Zionism, which basically also reinforces your supremacist belief in yourself and that you're basically a god and that this is some sort of holy war. Yeah, yeah. For somebody like that whose, you know, fame has passed him by at this point, he's just sitting on a pile of money. Of course, that's going to make that guy cry. I thought this clip of him crying was so interesting because, like you said, he's famously, he's aloof, he's a dick. He's, like, increasingly, I think, taken on this really, like, tough guy, like, not afraid to call balls and strikes kind of thing. In this very interview with Barry Weiss, he, like, calls for a return to, like, sort of strongman masculinity. And yet this makes him cry. And this made me think of a concept that Amy Sodaro coined called prosthetic trauma, that Naomi Klein has written about in the context of Israel and how in the wake of October 7th, while Israel continues to genocide Palestinians, now South Lebanon, that they've made these, like, art installations and, like, interactive, immersive exhibitions around, like, the Nova Music Festival and all of these things where you can go and it's, like, memorial, like, summer camp sing-along, like, megachurch vibes where they just wrap you up in emotion and the grief of October 7th that, like, Jerry Seinfeld didn't experience. But they make sure that he feels like he experienced it and therefore never has to doubt whatever Israel does to anybody else. Because that level of pain and trauma that Jerry Seinfeld thinks that he's experienced is enough to make him never doubt it and to throw, I cannot even imagine the amount of money that he and his wife have thrown at this cause. Oh, oh, absolutely. Does that make sense? Does the way I explain it make sense? It completely makes sense. With those tours of, like, the Nova Festival, if you're able to kind of experience that trauma or a display of it, then that's a way to, kind of, indoctrinate you into the cult-like mindset of Zionism as well. It's a shared trauma. It's a shared experience. And it is a myth that Zionists can tell themselves that is a moral underpinning for their thought-negating belief system that pushes aside all empathy and all humanization for Palestinians. So it can act as a method of indoctrination. And Jerry was more than happy to be indoctrinated. And I think this idea of prosthetic trauma is so good. I want to unpack it further in future episodes, I hope. Maybe even with Naomi Klein. She ever comes back to talk to me. No, she did message me and she was like, you did such a great job with our episode. I was like, oh my god. God, what an amazing human being. There's a lot of parallels that we can draw between October 7th and 9-11. And 9-11, similarly, was this moment that was exploited by, bad faith nationalist actors to put this nationalist and oftentimes racist fervor into the American population. And why ever since 9-11, especially around the each year memorial of 9-11, you have a lot of people, especially Muslim and Arab Americans, talking about like, hey, yes, let's like talk about this awful thing that happened in New York City. But also, let's not use this to further our own racism. The prosthetic trauma is what like a George Bush wanted every especially white American to feel in the wake of 9-11. It's like, you know, you may not have actually experienced this, but actually, actually, yes, you did. And let's do, you know, all of the museums and let's do all of the documentaries. And let's and I'm not saying in and of itself, museums and documentaries about a tragedy is a bad thing. But if they are exploiting people's pain to further more pain for other people and violence and destruction and genocide, then it is a bad thing. And we have to recalibrate how we're thinking about these things. And that's what Israel has done with October 7th. Absolutely. And people should look up Netanyahu's quotes about in his immediate reaction to 9-11. If you want to know how Israel felt about 9-11, they were quite excited that the United States would get even more involved in the Middle East and Netanyahu had to walk back some of his excitement about that kind of thing. But it is a way to if you're constantly only reinforcing the humanity of the victims of a terror attack like that, which is definitionally blowback for foreign policy in the Middle East, both on October 7th and what happened on 9-11. If you remove that context and you only humanize one side when you're trying to garner public support for a war, say, in Iraq that had nothing to do with 9-11, that is a very powerful way to get people to have some sort of collective trauma and only empathize with one side without analyzing systemically why this may have happened. You know, they hate us for our freedom. It serves the same role as Zionists basically saying that, you know, Hamas is the equivalent, you know, of Hitler and that they're going by Mein Kampf. Mm hmm. And while Jerry Seinfeld is really biting into that emotional propaganda and literally crying with Barry Weiss, college students, like I said, across the U.S. are peacefully camping out on their university's lawns for days and weeks at a time in protest of their tuition money being invested in companies that enable the IDF's genocide on Gaza. As people may recall, this severely angry, outward Zionists across the country and two such Zionists were Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld. Jessica Seinfeld was so angry about these protests. So Jessica posts on her Instagram story, it's a screenshot of a GoFundMe that just says UCLA rally. Huh? And she writes on top of it. I just gave to this GoFundMe to support more rallies like yesterday's at UCLA. More cities are being planned. So please give what you can. Donations are anonymous. We will continue to share our light and love as proud American Jews. Now this GoFundMe, which was literally just called UCLA rally, seems incredibly vague. And why did it need to raise $80,000? One has to wonder. And I've been to many a protest and I just I don't know where this money is going. But in any case, Jessica Seinfeld, as publicly available information on GoFundMe shows, don't have to worry. She has donated $5,000 to UCLA rally. Now, what did UCLA rally end up being? Well, in response to a peaceful encampment at UCLA formed by pro-Palestine student protesters, this was for a Zionist counter protest, which turned out to be a violent mob. I remember this. This was one of the worst instances of attacks on students. And it was jarring in particular to see how much older the Zionist protesters slash mob was than the students. And they were going after young women who were college age with violence. Yeah, they were beating the pro-Palestine students with rods. They were launching literal fireworks at the encampment from like like like tens of yards away. This is the worst violence of any of the ongoing college protests. UCLA, where counter protesters used sticks and boards against a pro-Palestine encampment. It was more than three hours of unrestrained violence the night of April 30th that led to injuries and bloody scenes as campus security and law enforcement allowed it to continue. Do you know how bad it has to be, how poorly Zionists have to behave? Well, it's not too bad for CNN to do reasonable reporting on them. Exactly. They did a whole investigation where a month later they were like, yep, these were basically all middle aged men. None of them were students at UCLA. They came to cause violence. They were yelling at young female students that Hamas was going to rape them. Horrifying. And, you know, Jessica Seinfeld, she was like, I'm horrified. And, you know, this isn't what I donated to. But, you know, it is. It is. It is. You also advertised it. And you knew what was going on there. You knew that they were going to disrupt it. And it is, as you say, interesting how so much of what Zionists have to say is projection, like the paid protesters thing. Oh, that these students are being funded by Hamas. The big claim at the time was like, who's funding all of their tents? Right. And it's like, what? I don't know. I forgot that tents rained. Ranged between like 200 and 300 K or something like that. It's a valid question. Yes. Hamas is sending money for their tents. But nevertheless, every accusation is a confession. And this is yet another example of that, because Jessica Seinfeld donated thousands of dollars to a mob of middle aged men who went and yelled at girls on campus. There you have it. And without listing the many other examples of of Jerry Seinfeld cruelly responding to anti-genocide hecklers at his shows or returning to Duke in 2025 to give a talk about how pro-Palestine protesters are, quote, the modern KKK. Jerry, can I get a selfie? Sure. Free Palestine. Maybe. I don't care about Palestine. That's sad. That brings us to the present, where just two weeks ago, Jerry Seinfeld uttered the three words. That a lot of people will likely remember him most for. Come on, give me some. Free Palestine. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. That's what I hope his legacy is. Or I could also settle for second fiddle to the much more talented Larry David. How do we round this out? Watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. Like if you guys like Seinfeld, watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. It is a superior show. It actually is riskier than Seinfeld and some of the things that it touches. But if you like Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, I think, shows who the real creative genius behind all of this is. And that must eat at Jerry. I think that must eat at him. And that's why he has to create this delicate little palace for himself in his mind where there is nothing that creeps in that would cause him to feel insecure or unsafe. So as he lectures the rest of the world on wokeness and safe spaces and cancel culture and political correctness. I think that's what he's trying to do. as we've discussed now, podcasting is hanging out in our world. So it's good to hang out with you. And it's a socialist summer in New York City. I hope that we came to you with full energy today because we were. I was out last night at some DSA events celebrating the election results. Got a little got a little fruity, a bit fruity, a bit fruity on stream. I mean, not in like a, you know, campy manner. I just I had some drinks. And what are you going to do? It was a great night. You were acting like a gay French king. Scrolling. I was drunk posting, unfortunately. Can't do that. Can't do that. But, you know, we've we've been electing some great left wing anti-genocide pro worker candidates here in New York City. And let's replicate this elsewhere in the country. I know we can do it. So many people are saying that, you know, New York City is just being woke. New York City. First of all, New York City has plenty of very unwoke representatives. And also, I know that what we are feeling in New York with regards to the genocide, with regards to taxing the rich, these are feelings that are being held throughout the country. So if that is something that resonates with you, join the DSA, but also look into candidates running in your district. Support the ones who are. I know we have some great candidates popping up all over the country. I know we have some great candidates popping up all over the place that I'm very excited about. And I don't know, just leaving this on a high note. Absolutely. Change is coming. Change is in the air. Hell yeah. Thanks so much, man. I love you so much. And until next time, stay fruity.