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A Bustle reporter finds the classic “Soup Nazi” episode of “Seinfeld” problematic by today’s standards.
“Seinfeld” might offend young people, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Millennial-focused website Bustle is taking heat for publishing a listicle that examines all the reasons why “Seinfeld” would be a little too edgy in the modern climate of policing everything that isn’t deemed politically correct.
Comedian and author Tim Young told Fox News that the article is “ridiculous,” and that it blows his mind how desperate people are to be offended, with the attack on “Seinfeld” the latest example. “Seinfeld,” which aired from 1989-1998, is widely considered one of the best programs in television history — but Bustle doesn’t exactly feel that way.
Angelica Florio’s piece, headlined “These 13 jokes from ‘Seinfeld’ are offensive now – Yes, that includes the ‘Soup Nazi,’” was published on New Year’s Eve and claims that watching the classic sitcom in 2019 will “hopefully” make viewers realize how much times have changed.
“Hopefully most people can agree that comedy, even ‘edgy’ comedy, doesn’t need to alienate marginalized groups in order to make people laugh,” Florio wrote. “Thanks to more modern understandings of what political correctness entails — and why being PC is important — it’s less common these days to find jokes like the offensive ones that often played out on ‘Seinfeld.’”
The Bustle reporter went on to condemn the “Soup Nazi” because, according to Florio, “using the term ‘Nazi’ to label someone as a joke doesn’t sit so well anymore.”
“It’s not the fault of ‘Seinfeld’ that the media 20 years later gave constant attention to a small group of radicals and gave them outsized importance. It’s also not ‘Seinfeld’s’ fault the media has made the term “Nazi” meaningless because it uses the label on anyone to the right of Nancy Pelosi,” Daily Wire reporter Ashe Schow wrote in a piece criticizing the Bustle article.
“The entire point of ‘Seinfeld’ was to show four terrible people interacting in a world full of kind, thoughtful people.”
“The entire point of Seinfeld was to show four terrible people interacting in a world full of kind, thoughtful people. The humor was in how terrible they were. After all, they ended up in jail at the end of the series for violating a good-Samaritan law when they chose to laugh at an obese man getting carjacked rather than help him,” Young said.
Other “Seinfeld” jokes the Bustle article considers taboo include calling a Native American an “Indian Giver,” Kramer accidently burning the Puerto Rican flag, Japanese businessmen sleeping in Kramer’s dresser drawers, Jerry mistakenly getting someone deported and “a whole episode’s worth of bad jokes” when a reporter thought Jerry and George were gay.
Young pointed out that the episode in which main characters are thought to be in a same-sex relationship was actually a groundbreaking episode for the gay community.
“It won a GLAAD award for its positive outlook on gay and lesbian relationships in the media as the script and interactions of the cast never mocked being gay,” Young said. “Rather, they took extra precaution in creating the line ‘not that there’s anything wrong with that’ to show that it’s ok and normal to have a same-sex relationship, just that ‘it wasn’t them.’”
The Bustle reporter also has an issue with storylines such as George staring at a woman’s cleavage, Jerry not understanding why liking Chinese women could be considered racist, Kramer referring to someone as a “fat little mental patient,” George seeking a woman who can’t speak English and a storyline based on illegally parking in a handicap spot.
While Young thinks the entire article is absurd, he also doesn’t think it’s particularly original.
“The first thing I thought when I saw this article was that it was a rip off of a Fine Brothers Entertainment video on YouTube entitled ‘Do Teens & College Kids Think Seinfeld Is Funny? | Does It Hold Up?’ Which has a million views and was given 130k dislikes and only 14k likes,” Young said. “They knew this was clickbait to egg on Americans who disagree with them.”
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