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JERRY SEINFELD’S LURCH TO THE RIGHT NOW INCLUDES MOURNING
‘DOMINANT MASCULINITY’  
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Arwa Mahdawi
June 1, 2024
The Guardian
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_ The comedian’s remarks on a podcast join his cheerleading of
genocidal violence and jokes about suffering children in Gaza _

Jerry Seinfeld in Los Angeles on 30 April 2024., Photograph: David
Swanson/Reuters

 

Jerry Seinfeld misses ‘dominant masculinity’

There are few things certain in life except death, taxes and the
knowledge that every single goddamn day you can look at the news and
find a rich man complaining about how feminism and wokeness have
ruined the world.

Today’s edition of Bigotry Is Acceptable Again comes via Jerry
Seinfeld [[link removed]], who
appears to be on a mission to make sure people don’t associate him
with a much-loved sitcom from the 1990s but with being a boring
reactionary obsessed with shaking his fist at progress.

Seinfeld’s lurch to the right hasn’t come out of nowhere:
the billionaire
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was never exactly woke. He famously dated a 17-year-old high school
student
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he was 38 and definitely not a high school student. Several years ago,
he also took his family to a so-called Anti-terror Fantasy Camp
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an illegal Israeli settlement
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the West Bank
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of “gamifying
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apartheid, where they could shoot guns and pretend to be soldiers.

But while Seinfeld has never been a bleeding-heart liberal, it feels
like he’s never been quite so vocally anti-progressive as he is now.
Ever since 7 October, Seinfeld has advocated loudly for Israel’s
collective punishment of Palestinians, demonized pro-Palestinian
protesters, and joked about suffering children in Gaza. “Save the
children of Gaza,” he said in a mocking voice after getting heckled
by pro-Palestinian protesters at a show
[[link removed]]. Along with
cheerleading what the United Nations human rights council has
described as genocidal violence
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he has also apparently decided that a great tactic
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publicizing his much-panned movie about Pop-Tarts is by complaining
about the left.

In April, for example, Seinfeld told the New Yorker’s Radio Hour
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comedy was dying because of the “result of the extreme left and PC
crap and people worrying so much about offending other people”.
(Really hilarious comedy, my friends, is joking about dead Palestinian
children.)

Then this week, Seinfeld decided to get nostalgic about “real
men” on the conservative agitator Bari Weiss’s podcast
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“I miss a dominant masculinity,” Seinfeld said. “Yeah, I get the
toxic thing … But still, I like a real man.” The pair also talked
about Israel and managed to display so little regard for the suffering
in Gaza that an Israeli journalist wrote a disgusted column
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it.

“The amount of empathy it would have taken for Bari Weiss and
Seinfeld to stop and think that perhaps ‘the mob,’ as they
referred to the pro-Palestinian movement … is also in pain is so
miniscule, I am still astounded neither of them could muster it up,”
Rachel Fink wrote in the Israeli paper Haaretz
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Oh, there’s more. Weiss and Seinfeld both got weirdly nostalgic
about the 60s. “Obviously there were problems. [The] civil rights
movement had yet to start, like a zillion. But the thing that was
present that I feel like isn’t now is a sense of, like … a common
culture,” Weiss said. Seinfeld agreed, saying the best thing about
that era, which is when his Pop-Tarts movie was based, was “an
agreed-upon hierarchy”.

I’m not sure hierarchies are ever “agreed-upon” – I rather
think they’re imposed. Do Weiss and Seinfeld realize what it sounds
like when they reminisce about an era before the civil rights movement
when there was an accepted “hierarchy”; when Black people and gay
people and women, they seem to be saying, all knew their place?

The answer to that question is probably: “Yes, and they don’t
care.” Bigotry seems to be perfectly acceptable now and not
something that impedes anyone’s career. A few weeks ago, the NFL
player Harrison Butker gave a massively misogynist and homophobic
speech
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a Catholic college in Kansas, for example. He’s since doubled down
on it, saying he doesn’t regret his remarks
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Possibly inspired by Butker, the Jaws actor Richard Dreyfuss also
recently made a number of sexist and transphobic comments at a Q&A
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Meanwhile, the Minnesota Republican party has just endorsed the
conspiracy theorist candidate Royce White, who has complained that
“women have become too mouthy
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Then, of course, there’s the convicted felon Donald Trump, who has
said far too many bigoted things to list. It didn’t stop people
voting for him in the past, and it hasn’t stopped megadonors
from throwing cash at him now
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Amazingly, even a guilty verdict might not stop Trump from becoming
president again. Seinfeld and Weiss might get those old-fashioned
“hierarchies” they love so much reinstated very soon.

Texas Republicans open to death penalty for abortion providers

As the feminist writer Jessica Valenti
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who first drew attention to this new proposal
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has noted, “extremists who would see women given the death penalty
are dictating Texas Republicans’ abortion policy”. And it’s not
just Texas: once-fringe abortion views are now entering the
mainstream. “There are more legislators who are willing to hear
these [extreme] bills or take them seriously,” the law professor
Mary Ziegler recently told NBC News
[[link removed]].

Indian airline gives female travelers option to choose seats next to
other women

It’s a shame we have to resort to gender segregation
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of, you know, making it socially unacceptable for men to harass women
on planes. Still, this feels like a smart move by low-cost carrier
IndiGo. Which, by the way, isn’t the first company to trial this
idea. In 2017, after a number of in-flight groping incidents, Air
India instated a female-only row
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seats on its domestic flights.

A Ukrainian cheerleading squad for women over 50 is going strong

They’re called the Nice Ladies
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a documentary with the same name recently made its international
premiere.

New York hospital fires nurse after her speech calling Gaza war a
‘genocide’

Hesen Jabr, who is Palestinian American, made the remarks while
accepting an award for providing excellent care to patients suffering
perinatal loss. As the artist Nan Goldin recently said in a Guardian
interview
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“These are chilling McCarthyist times.”

Two more US officials resign over Biden administration’s position on
Gaza war

Alexander Smith, a contractor for the US Agency for International
Development (USAid), said he was given a choice between resignation
and dismissal after preparing a presentation
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maternal and child mortality among Palestinians, which was cancelled
at the last minute by USAid. (Just read that sentence again, will you,
and really take it in.)

A growing number of Swifties are calling on Taylor Swift to break her
silence on Gaza

Pretty sure Swifties will be waiting
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looooong time. Taylor Swift doesn’t get political unless she knows
it’ll help her brand and we all know that speaking out about Gaza
doesn’t exactly do that: it makes you a target. Indeed, an Israeli
rap duo recently called for the deaths
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Dua Lipa, Bella Hadid and Mia Khalifa (who have all spoken out about
Gaza) in a chart-topping anthem.

Girls in the US are getting their first periods earlier

A new study has found this to be a trend across all demographics, but
it’s a lot more pronounced
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girls from racial and ethnic minorities and those from lower incomes.
This isn’t great: an earlier age of first menstruation is linked to
a number of adverse health issues. Getting your first period before
the age of 12, for example, is linked to an increase in breast cancer
risk.

Female climbers increasingly reporting sexual harassment in the sport

You can scale a remote mountain and you still can’t escape sexual
harassment
[[link removed]].

The week in pawtriarchy

Politics may be grim, but it’s been a very good year for penguins. A
zoo in England has just welcomed 11 Humboldt chicks: the highest
number in a decade
[[link removed]].
Humboldt penguins are vulnerable to extinction so this news is
brrrr-illiant.

_Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist and the author of Strong Female
Lead [[link removed]]. Twitter @ArwaM
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* Jerry Seinfeld
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* Right-wing politics
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* toxic masculinity
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* Israel-Palestine
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