It seems comedian Jerry Seinfeld has lost his patience with the insidious scourge of wokeness infecting society.
From calling out the extreme left for killing comedy to dismissing and mocking anti-Israel protesters, Seinfeld has grown more and more comfortable voicing views that are outside the Hollywood mainstream.
And now he has expressed his thoughts on the sorry state of masculinity in modern Western culture.
Seinfeld's remarks came during his appearance Tuesday on The Free Press' "Honestly with Bari Weiss" podcast as part of a press tour for his movie "Unfrosted," a comedic, fictionalized account of the creation of Pop-Tarts set in the 1960s.
The host asked him if the film was made, in part, because of his "nostalgia for this time that feels like another planet or at least another country."
"Of course it does," Seinfeld said. "But there's another element there that I think is the key element and that is an agreed-upon hierarchy, which I think is absolutely vaporized in today's moment.
"And I think that is why people lean on the horn and drive in the crazy way that they drive because we have no sense of hierarchy, and as humans, we don't really feel comfortable like that."
He then reminisced about the "real men" celebrated in the 1960s, when the film takes place.
Seinfeld told Weiss \-- semi-jokingly -- that he "always wanted to be a real man. I never made it."
"In that era, again, it was JFK, it was Muhammad Ali, it was Sean Connery, Howard Cosell, you can go all the way down there -- that's a real man," he said.
"I want to be like that someday," Seinfeld continued, lamenting how he "never really grew up ... you don't want to as a comedian because it's a childish pursuit."
And here was the phrase he used that got the keyboard warriors up in arms:
"I miss a dominant masculinity. Yeah, I get the toxic thing -- but still, I like a real man."
Seinfeld had an excellent point.
Though there are still strong, handsome men in entertainment, you would be hard-pressed to say that masculinity has been at all "dominant" in modern American culture.
The woke culture has generally preferred sensitive, nonthreatening males who have been more in touch with their feminine side -- men like Harry Styles who wear women's clothing and have a boyish or even androgynous aesthetic.
But such men are not the kind you rely on in a crisis, nor are they leaders or providers for their families.
The dominant men to which Seinfeld referred were unafraid to take charge and make the hard but necessary choices.
Without those sorts of men, the agreed-upon hierarchy is lost, leaving young people adrift and confused, groping in the dark for truth and an idea of social order.
Seinfeld immediately faced a backlash for his remarks, with some keyboard warriors attacking his masculinity -- which, of course, doesn't invalidate what he said.
Yes the “dominant masculinity” for which Jerry Seinfeld is well known… https://t.co/CYDct9Ck6C pic.twitter.com/Roljs12FhZ
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) May 30, 2024
The guy who complains about the little plastic things on the ends of shoelaces wants real men to return:https://t.co/6k3ulmJ8dO
— scharpling (@scharpling) May 29, 2024
Modern American culture is suffering in large part from a crisis in masculinity.
And until the culture can recapture a sense of the dominant masculinity Seinfeld was pining for, our problems will only get worse.
