Although he spent the first several decades of his career mining material that rarely got more political than the contents of his breakfast table, you can’t say Jerry Seinfeld hasn’t been making up for lost time. Seinfeld is, for instance, back on tour at the moment—which means he’s also back in the business of very publicly performing how not mad he is that audience members keep interrupting his shows to protest his vocal and aggressive support of Israel’s actions since the October 7, 2023 attacks.
The latest big blow-up happened last week in Chicago, where at least two protestors got up in the middle of Seinfeld’s set at the Chicago Theater on October 9 to yell at him about his anti-Palestine stances. (Seinfeld has previously, and unfavorably, compared people who call for “Free Palestine” to the KKK, stating his belief that the calls are just a cover for antisemitism.) Seinfeld, 74, attempted to project joyfulness at this impromptu opportunity for crowdwork last Friday—but if you sense a certain amount of real rage in the ways he repeatedly and sarcastically declared “I’m racist. It’s a genocide. I’m into it” at his critics in the since-gone-viral video, you wouldn’t be alone.
In addition to mocking the idea that Israel’s actions in Gaza over the last few years sum up to genocide, Seinfeld also got a little funky, busting out dance moves while one of the people in the video shouted statistics at him. He also assayed one of what we’d qualify as at least an actual attempt at a joke in response, telling the protesters that he intended to find out how much money they paid for their tickets and donate it to Israel, before adding, “No, I won’t, I’m keeping it.”
Although Israel and Palestine aren’t the only topics Seinfeld has gotten belligerent about since developing a pretty severe case of Aging Male Comedian Brain circa 2015—he’s also gone on at length about political correctness, college campuses, and the appeal of “dominant masculinity”—it is the one that gets him yelled at, and yelling back about, most frequently. It’s also just the latest way a split on cultural attitudes toward Palestine has continue to break into America’s biggest public spaces; suffice it to say Seinfeld probably won’t be hiring Macklemore to open for him any time soon.
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