Thursday, February 6, 2014

Race Quotas To Be Injected Into The Entertainment Industry?

And one more stupid topic in the news - during a Buzzfeed interview on CBS This Morning comedian Jerry Seinfeld was asked why he featured so many white men in his web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Really? They had nothing better to ask than that? 

Are American liberals now going to put racial, ethnic and/or gender quotas on entertainment shows? If a white comedian or actor does a show about himself and a few friends, who also happen to be white, will he now have to integrate a few people of color into it simply to please a few race-crazed liberal instigators? 

Gawker.com recently published an article called '"Who Cares" About Diversity in Comedy, Says Jerry Seinfeld'. Their opening remark attacked Seinfeld as though he is a blatant racist: "Jerry Seinfeld, the most successful comedian in the world and maker of comedy for and about white people, isn't interested in trying to include non-white anything in his work."

Seinfeld, who wasn't pleased with the question or the implications, replied "People think [comedy] is the census or something, it's gotta represent the actual pie chart of America. Who cares? Funny is the world that I live in. You're funny, I'm interested. You're not funny, I'm not interested," he said. "I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that."

Gawker continued their hit piece by saying "He seems to suggest that any comedian who is not a white male is also not funny, though he's also likely fed up with the amount of bad comedy he's been forced to sit through in his (waning) career.

Which is too bad, because Seinfeld is downplaying the work of everyone from Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby to Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, and Eddie Huang, who are all in various stages of their own sitcoms that just might turn out to be the next Seinfeld.

I don't know what Seinfeld did to be worthy of this hit piece by Gawker. What he said was he does comedy for comedy's sake and doesn't find a need for racial, ethnic or gender quotas in it. He in no way downplayed the work of other comedians who weren't "for and about white people." He said he has no interest in making gender or race a specific part of his show. (Chris Rock was a guest star on his show, as was Tina Fey. I guess they simply don't count.)

Gawker concluded with "Yes, comedy should represent the entire pie chart of America, and the glorious, multicolored diversity pie should be thrown directly at Jerry Seinfeld's face."

So there you have it - quotas being demanded by a liberal rag. Funny - I don't remember an over abundance of white characters on The Cosby Show, Sanford and Son, or even Fat Albert. (Sanford and Son did have them now and then for comedic interaction.) I loved them all and it never occurred to me that a show about a black family should have some whites tossed into the show for diversity purposes. I wonder how Gawker feels about Black Entertainment Television? Will they now demand the insertion of some Caucasian shows to make it more diverse? Of course they won't.

Sometimes people just like to stir things up by saying things that stretch the truth just to get a reaction. I have no doubt some of Gawker's readers now hate "that racist Jew, Seinfeld." Let's not forget that his hit TV show Seinfeld, which was watched and loved by millions of people white and black, was about him and his three closest friends who were....  you guessed it... white. Obviously Seinfeld is a racist. Why didn't I see it before. It's so obvious because.... he has white friends!

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