American Idiocracy

How Did We Become So Stupid? (Or: What happened to Gen Z?)

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

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*Also do check out Matt Ruby’s excellent piece on the Seinfeld debacle

Matt Ruby

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I recently listened to one of the most fascinating interviews I’ve heard in a long time: Bari Weiss dialoguing with Jerry Seinfeld. They talked about a lot of things—his new show “Unfrosted,” being a comic in the 1980s compared to now, the helpfulness in life of laughter, and Seinfeld’s lack of social superficial layers making him (and he argues most comics) those people who cut straight to the deep stuff. But one of the most interesting (and disturbing) was how at a recent graduation commencement speech at Duke, he was interrupted by hecklers yelling that he “supported genocide.” (He also criticized the idea of “Writer’s Block” saying there’s no such thing; there’s “lazy,” there’s “scared,” but not W.B. I agree.)

*(What’s also terrifying and fascinating is how out of context and in bad faith some Lefties have extracted Seinfeld’s words from the Weiss interview attempting to create in Seinfeld some sort of hyper-masculine genocide-supporting sexist misogynist Alt Right monster. You cannot listen to the 55-minute interview with Weiss and, being anything close to rational, come away with this exaggerated, dramatic, absurd conclusion. Seinfeld is clearly normal, average, representing most Americans’ basic views, regardless of race or gender. To take that and twist it into some kind of nightmare Frankenstein…well…this is why you can’t trust media anymore.)

I posted about the piece on Facebook and elsewhere. One woman I don’t know on FB commented, “Don’t you know about he and wifey’s warmongering? I’m glad I didn’t buy your book.”

My first thought was: Fuck you. (Honestly.) I of course considered ripping her a new spiritual asshole…but then I just hid the comment and let it go. What it brought to mind, though, was this: How have we come to the place where we are so radically tribalized that artists can’t engage in art anymore; that everything—and I mean everything—is political?

Seinfeld had signed a letter not long after October 7^th condemning Hamas. For this egregious sin he is mocked, yelled at and heckled by a bunch of rich elite white kids who are part of a larger milieu which is currently engaged in screaming things at protests such as “gas the Jews” and “By Any Means Necessary” and “From the River to the Sea” as well as, recently, “Stand with Hamas” and “Jihad.”

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From The New York Times:

“But Xavier Westergaard, a Ph.D. student in biology, said the mood for Jewish students was “very dire.”

“There are students on campus who are yelling horrible things, not about Israelis only or about the actions of the state or the government, but about Jews in general,” he said.”

““It is not our job as Jews to ensure our own safety on campus,” wrote Rabbi Buechler, the director of the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus at Columbia University and Barnard College. “No one should have to endure this level of hatred, let alone at school.”

“Chabad at Columbia University, a chapter of an international Orthodox Jewish movement, said in a statement that some protesters had hurled expletives at Jewish students as they walked home from campus over the weekend, and had said to them, “All you do is colonize” and “Go back to Europe.”

“Reports of antisemitic harassment by protesters surfaced on social media late Saturday. A video posted on X shows a masked protester outside the Columbia gates carrying a Palestinian flag who appears to chant “Go back to Poland!” One Columbia student wrote on social media that some protesters had stolen an Israeli flag from students and tried to burn it, adding that Jewish students were splashed with water.”

“In one instance, video captured a person holding up a sign that said, “Al-Qasam’s Next Targets,” referring to Hamas’s armed faction, near several Jewish counterprotesters. Mr. Adams said the police had already increased its presence near the campus and would investigate any potential violations of the law.”

“The verbal attacks left a number of the 5,000 Jewish students at Columbia fearful for their safety on the campus and its vicinity, and even drew condemnation from the White House and Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.”

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