Jerry Seinfeld misses “dominant masculinity” in society from the days of his youth, saying, “I like a real man.”
Seinfeld, who has made America laugh for decades, made the comments on the “Honestly with Bari Weiss” podcast Tuesday in a talk about his latest film, “Unfrosted,” set in the idyllic 1960s.
Asked whether he had nostalgia for the period, Seinfeld, 70, said he does.
“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,” he said. “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.”
Seinfeld said masculinity was a part of that.
“I really thought, when I was 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. I want to be like that some day,” he said.
But he joked that sadly, as a comedian, "I never really grew up,” calling his profession "a childish pursuit."
“But I miss dominant masculinity. Yeah, I get the toxic [masculinity], but still, I like a real man,” he added.
“Unfrosted,” which is streaming on Netflix, follows the rivalry between cereal giants Kellogg’s and Post to create a treat to revolutionize the breakfast table: Pop-Tarts.
It features Bill Burr as President John F. Kennedy, and it includes cameos by Jon Hamm and John Slattery as advertising executives — a nod to their role in the hit TV show “Mad Men,” which was also set in the ’60s.
It’s not the first time Seinfeld has been outspoken about modern culture. Last month, he suggested that political correctness was killing comedy, saying in an interview with The New Yorker that the era of golden comedy no longer exists.
“It used to be you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, ‘Oh, ‘Cheers’ is on,” he told the magazine. “‘Oh, ‘M*A*S*H’ is on, oh, ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ is on. ... You just expected there’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight. Well, guess what? Where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people.”
Seinfeld faced boos and a walkout during his commencement speech at Duke University in North Carolina this month.
Seinfeld, who is Jewish, has been a vocal supporter of Israel, which he visited after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the capturing of hostages that led to the war between Israel and Hamas.
