Jerry Seinfeld tells 60 Minutes why he wrote rebuttal to claim that New York City is "dead"
It's nothing personal. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld was attacking the idea, not the man who wrote an essay on LinkedIn this past summer arguing New York City is "dead forever" in the wake of the pandemic. Seinfeld was moved to issue a rebuttal to the essay, he says, because no one else was defending his beloved city. Seinfeld speaks to Jon Wertheim on the next edition of 60 Minutes, Sunday, October 4, at 7:30 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. PT on CBS.
"When you were a kid, remember kicking over the anthill? That's what just happened to us. They just kicked over the whole anthill," he tells Wertheim. "And what do the ants do? 'All right. Hand me the next crumb. Let's get back to work.'" Seinfeld says he has nothing against the author of the essay on LinkedIn, "He's fine. I didn't like that nobody was rebutting it. Then I realized, 'Oh, I guess that's my job.' Somebody, a real New Yorker, has to answer this."
When Wertheim pressed Seinfeld, "You called him some putz on LinkedIn," Seinfeld laughed it off.
"I don't even know what LinkedIn is," Seinfeld said. "That's who that guy is for the rest of his life. 'Oh, look who's here. The putz from LinkedIn.'"
At the heart of Seinfeld's rebuttal is a New Yorker's grit. "I just don't want New Yorkism to die. I don't want it to be replaced by deep concern and over-sentimentality. You can have those things, but be a little badass, too. We don't care if things are tough. Everything is always tough. It's tough to live here," says Seinfeld.
Seinfeld, who starred in a hit TV sitcom that was famously "about nothing," has authored a new book titled "Is this Anything?" Published by Simon &Schuster, part of ViacomCBS, the book is a primer on joke writing.