Larry David made SNL audiences uncomfortable with a monologue where he referenced the Holocaust and joked about getting a date in a concentration camp.
The Curb Your Enthusiasm comedian is a usual hit with fans, but his recent jab involving a sensitive topic left him in the midst of a colossal backlash.
"You tolerate me. You really, really tolerate me," David exclaimed at the beginning of the monologue. Was he placating the audience in advance for what was to follow?
He shared his experiences before his rise to television stardom. He touched on his brush with homelessness and compared himself with Quasimodo when it came to dating preferences. But then things quikly headed south when he segued from Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault charges to the Holocaust.
"So you know, a lot of sexual harassment stuff in the news of late, and I couldn't help but notice a very disturbing pattern emerging, which is that many of the predators — not all, but many of them — are Jews," he said. "And I have three words to say to that: Oy vey iz mir (woe is me)."
With the captive audience still in the palm of his hand, the Seinfeld co-creator expressed he can't stand it when Jewish names are in the headlines for notorious reasons. “I want ‘Einstein discovers the theory of relativity.’ ‘Salk cures Polio.’ What I don’t want: ‘Weinstein took it out.’”
"I've always been obsessed with women, and I've often wondered if I'd grown up in Poland when Hitler came to power and was sent to a concentration camp, would I still be checking out women out in the camp? I think I would," David quipped. The atmosphere shifted ever so slightly with one audible groan from the studio audience. David added, "Of course, the problem is, there are no good opening lines in a concentration camp."
He filled the awkward pause, with a few courtesy chuckles from the crowd, with an enactment of wooing a girl in the camp. "How's it going? They treatin' ya okay? You know, if we ever get out of here, I'd love to take you out for some latkas. What? What did I say? Is it me, or is it the whole thing? It’s because I’m bald, isn’t it?”
No, Larry. It was the whole thing.
It was a swing and major miss.
There were arguments made.
There are unspoken rules of comedy.
Not to mention the obvious.
Fans have seen better material from him.
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