From where I sit, firmly in the grasp of late middle age and hurtling toward oblivion, I am confident in only two things.

The first is that my body will soon give out. It has already started. My knees have become my enemies, and my skin has begun to wrinkle in places I barely knew I had skin. The noises I make in the morning as I rise and stretch my muscles seem foreign but somehow familiar. And I remember now that they are the same sounds my father used to make when he would stand or sit at my age. Nature has whispered in my ear: “This is your new body. Good luck.”

The second thing I know for sure is that, one day soon, I will wake up and something in the culture will deeply offend me. I don’t know what it will be, but I know that something that I believed in (or long ago became accustomed to) will have fallen dramatically out of fashion. I won’t understand why. But I know it’s inevitable.

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Some of this is already happening. For instance, I find modern rap unlistenable. My students often bring new tracks to my attention that they call “fire.” I rarely get even 15 seconds in before I ask them to turn it off. It’s gibberish to me, and I can’t imagine why anyone would think differently. I’ll stick to my ’80s and ’90s rap, thank you very much.

My likes and dislikes were forged a long time ago. When the culture was different. When we were rebelling against the values of people who were born in the 1940s. But all things must change: As a kid, I was told that marijuana would ruin my life. Now, there are ads for it in candy form all over my news feed.

I have never found Jerry Seinfeld funny. Even in the ’90s when his show was all the rage, I didn’t get why people thought it was hilarious. It always seemed to me to be about immigrants being odd or unhygienic or making fun of women’s faces or body parts. The show always seemed mean-spirited to me, and that’s just not my kind of humor.

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During an interview with the New Yorker to promote his upcoming Netflix film traversing the rather well-worn comedic landscape of the Pop-Tart, Seinfeld stated: “It used to be you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, ‘Oh, “Cheers” is on. 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.”

This comment didn’t surprise me. And I was equally unsurprised to read that the political right embraced Seinfeld’s comments. That group wants to keep everything the way it used to be. Perhaps conservatives feel safe only when they have assurances that things aren’t changing and that they are still the ones on top.

But the saddest thing in Seinfeld’s remarks is the lack of perspective. ’Cause nothing lasts forever, Jerry.

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Blackface, for example, was considered funny at one time, and I’m positive that, when it fell out of fashion, there was some old White guy complaining about how nothing is funny anymore and people have lost their sense of humor and it’s a shame he can’t say the n-word like he used to. The violent Punch and Judy shows, in which one puppet (Punch) would lay into his wife (Judy) and others with a stick, sometimes beating the daylights out of them, were meant for children. Punch was popular in its time. When it was called out for being problematic, I’m sure there were people who complained about that, too.

Tastes change. The culture changes. And I think some comedians cannot wrap their heads around that. The best catch the culture in a story or a moment that make people laugh. That’s a gift, but then the culture moves on. You have to keep up.

When I want a laugh, I admit, I go looking for it in old sitcoms. But I wouldn’t want the rules that those people followed to be the rules forever. And you are still very much allowed to find funny what you’ve always found funny. The difference now is that there will be people pushing back when you try to put it out to a wider audience. Those people have always been here. They just didn’t have a voice until now.

So, yes, if you make ham-fisted jokes about women or the LGBTQ+ community or people living with disabilities or the French, someone will come for you. And I don’t think it’s because they “don’t have a sense of humor.” I think it might just be because you’ve been living in a bubble and they are tired of playing Judy to your Punch.

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