the new york observer (Jared Kushner’s longtime newspaper/website) must be overjoyed that the run of Larry David’s curb your enthusiasm is ending this year; back in 2020, it ordered David to stop being funny, and submit to the me-too hoax

By N.S.

Many years ago, the producers of a once funny sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, gave up on laughs (“Who needs laughs? We’ve got laugh tracks!”), and switched to feminazi insults against men. They also expected the public to accept that a clearly homosexual performer was heterosexual. They seemed to weather the storm. Actually, there was no storm, that I’m aware of.


“Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm Lumbers Clumsily Into #MeToo”
“This big fat misunderstanding is not funny.”
By Lauren Hakimi
new york observer
2/14/20
https://observer.com/2020/02/larry-david-hbo-curb-your-enthusiasm-metoo-happy-new-year/

….

“It’s true—Jeff may not be Weinstein, Larry was only wearing the robe because he got his clothes dirty, and as for the MAGA hat, he was only wearing it as part of an admittedly ingenious scheme to get people to leave him alone. The viewers are meant to laugh at this big fat misunderstanding—sympathize, as we usually do, with the cranky but lovable Larry David. As though it’s impossible for someone who isn’t Weinstein and doesn’t believe in MAGA to still be a gigantic a--hole.

“It’s a great people repellent.” -Larry, on his MAGA hat HBO

By contrasting the evil [!] behavior of people like Weinstein and Donald Trump with the less virulent antics of Larry David, Curb minimizes the horribleness [!] of doing things like grabbing a woman’s shirt or otherwise invading her personal space, which in turn makes the women complaining seem unreasonable. [Because they are!] “I was lucky to get out of there,” the caterer later exaggerates to Larry’s assistant, driving home the point that not only were these women mistaken about Jeff’s identity, they must also be out of their minds.

[“Evil.” Got it?]

“By portraying women as hysterical here, especially in jest, Curb feeds into a popular, false stereotype that prevents women from confronting men who do things like grab their shirts, reach into their plates, and, in the new season’s second episode, hold their wrists so they can’t get away. And it’s not confined to just this one episode.

“Sexism is a problem Curb has had for awhile [sic] now. We are made to yearn for the hilarious moments when Larry acts pettily—oh, how we wish we could be like him and say what was really on our minds! But Larry’s trademark impoliteness that makes Curb funny constantly comes at the expense of its female characters, the stereotypical killjoy old-balls-and-chains who have to be portrayed as unreasonable to trigger the amusing sensibilities of Larry David and his posse of bros.

“Jeff’s wife Susie can be counted on for sudden angry outbursts, poshness and a desire to control everybody around her, while Jeff is reduced to the trope of the dumb husband who needs his wife to tell him what to do. [N.S.: So, anything a man does is wrong.] Meanwhile, Larry’s now ex-wife Cheryl plays the role of the needy, party-pooper wife.

“A dog whistle to disillusioned husbands out there, the wives’ irrationality plays out most recognizably in cases where the husbands just want to play golf. [“Dog whistle”? Did she actually say “dog whistle” out loud?] “In a Season 9 scene, Jeff’s golf-playing is threatened by Susie’s obnoxious demand that he drive her to the airport. In a classic scene in Season 3, Larry and Cheryl are told there will be a terrorist attack in Los Angeles, and Larry considers it an excellent opportunity to go play golf, while Cheryl is willing to die and expects Larry to do the same. [But she doesn’t consider that funny?]

“’Do you think that’s a good idea?’ Cheryl asks Larry passive-aggressively when he says he wants to play golf. ‘It just seems like if we’re gonna go, we should go together.’ The premise of Curb is supposed to be that Larry is the punchline of the joke, but in this utterly bizarre conversation as well as in many others, Cheryl is the unreasonable one.

”By inventing such irrational female characters, Curb’s creators promote a sexist stereotype in order to serve as the butt of Larry’s antics. [What “sexist stereotype”?] In Season 10, the sexism culminates in the portrayal of women as eager to cry sexual harassment, which is the opposite of the truth given women’s continued reluctance, even in the post-#MeToo era, to speak up about harassment. [Liar.]

”Jeff may not be Weinstein, but the bigger misunderstanding is not the assistant’s. The much more dangerous misunderstanding belongs to whoever thought it would be funny to portray a woman whose breast Larry grabs—accidentally or not—as unreasonable. Consider my enthusiasm curbed.”