Jerry Seinfeld likened the Free Palestine movement to the Ku Klux Klan — even saying those who use the phrase “Free Palestine” are worse than the white supremacist group — at a student event at Duke University meant to honor hostages who are being held in Gaza.
Seinfeld spoke at the school in Durham, North Carolina, to introduce a former Israeli hostage, Omer Shem Tov, when he made the remarks, according to the university’s student newspaper, The Duke Chronicle. He reportedly started by saying, in reference to the Free Palestine activist movement, “Just say you don’t like Jews.”
“By saying ‘Free Palestine,’ you’re not admitting what you really think. So it’s actually — compared to the Ku Klux Klan, I’m actually thinking the Klan is actually a little better here, because they can come right out and say, ‘We don’t like Blacks, we don’t like Jews.’ Okay, that’s honest,'" the Chronicle reported Seinfeld said.
While agree that words should have meanings, he definitely still was nearly 40 and apparently preferring the company of a 17 year old. Not a pedo by the evidence presented, ok, but that ice is thin.
That’s not thin ice. Paedophiles are attracted to prepubescent children, i.e., below the age of 13. Here’s where the ice is at its thinnest to diagnose someone as a paedophile, while ethically one is already submerged of course. It’s obviously not to be taken lightly with traumatic life-changing consequences when indulged.
In Seinfeld-Lonstein’s case, however, context matters. Here’s a quote from a book I’m reading which is an apt litmus test to decide if any relationship is weird or not.
Judging from the sources I’ve read Shoshanna and Jerry were able to talk to each other without one manipulating the other. While it’s statistically more unlikely considering their indeed unusual age gap, it does happen. Conversely, I’ve seen people in their thirties talk to each other where one was clearly dumbing themself down when talking to their significant other, which seemed quite weird.
TL;DR: there’s a night and day difference between actual indulging paedophiles who cause human trafficking and unimaginable suffering/death, and haphazardly being attracted to someone in their late adolescence. The former belong to the most horrible forms of human depravity, while the latter, well, doesn’t. If one needs to manipulate another to form a connection, then it is ethically wrong regardless of age.
Ok, so the guy goes for as young as he possibly can and we’re going to assume that that confirms that he wouldn’t going any younger if he could? That’s the thin ice I’m talking about. I agree that we cannot call him a pedophile because there is no direct evidence of it, I’m on board with that, but his actions are not doing a lot for him. If he said “oh yea I like 24 year olds and older” that’s still weird for his age but it shows that his limit is a personal one and not a legal one.
It’s also weird that he says he could love someone whole-heartedly but also couldn’t properly communicate with her on more nuanced topics. Like, what made this minor so great and why could he not find that in anyone between 30-45y/o?
Oh it wouldn’t surprise me if many would go lower if the opportunity presented itself. Some of them, a small minority, will be paedophiles, and would go as low as they could. However, biologically the majority are simply attracted to fertility, attractiveness, i.e., young women, not girls. That’s exactly why there’s a need for an age or metric where ambiguity regarding potential harm/manipulation is decreased to a minimum, because obviously any kind of harm toward living beings is unethical; spare self-defence, but that’s neither here nor there.
Only aiming for as young as legally possible would be suspicious, but as far as I’m reading he’s still together with his wife Jessica Seinfeld who he met when she was 26, so I’m not yet sure what you mean by “his actions”. Anyway, what about what the women think in these situations? Shoshanna was on board for four years, and so were her parents. There’s no indication Seinfeld was inappropriate.
Women are as biologically wired as men are, and equally flawed—just look at how Justin Bieber was publicly salivated over at a similar young age, that’s clearly not okay. Meanwhile all of these discussions oftentimes sound as if women are always at the mercy of men. They aren’t.
If you were referring to “I can’t philosophize with her”, that’s a quote from a wholly different book about two siblings part of the youth resistance in Nazi Germany. I just found that sentence particularly apt to decide whether a relationship is right or not.
Oh god are you really bringing up a “women do it to” point completely unprompted?
As for the other quote, yes I clearly missed that. Still, I’m not sure what it has to do with the Seinfeld thing even though it is tangentially related.
As for “being attracted to fertility” and whatever…yea that’s not it, chief. Maybe I’m of the group that doesn’t see it that way but I’m 30 and I see someone ~25 and under and I see a child, not someone I should be sexually attracted to. Certainly not someone who I’d actually give that kind of attention to. I’m more than monkey brain, and maybe most people aren’t but we trust them to have jobs and shit so they should be able to handle this, too.
Think about the number of words you have written on this particular subject. I’m not saying it automatically makes you a weirdo to think so long and hard about this but… I wouldn’t want to hang out with you.
If you were falsely accused of rape or murder, would you want a lawyer that analyzes your case long and meticulously or a zero-attention-span illiterate straight from Idiocracy that sifts TikTok’s “Ow-My-Ballz” videos all day?
Thinking long and deeply about oftentimes uncomfortable subjects or ethical dilemmas is why becoming a lawyer, doctor, judge, et cetera, is difficult, and accusing a person over the Internet is not. The latter unfortunately requires Brandolini’s law to refute: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.”
The term is “sleazebag” or “pederast” if you want to get technical