I might be the biggest Larry David fan on the planet. It’s not just the zany concoctions David comes up with in “Curb Your Enthusiasm”; it’s also his disposition to offend everyone.
“Curb” is built to offend. Over 12 seasons, the show took on virtually every taboo imaginable, from the Holocaust to incest to the disabled to #MeToo to racism to Jewish-Palestinian relations, among many others. And yet, despite the cringe, David got away with it.
Why? Because the show is funny. Like, really funny.
One of my favorite episodes was when David took on Trump. His ingenious angle was to use a MAGA hat to get out of trouble with an angry biker or a lunch date with a boring TV producer. It played seamlessly into David’s character– putting his own petty needs first, even if it meant showing something that makes his fans recoil.
In this fearless and edgy eagerness to offend everyone, David has become an exemplar for that ultimate freedom we call free speech.
But with one recent op-ed in The New York Times titled “A Private Dinner with Hitler,” he undermined his own principle of freedom to offend.
Evidently, David was offended that his friend and comedian Bill Maher had dinner with the reviled Trump and had the nerve to say he found him to be “gracious and measured.”
Being a superstar comedian, David could not just come out and say he was offended. So he created a fictitious dinner with the Fuhrer, perhaps hoping that the humor would help his admonition go down easier.
“Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler,” David begins his witty op-ed.
This is an obvious reference to Maher’s dinner with Trump, an encounter David satirizes as hopelessly naïve.
“Eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere,” he writes. “I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.”
Ironically, when Maher defended himself from critics who bashed him for meeting Trump, he used the same argument David mocked. Yes, there’s value in talking to even those we despise.
“I had the opportunity to talk to Donald Trump and say things to him that maybe he never hears,” Maher said on the 2angry men podcast. “Literally to speak truth to power. I shouldn’t take that opportunity?”
But let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that there was no value in meeting with Trump. So what? Does Maher need our approval for whom he chooses to talk to? And let’s accept that David was deeply offended by Maher’s decision to meet Trump. Again, so what? David has made a living out of offending people. Can’t he be offended for once? Is he the only one who’s free to offend? Freedom for me but not for thee?
If anything was offensive, it was David dredging up the darkest evil in Jewish history and insulting the 6 million souls who perished under Hitler.
He tried to camouflage his offense with humor:
“[Hitler] said he was starving and led us into the dining room, where he gestured for me to sit next to him. Göring immediately grabbed a slice of pumpernickel, whereupon Hitler turned to me, gave me an eye roll, then whispered, ‘Watch. He’ll be done with his entire meal before you’ve taken two bites.’”
Is that funny? Yes, but it’s funny with a Hitler analogy and a political agenda, two things that undermine the humor. David’s agenda in “Curb” was pure — to make us laugh. In the op-ed, it was to scold a friend who offended his sensibilities.
A comic who has crossed all the red lines scolds a friend for crossing a line that offends him? And he uses Hitler to do it? Someone who refuses to be offended is neither funny nor interesting.
That said, has David’s op-ed curbed my enthusiasm for his show? Not a chance. My life would be diminished without the guaranteed laughs I get from “Curb.”
But I can see yet again how politics and Trump Derangement Syndrome can take people off their game. Trump already takes more than enough heat from his many critics, and this country already has way too many scolds. If there’s one thing we could use right now, it’s a little laughter to give us a break from the around-the-clock hell of politics.
Had David sent his piece to the Jewish Journal, I would have told him just that, even if might have offended him.
