Earlier this year, during an interview with the New Yorker to promote his film ‘Unfrosted’, veteran comedian Jerry Seinfeld had stated that the “extreme left and PC crap” are the major barriers for comedians today and the reason television comedy is suffering.

“[…] people worrying so much about offending other people,” he had said at the time. “When you write a script, and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups – ‘Here’s our thought about this joke’ – well, that’s the end of your comedy.” The comedian recanted this statement during his appearance on fellow comedian Tom Papa’s Breaking Bread podcast this week.

“I said that the ‘extreme left’ has suppressed the art of comedy. I did say that. That’s not true,” he said on the podcast. “If you’re a champion skier, you can put the gates anywhere you want on the mountain and you’re going to make the gate. That’s comedy. Whatever the culture is, we make the gate. You don’t make the gate, you’re out of the game.”

“Does culture change and are their things that I used to say that [I can’t because] people are always moving [the gate]? Yes, but that’s the biggest and easiest target,” Seinfeld added. “You can’t say certain words about groups. So what? The accuracy of your observation has to be 100 times finer than that just to be a comedian…So I don’t think, as I said, the ‘extreme left’ has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy.”

When Seinfeld made the comments in April regarding PC culture, he had received significant backlash from fans and peers including his ‘Seinfeld’ co-star Julia Louis-Dreyfus. “There’s a lot of talk about how comics can’t be funny now,” Louis-Dreyfus said during her appearance on the On With Kara Swisher podcast. “I think that’s bullsh*t. Physical comedy and intellectual comedy and political comedy, I think, has never been more interesting, because there’s so much to do.”