Larry David managed to get through jokes about the homeless, the blind, the ugly and Jewish sex predators last night — and had his “Saturday Night Live” monologue ended there, you might not be reading this article.
“I think I’m doing quite well,” David said to himself after a joke about the Hunchback of Notre Dame’s dating standards. Some of the critics watching thought the legendary comedy writer was already bombing, but the audience cheered David on.
Nearly through with his routine, David clasped his hands together on the stage and segued from the topic of sexual assaulters to Holocaust victims.
“I’ve always, always, been obsessed with women, and I’ve often wondered — if I’d grown up in Poland when Hitler came to power and was sent to a concentration camp, would I still be checking out women in the camp?” said David, whose family is Jewish.
Titters in the darkened studio.
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“I think I would!” David said, and launched into an impression that the Times of Israel would later summarize as “picking up women in concentration camps during the Holocaust.”
“How’s it going?” David-as-prisoner asked an imaginary woman from the next barracks over. “They treating you okay?”
“You know,” he said, “if we ever get out of here, I’d love to take you out for some latkes. You like latkes?
“What? What did I say? Is it me, or is it the whole thing? It’s because I’m bald, isn’t it?”
That was enough.
“Not a good segue,” remarked the husband of Jean Edelstein as they watched this. Edelstein subsequently wrote a critique of the monologue for the Guardian and wondered whether — after co-creating “Seinfeld” and starring in “Curb Your Enthusiasm” for nine seasons — David simply wasn’t funny anymore.
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“He managed to be offensive, insensitive and unfunny all at same time,” wrote the Anti-Defamation League’s chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt. “Quite a feat.”
David had, at least, contributed to an “awkward” SNL episode, the New York Times wrote. And a chef spoke for many on Twitter when she declared: “Nothing about the holocaust will ever be funny.”