Seinfeld Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Seinfeld. Here they are! All 100 of them:

If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?
Jerry Seinfeld
Somebody just gave me a shower radio. Thanks a lot. Do you really want music in the shower? I guess there's no better place to dance than a slick surface next to a glass door.
Jerry Seinfeld
Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason
Jerry Seinfeld
A bookstore is one of the only pieces of physical evidence we have that people are still thinking.
Jerry Seinfeld
Dogs are the leaders of the planet. If you see two life forms, one of them's making a poop, the other one's carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge.
Jerry Seinfeld
There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.
Jerry Seinfeld
What I don't understand is how women can pour hot wax on their bodies, let it dry, then rip out every single hair by its root and still be scared of spiders.
Jerry Seinfeld
According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.
Jerry Seinfeld
Elaine: Ugh, I hate people. Jerry: Yeah, they're the worst.
Jerry Seinfeld
It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.
Jerry Seinfeld
If I want a long boring story with no point to it, I have my life.
Jerry Seinfeld
A two-year old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it.
Jerry Seinfeld
The best revenge is living well.
Jerry Seinfeld
Why do people give each other flowers? To celebrate various important occasions, they’re killing living creatures? Why restrict it to plants? 'Sweetheart, let’s make up. Have this deceased squirrel.
Jerry Seinfeld
Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you've got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn't your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash.
Jerry Seinfeld
You know the message you're sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You're telling the world, 'I give up. I can't compete in normal society. I'm miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.
Jerry Seinfeld
Where lipstick is concerned, the important thing is not color, but to accept God's final word on where your lips end.
Jerry Seinfeld
And that's when I realized, when you're a kid you don't need a costume, you ARE superman.
Jerry Seinfeld (Halloween)
I am so busy doing nothing... that the idea of doing anything - which as you know, always leads to something - cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything.
Jerry Seinfeld
What is this obsession people have with books? They put them in their houses like they're trophies. What do you need it for after you read it?
Jerry Seinfeld
The Swiss have an interesting army. Five hundred years without a war. Pretty impressive. Also pretty lucky for them. Ever seen that little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews. Bottle openers. ‘Come on, buddy, let’s go. You get past me, the guy in the back of me, he’s got a spoon. Back off, I’ve got the toe clippers right here.
Jerry Seinfeld
And secondly, losing your virginity doesn't make you a slut. I slept with your father when I was your age. . . ' 'Mia,' my father roared from the other room. 'What? So we're going to lie to her now,?' she shouted back. He walked in. 'What if your mother finds out? Or my mother?' 'Robert, it was twenty years ago. I don't think there's much they can do.' He looked at me, pointing a finger. 'No sex for you.' He used the Soup Nazi's accent from Seinfeld.
Melina Marchetta (Saving Francesca)
I think you should know that real-life white people are not all as funny as the ones on 'Seinfeld'.
Aaron McGruder
They say - "they" being the great philosophers, or possibly the cast of Seinfeld - that breaking up is like pushing over a Coke machine. You can't just do it, you have to set the thing in motion, rock it back and forth a few times.
Jennifer Weiner (Good in Bed (Cannie Shapiro, #1))
When you interrupt, you've stopped listening. People need to be heard.
Jerry Seinfeld
I don't wanna be a Pirate!!!!
Jerry Seinfeld
You all watched a sketch about feminism and you didn't even know it because of all the jokes. It's like when Jessica Seinfeld puts spinach in kids' brownies. Suckers!
Tina Fey (Bossypants)
Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in and no one can stop it. When the doctor slaps your behind, he's ripping your ticket and away you go. As you make each passage from youth to adulthood to maturity, sometimes you put your arms up and scream, sometimes you just hang on to that bar in front of you. But the ride is the thing. I think the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair's messed, you're out of breath, and you didn't throw up.
Jerry Seinfeld
No soup for you
Jerry Seinfeld
You'll fold faster than Superman on laundry day
Jerry Seinfeld
Looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun. You don't stare at it. It's too risky. Ya get a sense of it and then you look away.
Jerry Seinfeld
Let's face it: a date is a job-interview, that lasts all night. The only difference between a date and a job interview is: not many job-interviews is there a chance you'll end up naked at the end of it.
Jerry Seinfeld
Come on, who saw what happened?" "I did," I volenteered. "Well?" "Buttwipe wanted to know what jerkface was looking at." I turned turned eyes on the bloody and dirt-smeared brawlers. "You were barely 3-inches apart. Couldn't you see that you were both looking at each other?" The teacher's face reddened. "Who do you think you are? Jerry Seinfeld?" "You must be confused with another student," I told him. "My name is Capricorn Anderson.
Gordon Korman (Schooled)
The IRS! They're like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!
Jerry Seinfeld
I'm in the unfortunate position of having to consider other people's feelings
Jerry Seinfeld
i chose not to run
Jerry Seinfeld
Festivus for the Restivus!
Jerry Seinfeld
I don't understand women at all. Like how a women can pour boiling hot wax onto their upper thigh, then rip the hair out by the root... and still be afraid of a spider.
Jerry Seinfeld
Keep your head up in failure, and your head down in success.
Jerry Seinfeld
I gazed around the room and my eyes stopped dead on a little boy standing in the corner. This was a particularly eerie doll. Life-sized and blond-haired and blue-eyed. I saw a little Nazi boy, pockets probably stuffed with scissors and retractable blades. My grandfather on my mother's side was rumored to be half Jewish, which practically makes me Jerry Seinfeld's brother, and thus wary of blond German boys with their hands out of sight.
Augusten Burroughs (Possible Side Effects)
Once you start doing only what you've already proven you can do, you're on the road to death.
Jerry Seinfeld
You know you really need some help. A regular psychiatrist couldn't even help you. You need to go to like Vienna or something. You know what I mean? You need to get involved at the University level. Like where Freud studied and have all those people looking at you and checking up on you. That's the kind of help you need. Not the once a week for eighty bucks. No. You need a team. A team of psychiatrists working round the clock thinking about you, having conferences, observing you, like the way they did with the Elephant Man. That's what I'm talking about because that's the only way you're going to get better.
Jerry Seinfeld
The basic conflict between men and women, sexually, is that men are like firemen. To men, sex is an emergency, and no matter what we’re doing we can be ready in two minutes. Women, on the other hand, are like fire. They’re very exciting, but the conditions have to be exactly right for it to occur.
Jerry Seinfeld
You see, that's the true spirit of Christmas: people being helped by people other than me.
Jerry Seinfeld
If you're a surfer, you just want to surf. You don't know if anyone's going to see you, and you don't really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.
Jerry Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld once remarked that today’s athletes churn through the rosters of sports teams so rapidly that a fan can no longer support a group of players. He is reduced to rooting for their team logo and uniforms: “You are standing and cheering and yelling for your clothes to beat the clothes from another city.
Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity)
The turkeys are not going to Jurassic Park you,” he says. “You’re not the bloke from Seinfeld. You’re Jeff Goldblum. Go to sleep.
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
I love Amazon 1-Click ordering. Because if it takes two clicks, I don't even want it anymore.
Jerry Seinfeld
BY 2013, SEINFELD WOULD BECOME the most successful show ever in syndication. Networks buy reruns in packages sold in “cycles,” and Seinfeld was the first show in history to get to a fifth cycle, taking its rerun sales through 2017—nearly twenty years since its finale.
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong (Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything)
Being funny is one of the ultimate weapons a person can have in human society.
Jerry Seinfeld
[We do some TV talk. He loves Seinfeld, thinks Friends is “a little gooey.
David Lipsky (Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace)
No, no. It's not your fault. 'Books, books, I need my books.' Have you re-read those books yet, by the way?" - Jerry, "Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld
Men don’t care what’s on TV. They only care what else is on TV. JERRY SEINFELD
Christopher Ryan (Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships)
Seinfeld was the most popular, most transformative live-action show on television. It altered the language and shifted comedic sensibilities, and almost every random episode was witnessed by more people than the 2019 finale of Game of Thrones.
Chuck Klosterman (The Nineties: A Book)
I binge-watched every season of Seinfeld when I was fifteen and came out of it believing that Jerry was right—there’s something annoying about every single human on this planet.
Colleen Hoover (Layla)
provides American business with the only reliable domestic market in the world. Schools train individuals to respond as a mass. Boys and girls are drilled in being bored, frightened, envious, emotionally needy, generally incomplete. A successful mass production economy requires such a clientele. A small business, small farm economy like that of the Amish requires individual competence, thoughtfulness, compassion, and universal participation; our own requires a managed mass of leveled, spiritless, anxious, familyless, friendless, godless, and obedient people who believe the difference between Cheers and Seinfeld is a subject worth arguing about.
John Taylor Gatto (The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling)
You know, a wise man once said, ‘Pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a gap.’ ” “Pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a gap,” she repeated. “Sounds like St. Ignatius.” “Jerry Seinfeld actually.
Tiffany Reisz (The Confessions (The Original Sinners, #8.2))
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld advised aspiring comedian Brad Isaac that, because daily writing was the key to writing better jokes, Isaac should buy a calendar with a box for every day of the year, and every day, after writing, cross off the day with a big red X. “After a few days you’ll have a chain,” Seinfeld explained. “You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.
Gretchen Rubin (Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life)
Newman!!!
Jerry Seinfeld
It's not a lie if you believe it.
George Costanza
The funniest part of that joke is, 'say what you will about Hitler.
Jerry Seinfeld
Seinfeld began his advice to Isaac with some common sense, noting “the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes,” and then explaining that the way to create better jokes was to write every day. Seinfeld continued by describing a specific technique he used to help maintain this discipline. He keeps a calendar on his wall. Every day that he writes jokes he crosses out the date on the calendar with a big red X. “After a few days you’ll have a chain,” Seinfeld said. “Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.” This chain method (as some now call it) soon became a hit among writers and fitness enthusiasts—communities that thrive on the ability to do hard things consistently.
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
we are all trying to get to the same island, whether you swim, fly, surf or skydiving. What matters is when the red light comes on.
Jerry Seinfeld
Sometimes I want to go back to the old flip phone. One of those old-people ones that they advertise on TV with the giant buttons like floor tiles.
Jerry Seinfeld (Is This Anything?)
Nobody cares about someone like me, because they don't know the frustration that you feel when you have the solution, but you do not have the problem.
Jerry Seinfeld (Is This Anything?)
ELAINE: Go talk to her. GEORGE: Elaine, bald men, with no jobs, and no money, who live with their parents, don't approach strange women. Seinfeld episode "The Opposite
Sienfeld
George Costanza gave to Jerry Seinfeld about how to fool a polygraph test: “Jerry, just remember. It’s not a lie if you believe it.
Russell A. Poldrack (The New Mind Readers: What Neuroimaging Can and Cannot Reveal about Our Thoughts)
You're not the bloke from Seinfeld. You're Jeff Goldblum.
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
He takes a big chip, dips it in the salsa, bites off half, and double dips. That’s right. He just offended Jerry Seinfeld and the crew with one bite.
Julia Kent (Shopping for a Billionaire Box Set One (Shopping for a Billionaire #1-5))
I have come to the conclusion that Seinfeld is a dank cesspool of humanity.
Jesse Saperstein (Atypical: Life with Asperger's in 20 1/3 Chapters)
A calendar helps you plan work, gives you concrete goals, and keeps you on track. The comedian Jerry Seinfeld has a calendar method that helps him stick to his daily joke writing. He suggests that you get a wall calendar that shows you the whole year. Then, you break your work into daily chunks. Each day, when you’re finished with your work, make a big fat X in the day’s box. Every day, instead of just getting work done, your goal is to just fill a box. “After a few days you’ll have a chain,” Seinfeld says. “Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.” Get a calendar. Fill the boxes. Don’t break the chain.
Austin Kleon (Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative)
A perennial guest star is like being a foster kid who's passed around some really great foster homes. I would love for one of them to keep me, but it's a hell of a lot better than being abandoned.
Fred Stoller (My Seinfeld Year)
It is the story of two men whose sitcom—full of minute observations and despicable characters—snuck through the network system to become a hit that changed TV’s most cherished rules; from then on, antiheroes would rise to prominence, unique voices would invade the airwaves, and the creative forces behind shows would often gain as much power and fame as the faces in front of the cameras. Seinfeld
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong (Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything)
SHUT UP," Carot Top say, the cocane now taking effect. "This isnt Poetry 101. People want to laugh. Your suposed to be a 'King' of Prop Comedy. But youve been acting more like a jester of prop comedy.
Seinfeld 2000 (The Apple Store)
Of course we all try and save time. Cutting corners, little short cuts. But no matter how much time you save, at the end of your life, there's no extra time saved up. You'll be going "what do you mean there's no time?
Jerry Seinfeld (SeinLanguage)
Seinfeld asked if McKinsey is funny. No, the magazine said. “Then I don’t need them,” he said. “If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way. The show was successful because I micromanaged it—every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting.” If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. That is so counterintuitive. But I think it perfectly highlights the danger of shortcuts.
Morgan Housel (Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes)
But the health clubs are a little too strict. What's with the high level of security? The picture IDs, the security guards, the people signing in and out... What is this, NORAD? I mean the people that have a membership go twice a year, who's breaking in? And what if they catch the person, what then? They run. That's aerobic, makes it even worse.
Jerry Seinfeld (SeinLanguage)
Seinfeld was typically American in that show. He was a pretty funny guy, but he had no sense of style. Tacky like a Texan tux. Tasteless dressing and tasteful jokes. That's Seinfeld for me. I would have preferred it the other way around.
Hallgrímur Helgason (The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning)
I wasn't feeling that social, though I was painfully alone at the time. I do things like that. I'll moan to myself how isolated I am, go outside, see someone I know and then hide from them. It's not always because this person is the most annoying. Sometimes with some people I just know what the conversation is going to be and I don't have the strength to relive it in real life after experiencing it in my head.
Fred Stoller (My Seinfeld Year)
Jerry Seinfeld is a genius. Seinfeld, who doesn’t need to work, still does stand-up comedy, fine-tuning his bits obsessively, averaging close to a hundred shows a year. He says he’s going to keep doing it “into my 80s, and beyond.” In a recent interview, he compared himself to surfers: “What are they doing this for? It’s just pure. You’re alone. That wave is so much bigger and stronger than you. You’re always outnumbered. They always can crush you. And yet you’re going to accept that and turn it into a little, brief, meaningless art form.” Selya
William Finnegan (Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life)
The thing I don't understand about the suicide person is the people who try to commit suicide, for some reason they don't die, and that's it. They stop trying. Why don't they just keep trying? What's changed? Is their life any better now? No. In fact. it's worse, because now they've found out here's one more thing you stink at. And that's why these people don't succeed in life to begin with. They give up too easy. I say, pills don't work? Try a rope. Car won't start in the garage? Get a tune-up. There's nothing more rewarding than reaching a goal you've set for yourself.
Jerry Seinfeld (SeinLanguage)
Washington's all abstraction. It's about access to power and nothing else. I mean, I'm sure it's fun if you're living next door to Seinfeld, or To Wolfe, or Mike Bloomberg, but living next door to them isn't what New York is about, In Washington people literally talk about how many feet away from John Kerry's house their own house is. The neighborhoods are all so blah, the only thing that turns people on is proximity to power. It's a total fetish culture. People get this kind of orgasmic shiver when they tell you they sat next to Paul Wolfowitz at a conference or got invited to Grover Norquist's breakfast.
Jonathan Franzen (Freedom)
Every other man is looking great saint after marriage.
Jerry Seinfeld (O Melhor Livro Sobre Nada)
Friends, family, school, they were just obstacles in the way of getting more books.
Jerry Seinfeld
No, no. It's not your fault. Books, books, I need my books. Have you re-read those books yet, by the way? - Jerry
Seinfeld
Jary, Garge, Elane and Daved Pady emerge from the Lamborgini Veneno like sad clown's from the SICKEST clown car ever.
Seinfeld 2000 (The Apple Store)
When you are driving, you're outside and inside, moving and completely still, all at the same time. I think that's something.
Jerry Seinfeld (SeinLanguage)
I love those small airplane bathrooms. It's like your own little apartment on the plane. You go in, close the door, the light comes right on. It's a little surprise part every time you go in.
Jerry Seinfeld (SeinLanguage)
Mom," say Malia Obame, "why dont you go get the photo albem of dad when he was a small boy, maybe it will jossel his memery." "Good idea," Michele Obame say. "I guess thats why we call you the smart one," she go, and cast a look of disapoint at Sashe Obame.
Seinfeld 2000 (The Apple Store)
My mother tried her best, but was saddled with many fears that she passed on to me, with the highest anxiety. I’m pretty sure I’m the only nine-year-old who set up a lemonade stand whose mother reacted by panicking. “What if it goes under? Don’t do it, Freddie.
Fred Stoller (My Seinfeld Year)
This was the tedious process by which I found great writers, like Greg Daniels (creator of The Office) and Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, who three years later had my job running the show. In both cases, they had written pitch-perfect Seinfeld scripts. Greg’s was set entirely in a single parking space and was so good that Seinfeld actually produced it. Bill and Josh’s script had George Costanza accidentally swallowing a jagged piece of glass at a party; all the guests stay for hours, waiting to see if George “passes” the glass safely. It was cringe comedy at its very best.
Mike Reiss (Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets, and Outright Lies from a Lifetime Writing for The Simpsons)
The waitress walk away. Everyone look's at each other and then laugh. The laugh it feel so cathartic. It break the ice and sudenly the mood feel like old times. They may not have money now to aford food, but they still have each other. And forget what Maslow's "heirarchey of needs" say: some time's freindship is more important than nutrient's.
Seinfeld 2000 (The Apple Store)
One hour later, the presedent is standing in the White House press room before a full house of journelist's and reporter's. Obame flash his milien doller grin. It lite up the room like fourth of July fire work's. It cause at least three feamale reporter's in atendence to quietley have orgasems. But then Obame grin vanish and the mood turn sombre.
Seinfeld 2000
Another misnomer concerned the relationship between audience size and advertising rates. One common interpretation propounded that programs with higher ratings produced higher revenues - a logical fallacy insofar as it flagrantly disregarded crucial influencing factors (notably, content and demographics). In 1994, to cite one illustrative example, Seinfeld commanded $390,000 for a 30-second spot - $40,000 more than Home Improvement - despite attracting fewer overall viewers. Its ability to draw more young viewers (often defined as the ‘highly desirable’ 18-49 demographic) instead made all the difference. In sum, as industry experts realized, advertisers bought ‘demos’ before they did households.
Guy Evans (Nitro: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's WCW)
Instead of fixing the econamy, U.S. "Presedent" (recount pls) Bary Obame is back in the Ovel Office. Hes sitting on the sofa in the midle of pretty inappropriete gmail G-chat with actres Scarlet Johansen. "OK Scarlat, thank you for emailing me so many nude photos. They were very provocetive LOL. And thank you for offer me sex intercorse :)" Obame type, and because its gmail G-chat, the :) make a 90-degree clock wise turn and anamate into a smile emoji. "Good nite.
Seinfeld 2000 (The Apple Store)
In the face of uncertainty, our first instinct is often to reject novelty, looking for reasons why unfamiliar concepts might fail. When managers vet novel ideas, they’re in an evaluative mindset. To protect themselves against the risks of a bad bet, they compare the new notion on the table to templates of ideas that have succeeded in the past. When publishing executives passed on Harry Potter, they said it was too long for a children’s book; when Brandon Tartikoff saw the Seinfeld pilot, he felt it was “too Jewish” and “too New York” to appeal to a wide audience. Rice professor Erik Dane finds that the more expertise and experience people gain, the more entrenched they become in a particular way of viewing the world. He points to studies showing that expert bridge players struggled more than novices to adapt when the rules were changed, and that expert accountants were worse than novices at applying a new tax law. As we gain knowledge about a domain, we become prisoners of our prototypes.
Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
Elane scan the room and takeing in the white antiseptec decor of Buzzfeed office in Soho. Her eyes land on a wall decoratien, a glareing yellow butten about the size of a parasol. It read simply: LOL. It seem to mock her. Honestly? Elane just dosent fit in here. No one here is under 30 and to Elane it is almost like nobody speaking Englesh. Everything is "HTML 5" this and "Keven Ware sports injery" that and "Game Of Throans recap" this and "Downten Abby parady tumblr" that. She have no idea what any of that mean. She open her face book and feal deep pit of emptynes as she click thru the profiles of her 17 face book frends.
Seinfeld 2000 (The Apple Store)
U.S. Presedent Barack Sadam Husene Obame sit in the darkened Oval Ofice at 2 a.m. wearing hes traditienel Kenyan roabe. He take one last bite of the Chicago style deep dish pizza that he has flown to him every day on the Amerecan tax payer's dime and wipe the grease off his mouth with the U.S. consititutien. He get up and walk to desk, where he keeps the Kenyan black magic crystle ball. Its black glow iluminate his face. "Eeny, meeny, miney, mo — which basic U.S. freedoms are next to go?" he say aloud to no one and every one at the same time. Then he flash that trade mark Bary Obame million doller grin as a crack of lightning sound in the distence.
Seinfeld 2000 (The Apple Store)
Sudenly Garge spring up and walk to the wall to admire some modarn art hanging on Frank and Estele Catandas wall. Hes impressed. Frank and Estele have always had a traditienel sensibility when it come to aesthetic matter's. For as long as he knew it, this space on the wall was ocupied by a Normen Rockwell print of a smileing child with a cast on his arm eating a handful of bird seed out of the hand of the postman. But now its replace with this minimelist art work, a large black rectangle. He make out hes bald reflectien in the imposibly smooth black surfece. It look like something that should be hang in the Moma (Museum Of Modarn Art). "This is beauteful," Garge remark. "It seem like a stark comentary on the end of art. Who designe this?" "Not art," Frank go. "Thats a televisien.
Seinfeld 2000 (The Apple Store)
Somewhere in between are the rest of us natives, in whom such change revives long-buried anger at those faraway people who seem to govern the world: city people, educated city people who win and control while the rest of us work and lose. Snort at the proposition if you want, but that was the view I grew up with, and it still is quite prevalent, though not so open as in those days. These are the sentiments the fearful rich and the Republicans capitalize on in order to kick liberal asses in elections. The Democrats' 2006 midterm gains should not fool anyone into thinking that these feelings are not still out here in this heartland that has so rapidly become suburbanized. It is still politically profitable to cast matters as a battle between the slick people, liberals all, and the regular Joes, people who like white bread and Hamburger Helper and "normal" beer. When you are looking around you in the big cities at all those people, it's hard to understand that there are just as many out here who never will taste sushi or, in all likelihood, fly on an airplane other than when we are flown to boot camp, compliments of Uncle Sam. Only 20 percent of Americans have ever owned a passport. To the working people I grew up with, sophistication of any and all types, and especially urbanity, is suspect. Hell, those city people have never even fired a gun. Then again, who would ever trust Jerry Seinfeld or Dennis Kucinich or Hillary Clinton with a gun? At least Dick Cheney hunts, even if he ain't safe to hunt with. George W. Bush probably knows a good goose gun when he sees one. Guns are everyday tools, like Skil saws and barbecue grills. So when the left began to demonize gun owners in the 1960s, they not only were arrogant and insulting because they associated all gun owners with criminals but also were politically stupid. It made perfect sense to middle America that the gun control movement was centered in large urban areas, the home to everything against which middle America tries to protect itself—gangbangers, queer bars, dope-fiend burglars, swarthy people jabbering in strange languages. From the perspective of small and medium-size towns all over the country, antigun activists are an overwrought bunch.
Joe Bageant (Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War)