Larry David

I’m going back and forth about whether I think these Larry David quotes are offensive. Larry David was doing an interview with the Mike Lupica Show this week, and he was asked about the smash Broadway musical Hamilton. Hamilton has been a phenomenon for more than a year, it’s pulled in tens of millions of dollars in ticket sales, and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda has won a Pulitzer and a Peabody, plus the musical picked up no fewer than 16 Tony Award nominations. Basically, everyone thinks Hamilton is THE BEST. Full-stop. But no, says Larry David. Hamilton is popular because white people are just pretending to like it so they can be hip. “Hamilton” may be making history on Broadway, but Larry David, for one, is curbing his enthusiasm. The comic actor took to the “Mike Lupica Show” podcast, which debuted Tuesday, to express his theory that a lot of the demand comes from white ticket-buyers trying to “solidify their liberal bona fides.” “Yeah, ‘Hamilton’ — it was pretty amazing,” David told the Daily News columnist. “But I have a feeling there are a lot of white people who are saying they are completely blown away even though they didn’t really understand half of the things the people on stage were saying. They just want to solidify their liberal bona fides and how cool they are: ‘Yea, I love Hamilton. Yea I get it, I’m hip.’” Lupica made a connection to the kind of voters who mislead political pollsters. “I think some of them are. No but, the show is amazing,” said David. “No doubt about it, it’s an incredible show, but I do have this theory on a lot of the people that are seeing it.” [From The NY Daily News] I was going to make a point about how Larry David would never say “Leonardo DiCaprio’s films are so popular because white people just want to pretend that they’re cool.” But I actually do think that happens. By most accounts, The Revenant was a beautiful snoozefest, and I do think some people said they liked the movie because they wanted to look artsy and cool. So, is that happening with Hamilton? Or is Larry David showing off some racial microaggression about Hamilton, like the only reason it’s so successful is because white people are trying to be cool about something they don’t “get”? Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.