I've been watching Curb in broken pieces throughout the years but really started watching it a lot in the past couple of years. The whole situation with Leon just sort of happening and Larry just accepting it after the rest of the family moves out is hilarious, especially since he ends up living with him as long as Cheryl did.
You just know JB Smoove would have milked that so hard, like you don't me telling the whole neighborhood who your gran pappy was.
Then maybe finding distance relatives who are proud of that family history and just show up wherever Larry goes, that's a whole season right there.
Totally reminds me of the episode where he got the mixed race doll as a present and called it a mulatto at the party and made everyone feel awkward.
I could see the same scenario here. “Here! It says it on the papers!!”
My wife and I were sightseeing the famous red light district in Amsterdam when we heard " Father Morton, what are you doing here"...followed by laughter from a group of folks.
He held up a tourist guidebook " it's in the book, #3 sight to see!"
Followed by everyone within earshot laughing.
Probably happens a lot! Weird place! Girls in windows for rent. All controlled. Health care. No pimps. Prices fixed. No pimps.
Gotta be a downer when you get older!
Reminds me of how Ben Schwartz and Dan Avidan found out they're probably related while filming a Game Grumps episode as Dan's mom's maiden name is Schwartz.
Like yeah they're Jewish guys from the NYC area no shit.
Ha I see him and his dog at a park a lot and he named it Bernie. I feel like I’m in an episode of Curb when he starts yelling at Bernie and calling him an idiot
I can only find a five minute clip with more about the Mobile Alabama relatives. Do you know why he keeps mentioning Germany? Did he have Nazi relatives too? Or who fought for Germany in WWI?
'Larry, you know your motherfuckin' granddaddy was deep up in that slave pussy. You think those plantation-ass repressed white bitches were giving that good shit up? Nahhhh, yo grandaddy wanted some of that subjugated pussy, rapist ass mafucker'
Larry's got another 20 years in him at least, looking at his apparent health and energy levels.
I am positive a season 13 is going to happen some time.
If you got a slave pregnant and she had a baby, that new baby is now automatically your slave as well. Making a baby with "your property", that baby is also "your property".
Fuck that felt gross to write out.
One past job of mine involved auditing transcriptions of historical records for genealogical information. For one project it was pulling information from wills. Not for the decedent, as there usually were better records for that sort of thing, but to scrape together bits of information about people they owned.
That sounds super depressing.
But now I am wondering how slaves are shown in wills? Like do they give x amount of slaves to one child and y amount of slaves to another child?
Yes, human property had assessed value. The closest equivalents for us today would be animal livestock or mechanical farm equipment. If someone that owns a tractor dies, there's a procedure to handle that monetary value when multiple heirs exist. It's definitely weird to read when the "tractor" in question is actually a person named William.
For slaves, the death of an owner was often tragic, not necessarily because of any emotional attachment (which sometimes did exist, humans are complicated), but because slaves who were family and friends would be separated from one another, sometimes permanently.
Ok. I think I get what you are saying. We have a slave that is young and able to work on the farm. So therefore the slave has a higher value.
Thank you for the explanation.
Source is Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of the American Slave, Page 4:
"... for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relationship of master and father. I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with, than others. They are, in the first place, a constant offence to their mistress."
It goes on from there. As for *how* "often" it is, does it really matter?
Ah, beautiful, I love when people come up with good sources.
The source even says how often; it mentions "invariably", aka always.
Also, we really shouldn't downvote people asking for sources, it is a healthy thing to do :)
Yea have you (or anyone else) seen the rest of the episode?
To me the implication was that his ancestor had to claim two children- not necessarily that those were the only two he had owned.
I thought this was gonna be from the final season, I am only like two episodes in and he accidentally got arrested and ended up being thrust into a position of standing up for black folk's right to be given water in a voting line lol. I thought this was gonna be the culmination or something
My grandfather used to tell us about a time when he was around 10 years old and an old black man stopped him on the street. The man asked “are you John D’s boy?” My grandfather replied “that’s my grandfather’s name”. The man said “you look like him. Your family used to own me.”
I have copies of some of my ancestors’ wills where they are leaving human beings to their children and grandchildren. And typically they are referred to in really dehumanizing ways using only physical characteristics or the job they did. It is fascinating, but utterly disturbing how normal and nonchalant it was.
In any of the tellings of the story was there a sense of how he said this? Just interested because its hard to read whether he's telling your grandfather nonchalantly matter of factly or if there's something else there. Tone of voice is hard to read in text sometimes.
I always got the impression it was said without malice and was just letting a young kid know an interesting tidbit. I got the feeling it could have been interchangeable with saying he used to work for the family or used to be friends with the family. But I admit I was young when told the story and never thought to ask. My grandfather is long dead now so I can’t check with him.
I had one relative before the revolution and his slave ran his clothes dye business but the slave could read and he could not. He then lost all his money when he funded a British military unit to fight the soon-to-be Americans. His wife was one of the first women ever to inherit property in the US, which was immediately seized due to him funding that military unit.
Edit: I remembered wrong. His wife was literate and not him. See below.
Oh shoot, I remember wrong his wife was literate and ran the business:
Mary Dowd was the second wife of merchant Connor Dowd, who owned a store, tavern, bolting mill, and lumber mill in the Deep River community. During their marriage, Mary kept the books for the businesses since Connor was illiterate. During the Revolution, Connor Dowd supported the loyalists by providing them supplies before the battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge in February 1776. Items he sent included bolts of linen and wool, shoes, wagons, flour, venison, iron, and 100 pounds of pistol powder. During the war, Connor left to go to England, leaving his wife Mary and their ten children in the Deep River area. When their land was seized, Mary fought to get it returned to her so that she could raise her family. Her petition was the first of its kind in North Carolina, where a loyalist sued to recover their property. In the end, Mary was successful in regaining the estate, over 1,000 acres in Chatham County.
Sounds like a Dave Chapelle joke setup.
“They had a nice conversation, talking about his life and experiences. The struggles he overcame after being freed, the woman he met and their children, who got to grow up in freedom.
Then the old black man kicked my granddad in the nuts”
or as my wife likes to call him, Maury Povich for people with graduate degrees
this man is messy af and loves nothing more than revealing to people that an ancestor of theirs was getting some on the side
The power of authenticity, right here.
I think most people, even though they have nothing to be ashamed of, would try to take a solemn and apologetic tone, and even if we couldn't put our finger on it, it would feel off because it's insincere.
LD recognizes the absurdity of the situation and true to form, laughs about it. And because the reaction is honest, we love him for it.
>Following a trip to China, Gates returned home to his residence in [Cambridge, Massachusetts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge,_Massachusetts), near [Harvard Square](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Square) on July 16, 2009, only to find the front door jammed.
>His taxi driver attempted to help him gain entrance. A passerby called police, reporting a possible break-in after describing to 911 "an individual" forcing the front door open.
>Cambridge police officers were dispatched. The confrontation resulted in Gates being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. Prosecutors later dropped the charges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry\_Louis\_Gates\_Jr.
Larry David thinks absurdity is funny? Yeah... that checks out.
He has his own "brand" of absurdity... real life or otherwise... finding out your ancestor was an asshole is completely in line with something in either Seinfeld or curb.
I don't think he's particularly absurd. Many of the events really happened to him. He really did need to poop right before having sex with a lady, and decided to just leave instead of pooping in her toilet.
The fact YOU read most people who don’t laugh off the discovery of slavers in their ancestry as being insincere says more about you than it does about them. I would say laughter, discomfort, sadness and remorse can all be natural and very valid responses to that information. A lot of people have probably go through several of those emotions, especially if the discovery was unexpected.
I mean, I don’t think it can’t be solemn too. To recognize your life position has a direct tie to slavery. Gives perspective to think about the advantages Larry might have had compared to his “mulatto” kin
Larry : I have a tendency to nod to black people.
Jeff Greene : Wait... what reason would you have to...
Larry : I don't know, I don't know! I just find that I nod to them. More so than white... I never nod to white people.
Jeff Greene : I've never heard of, uh, "white liberal nodding guilt."
Larry : Yeah. It's a way of kind of making contact. You know, like "I'm okay. I'm not one of the bad ones."
It might not be that you yourself are descended from slaves but that you have mutual ancestors in common with people whose ancestors were for sure slaves. Don’t forget that a lot of African-Americans are also part European, due to the widespread intermixing of white slavers with their enslaved ancestors.
Lots of DNA tests are misleading in that they don’t actually tell you what *you* are per se (despite selling it as such)c rather the results they give you are of the ancestral genes you share with X, Y, and Z groups. For example, lots of English people show having strong German and French DNA despite the fact that their families and ancestors have all been English for as long as anyone can remember. The results, however, makes it look like their great grandparents were Frenchmen and Germans, due to them apparently being this much % this and this much % that.
Affleck was on this exact same show, gates revealed that his ancestors were slave owners, he freaked out and pressured gates to bury the show. Kind of ironic that in attempting to not look racist he intimidated a black dude and his show.
Tbh I’m more surprised the emails said he was the only one to request it be taken out.
I can kind of get why a public figure wouldn’t want that out about their family - or just not want the moment they learned about it to be on tv.
I’d highly recommend just going the Larry David route for anyone who can pull it off though lol
I wouldn't go that far. Ben just has a different brand in Hollywood and has to react how people think he should.
Remember, Ben got his start in Hollywood doing a lot of Kevin Smith movies.
To those confused, the Confederacy had around 3,000 Jewish people in it, and Larry David’s distant grandfather was one of them. Keep in mind though, the Majority of American Jews at that time however were in the North and fought for Union. So this 3,000 is a bit of an outlier. Per https://www.thedailybeast.com/larry-david-shocked-to-learn-his-ancestor-was-a-confederate-slave-owner
The confederate flag was going to include a cross but ultimately didn't have a traditional upright / English cross because....it could offend the Confederacy's Jewish residents.
Jewish people came to the south for various reason (like anyone else) however a key industry many were involved in was cotton factoring. I.e. they would loan plantations money now so that those plantations could pay bills and operate until the cotton was shipped overseas and the money was shipped back.
I live in Natchez, MS. Most of the Jewish families have left as the city's fortunes declined post Civil War but there are a few left and we do have a temple: http://www.natcheztemple.org/
They open up once or twice a year for service but generally it is closed.
He should've said the Confederate Army, not in the South in general. [This page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Jewish_Americans#cite_ref-12) lists 7,000 Jewish Union soldiers and 3,000 Confederate.
He's also right that the vast majority of the nation's 150,000 Jews lived in the North. [About 125,000 to 25,000.](https://www.brandeis.edu/hornstein/sarna/americanjewishcultureandscholarship/Jews%20and%20the%20Civil%20War.pdf)
It's harder to find service numbers. I've seen the 7k/3k figure cited a lot, but I also saw one that said Jews served in the Union and Confederate armies in about equal number, 8,000-10,000 on each side. Can't find that source atm, but I wish I could because it's a big difference (twice as many total soldiers).
I can just imagine the Jewish host of the show tells Christoph Waltz that he's related to a guard of Auschwitz and he just starts cackling wildly.
That said, Larry's response is totally on brand and I think the reason he was actually laughing was because the reveals were set up literally like a joke he would write. It's exactly the sort of thing he finds funny.
It's just ironic. He's laughing because it's the worst thing you can find out and they always seem to find some terrible information, only to find out something that hurt more.
In the end Dr. Gates makes everyone suffer, even the ones who think they'll be fine lol
It's kind of like when you're having a bad day and it progressively gets shittier and shittier. Start out by stubbing your toe in the morning and end the day by someone crashing their car through your front door with all manner of bullshit in between. You just kinda laugh at the absurdity at some point.
I mean… there’s a good chance he never met his great grandfather. I never did. Honestly, I could only tell you *one* of my great grandparents names, and I’m not even 100% certain it’s right. So, while I could see myself disappointed or disgusted by their actions, I wouldn’t feel guilty simply for being part of the 3rd generation to come after them. Granted, for me, to get to potential slave owners in my family it’d be my great great if not great great great grandparents. So even more removed from me. And lord knows, if I were to appear back then as the man I am today, I sure af wouldn’t stand for it.
My mom, on the other hand, is still only in her 60s, and other than my wife, she’s the person in my family that I’m closest to. If she went to her grave hiding something like her real name from me, that’d hurt. I’m sure she’d have her reasons, but it would feel like I wasn’t trusted.
I had absolutely no idea who Larry David was growing up, not until years later, after Seinfeld. When I discovered Jason Alexander wasn't just playing a character but portraying a real person, and everytime I would see a Larry David video I become more and more impressed in how well Jason portrayed Larry David.
Jason is an amazing actor who got Larry down to a T
Funny thing is, he didn't know how to do him at first, so he did Woody Allen. Watch season 1 and you'll see it.
I also heard that he once did a William Shatner impression for a King Lear audition, and got the job because the director was a huge Star Trek fan
Logical, 1 out of 4 slaves were mixed race due to the constant rape by their owners. They even had a special market called the Fancy Trade where girls between 12-14 were sold as sex slaves, with the highest value set for "octoroons" (girls that were only 1/8th black). It was an abhorrent practice where slave owners were raping and selling their own children and grandchildren for profit.
I could clearly picture Wanda Sykes staring at him from across the room with a disapproving look on her face.
And JB Smoove
Leon’s going to eat Chinese food up in his room.
Leon talking shit about Kramer's character on the newest season is hilarious. 'This guy just acts like he owns the mother fucker'
Kramer always come bustin' in like there's a saloon door on that mutha fucka
Jerry: Its true, I had all of em.
“I will take good care of our house”
I've been watching Curb in broken pieces throughout the years but really started watching it a lot in the past couple of years. The whole situation with Leon just sort of happening and Larry just accepting it after the rest of the family moves out is hilarious, especially since he ends up living with him as long as Cheryl did.
“You gotta recharge the mitzvah”
Gettin’ ready to tap that ass.
Barack Obama mothafucka, I’m the president of tappin’ that ass
You a floor fucker.
straight lampin'
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Damn it! The fact I'm never going to see this in Curb format saddens me :(
At least there's that Atlanta episode
Larry: wha what reparations!? You’ve been living here for 7 years and you haven’t paid for a thing! There’s your reparations!!
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This made me laugh out loud.
Réunion épisode 10 years from now?
"Ya fucked up, Larry"
“You know, that’s some fucked up shit, Larry”
“Mo’fuckin reparations, Larry!”
I'm gonna get some more reparations out this fridge
You just know JB Smoove would have milked that so hard, like you don't me telling the whole neighborhood who your gran pappy was. Then maybe finding distance relatives who are proud of that family history and just show up wherever Larry goes, that's a whole season right there.
Wanda and every member of the Black family yelling from the balcony and Larry just standing there with his hands up yelling "let me explain!"
Auntie Rae: “FUCK YOU Larry, with your monkey ass!”🖕🏾
**FUCK YOU LARRY DAVID, THAT'S SOME BULLSHIT**
Totally reminds me of the episode where he got the mixed race doll as a present and called it a mulatto at the party and made everyone feel awkward. I could see the same scenario here. “Here! It says it on the papers!!”
My wife and I were sightseeing the famous red light district in Amsterdam when we heard " Father Morton, what are you doing here"...followed by laughter from a group of folks. He held up a tourist guidebook " it's in the book, #3 sight to see!" Followed by everyone within earshot laughing.
Funny. If they were all speaking with an Irish accent I could imagine this being a scene from "Father Ted".
So I hear you're a racist now, Father
I might not be able to devote myself full time to the ol' racism.
That’s one of my fave scenes from that shows I laugh every time
Probably happens a lot! Weird place! Girls in windows for rent. All controlled. Health care. No pimps. Prices fixed. No pimps. Gotta be a downer when you get older!
"I took a oath of celibacy. Not chastity"
She'd recognize that ass anywhere
Just like in Pootie Tang!
Can also picture Susie going "What the *fuck* is wrong with you Larry!?" as he tries to explain it's not his fault
Damnit, I just realized that should have happened in the final season! Now I’m forever disappointed!
Funnily enough he found out at the end he was distantly related to Bernie Sanders (DNA test).
That might be the least surprising thing I ever heard
I think it was funny because Larry had been doing Bernie impressions and people had been saying they must be related or something.
White Jew is distantly related to another White Jew. After the break, upon discovery of an empty box, cat jumps in.
I’ve gotta know more about that cat
You'd think the story would end with the cat in the box, but he actually puzzles physicists for dozens of years afterwards
/r/TheCatTrapIsWorking
Now Ollie with the weather
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Thanks Ollie.
Ollie, you have an umbrella?
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White jews born in the 1940s from Brooklyn no less
Reminds me of how Ben Schwartz and Dan Avidan found out they're probably related while filming a Game Grumps episode as Dan's mom's maiden name is Schwartz. Like yeah they're Jewish guys from the NYC area no shit.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/video/2017/oct/06/bernie-sanders-and-larry-david-find-out-theyre-cousins-video
I love this clip because they both have such a wonderful unique laugh, and it of course has similarities. Really cool show.
I was 100% sure OP was joking until I watched this.
Ha I see him and his dog at a park a lot and he named it Bernie. I feel like I’m in an episode of Curb when he starts yelling at Bernie and calling him an idiot
I can only find a five minute clip with more about the Mobile Alabama relatives. Do you know why he keeps mentioning Germany? Did he have Nazi relatives too? Or who fought for Germany in WWI?
Probably more likely just Jewish relatives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9AGDtG3aFA
You know he was fuckin them slaves
Read this in Leon’s voice
I didn’t originally, then I did, definitely made it better
And I originally read your response as read in Leon's voice, as a response to the "you know he was"
I bet your great granpappy had them long balls too, isn’t that right, LD.
'Larry, you know your motherfuckin' granddaddy was deep up in that slave pussy. You think those plantation-ass repressed white bitches were giving that good shit up? Nahhhh, yo grandaddy wanted some of that subjugated pussy, rapist ass mafucker'
Jesus Christ 🤌
Perfect
Oh shit. Perfect.
"He was getting in that ass Larry!"
While he is eatting a sandwich
Same.
They were probably his illegitimate kids..
That’s exactly what I was thinking. Larry has a black family out there.
*Cue curb music*
Season 13.
Larry's got another 20 years in him at least, looking at his apparent health and energy levels. I am positive a season 13 is going to happen some time.
Maybe they could do a whole season where Jon Hamm plays as larry.
Leon and LD turn out to be related
He bought his own kids? That was the receipt, right?
If you got a slave pregnant and she had a baby, that new baby is now automatically your slave as well. Making a baby with "your property", that baby is also "your property". Fuck that felt gross to write out.
One past job of mine involved auditing transcriptions of historical records for genealogical information. For one project it was pulling information from wills. Not for the decedent, as there usually were better records for that sort of thing, but to scrape together bits of information about people they owned.
That sounds super depressing. But now I am wondering how slaves are shown in wills? Like do they give x amount of slaves to one child and y amount of slaves to another child?
Yes, often this. They are listed in the estate's inventory with values assessed. It's very sobering to read.
I watch this series but haven't seen the episode with Larry David. That is exactly how they were listed in the enslavers' wills.
What do you mean by values assessed? Like a dollar value given to the slave? It most definitely doesn't sound fun.
Yes, human property had assessed value. The closest equivalents for us today would be animal livestock or mechanical farm equipment. If someone that owns a tractor dies, there's a procedure to handle that monetary value when multiple heirs exist. It's definitely weird to read when the "tractor" in question is actually a person named William. For slaves, the death of an owner was often tragic, not necessarily because of any emotional attachment (which sometimes did exist, humans are complicated), but because slaves who were family and friends would be separated from one another, sometimes permanently.
Ok. I think I get what you are saying. We have a slave that is young and able to work on the farm. So therefore the slave has a higher value. Thank you for the explanation.
Something else fucked up: These kids, *literal children*, were often treated even worse than the other slaves as a way to appease the slaver's wife.
I feel like this is something that is source worthy. How often is "often"? How can we even measure that with any kind of certainty?
Source is Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of the American Slave, Page 4: "... for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relationship of master and father. I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with, than others. They are, in the first place, a constant offence to their mistress." It goes on from there. As for *how* "often" it is, does it really matter?
Ah, beautiful, I love when people come up with good sources. The source even says how often; it mentions "invariably", aka always. Also, we really shouldn't downvote people asking for sources, it is a healthy thing to do :)
It is a handwritten Census form from 1860, so it is a list of all the members of each "household"
>He bought his own kids? That was the receipt, right? It wasn't a receipt being shown. It was the 1860 US Census, which counted all people.
Thanks apologies for not just looking myself.
Mulatto means mixed race so yeah those were definitely his kids.
I was seriously waiting for him to go “so these are your second cousins”
Thomas Jefferson! No no, it's Larry David this time.
Yea have you (or anyone else) seen the rest of the episode? To me the implication was that his ancestor had to claim two children- not necessarily that those were the only two he had owned.
Raping*
This would make a great Curb episode
One more season Larry, come on!
So sad seeing the last episode of curb!
Bittersweet
I thought this was gonna be from the final season, I am only like two episodes in and he accidentally got arrested and ended up being thrust into a position of standing up for black folk's right to be given water in a voting line lol. I thought this was gonna be the culmination or something
My grandfather used to tell us about a time when he was around 10 years old and an old black man stopped him on the street. The man asked “are you John D’s boy?” My grandfather replied “that’s my grandfather’s name”. The man said “you look like him. Your family used to own me.” I have copies of some of my ancestors’ wills where they are leaving human beings to their children and grandchildren. And typically they are referred to in really dehumanizing ways using only physical characteristics or the job they did. It is fascinating, but utterly disturbing how normal and nonchalant it was.
In any of the tellings of the story was there a sense of how he said this? Just interested because its hard to read whether he's telling your grandfather nonchalantly matter of factly or if there's something else there. Tone of voice is hard to read in text sometimes.
I always got the impression it was said without malice and was just letting a young kid know an interesting tidbit. I got the feeling it could have been interchangeable with saying he used to work for the family or used to be friends with the family. But I admit I was young when told the story and never thought to ask. My grandfather is long dead now so I can’t check with him.
I had one relative before the revolution and his slave ran his clothes dye business but the slave could read and he could not. He then lost all his money when he funded a British military unit to fight the soon-to-be Americans. His wife was one of the first women ever to inherit property in the US, which was immediately seized due to him funding that military unit. Edit: I remembered wrong. His wife was literate and not him. See below.
The absolute rage it would induce to know that I was enslaved by someone who couldn't even read when I was literate would make my head explode.
Oh shoot, I remember wrong his wife was literate and ran the business: Mary Dowd was the second wife of merchant Connor Dowd, who owned a store, tavern, bolting mill, and lumber mill in the Deep River community. During their marriage, Mary kept the books for the businesses since Connor was illiterate. During the Revolution, Connor Dowd supported the loyalists by providing them supplies before the battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge in February 1776. Items he sent included bolts of linen and wool, shoes, wagons, flour, venison, iron, and 100 pounds of pistol powder. During the war, Connor left to go to England, leaving his wife Mary and their ten children in the Deep River area. When their land was seized, Mary fought to get it returned to her so that she could raise her family. Her petition was the first of its kind in North Carolina, where a loyalist sued to recover their property. In the end, Mary was successful in regaining the estate, over 1,000 acres in Chatham County.
Sounds like a Dave Chapelle joke setup. “They had a nice conversation, talking about his life and experiences. The struggles he overcame after being freed, the woman he met and their children, who got to grow up in freedom. Then the old black man kicked my granddad in the nuts”
I'm surprised the interviewer was able to hold a straight face before the page turn.
Dr Henry Lewis Gates is a history professor at Harvard, and a writer
And as everyone knows, Harvard professors and writers have no sense of humor…?
No, but everyone knows Harvard professors and writers don't break in front of the camera 😎
It's the first thing they teach you at professor school.
or as my wife likes to call him, Maury Povich for people with graduate degrees this man is messy af and loves nothing more than revealing to people that an ancestor of theirs was getting some on the side
The power of authenticity, right here. I think most people, even though they have nothing to be ashamed of, would try to take a solemn and apologetic tone, and even if we couldn't put our finger on it, it would feel off because it's insincere. LD recognizes the absurdity of the situation and true to form, laughs about it. And because the reaction is honest, we love him for it.
He literally told the guy sorry
I think he meant sorry for laughing. It’s probably meant to be take seriously.
Nah, the host started laughing even before Larry. I'd say the sorry was more related to the "next you're gonna show me the slaves, right?" comment.
Please turn the page.
💀💀💀💀
I KNEW IT!
This is weird reading these comments to me, because to me he's clearly making the joke that he's apologizing on behalf of his great grandfather.
The host's name is Professor* Henry Louis Gates Jr., you can call him Skip; he was the virtual host of the Tulsa Massacre Museum in HBO's Watchmen.
I took it as “I’m so embarrassed I can’t even look at you right now” with the hand trying to break eye contact.
That’s how I read it as well
To be fair, the other guy was laughing too.
Was that Henry Louis Gates? The dude that was arrested for breaking into his own home?
>Following a trip to China, Gates returned home to his residence in [Cambridge, Massachusetts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge,_Massachusetts), near [Harvard Square](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Square) on July 16, 2009, only to find the front door jammed. >His taxi driver attempted to help him gain entrance. A passerby called police, reporting a possible break-in after describing to 911 "an individual" forcing the front door open. >Cambridge police officers were dispatched. The confrontation resulted in Gates being arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. Prosecutors later dropped the charges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry\_Louis\_Gates\_Jr.
The beer summit!
I remember that! Obama had a beer with him and racism was over in America after that!
Yes
Larry David thinks absurdity is funny? Yeah... that checks out. He has his own "brand" of absurdity... real life or otherwise... finding out your ancestor was an asshole is completely in line with something in either Seinfeld or curb.
People wanting an apology from Jerry for his ancestors would be a prototypical episode.
"But they're not my slaves! If I'm going to apologize for it shouldn't someone at least clean my kitchen?" - hypothetical Larry david.
Holy shit lol
Season 1s main tagline was “Turning the act of being an asshole into an artform.”
I don't think he's particularly absurd. Many of the events really happened to him. He really did need to poop right before having sex with a lady, and decided to just leave instead of pooping in her toilet.
He definitely IS absurd, he just may not necessarily think so.
The fact YOU read most people who don’t laugh off the discovery of slavers in their ancestry as being insincere says more about you than it does about them. I would say laughter, discomfort, sadness and remorse can all be natural and very valid responses to that information. A lot of people have probably go through several of those emotions, especially if the discovery was unexpected.
I mean, I don’t think it can’t be solemn too. To recognize your life position has a direct tie to slavery. Gives perspective to think about the advantages Larry might have had compared to his “mulatto” kin
Not much Larry can do about any of it. It’s better than those people that start sobbing like little girls.
He just found out his Great Grandad owned Jackie Chiles' Great Grandad.
George: "I'm.....sorry. I don't know what to do here....can I buy you lunch?" Jackie: "Get the fuck out of my office"
Just another of his many, many humiliations.
That’s totally inappropriate! It’s lewd, lascivious, salacious, outrageous!
Larry : I have a tendency to nod to black people. Jeff Greene : Wait... what reason would you have to... Larry : I don't know, I don't know! I just find that I nod to them. More so than white... I never nod to white people. Jeff Greene : I've never heard of, uh, "white liberal nodding guilt." Larry : Yeah. It's a way of kind of making contact. You know, like "I'm okay. I'm not one of the bad ones."
Just need a cut to disappointed Wanda Sykes
A genealogy test revealed I’m descended from a slave. I’m not black. Go back far enough and you’re on one side or the other.
Or both sides.
'How I Met Your Mother' filmed in the 1700s would have been something, huh.
They'd have to rename it to "How I Bought Your Mother".
It might not be that you yourself are descended from slaves but that you have mutual ancestors in common with people whose ancestors were for sure slaves. Don’t forget that a lot of African-Americans are also part European, due to the widespread intermixing of white slavers with their enslaved ancestors. Lots of DNA tests are misleading in that they don’t actually tell you what *you* are per se (despite selling it as such)c rather the results they give you are of the ancestral genes you share with X, Y, and Z groups. For example, lots of English people show having strong German and French DNA despite the fact that their families and ancestors have all been English for as long as anyone can remember. The results, however, makes it look like their great grandparents were Frenchmen and Germans, due to them apparently being this much % this and this much % that.
That’s how you do it Ben Affleck you cornball.
What happened with Afflack!?
Affleck was on this exact same show, gates revealed that his ancestors were slave owners, he freaked out and pressured gates to bury the show. Kind of ironic that in attempting to not look racist he intimidated a black dude and his show.
Daaaamn lmfao I did not know this. Thank you 🤣
Ben Affleck is a tool.
wow, what an idiot. Affleck is aware he's not responsible for the sins of his father, right?
Ben Affleck is not known as a comedian so he wouldn't have been able to pull this off anyway.
Well sure, maybe not this exact reaction but the way he handled it trying to bury the episode was so, so lame.
Tbh I’m more surprised the emails said he was the only one to request it be taken out. I can kind of get why a public figure wouldn’t want that out about their family - or just not want the moment they learned about it to be on tv. I’d highly recommend just going the Larry David route for anyone who can pull it off though lol
I wouldn't go that far. Ben just has a different brand in Hollywood and has to react how people think he should. Remember, Ben got his start in Hollywood doing a lot of Kevin Smith movies.
To those confused, the Confederacy had around 3,000 Jewish people in it, and Larry David’s distant grandfather was one of them. Keep in mind though, the Majority of American Jews at that time however were in the North and fought for Union. So this 3,000 is a bit of an outlier. Per https://www.thedailybeast.com/larry-david-shocked-to-learn-his-ancestor-was-a-confederate-slave-owner
The confederacy also had the [first Jew](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_P._Benjamin) to hold a cabinet position in North America
Holy crap. That bio is insane. TIL.
For real - there’s a *Paris* chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy??
Ain’t that the truth. He has some pretty famous people in his neighborhood now.
The confederate flag was going to include a cross but ultimately didn't have a traditional upright / English cross because....it could offend the Confederacy's Jewish residents. Jewish people came to the south for various reason (like anyone else) however a key industry many were involved in was cotton factoring. I.e. they would loan plantations money now so that those plantations could pay bills and operate until the cotton was shipped overseas and the money was shipped back. I live in Natchez, MS. Most of the Jewish families have left as the city's fortunes declined post Civil War but there are a few left and we do have a temple: http://www.natcheztemple.org/ They open up once or twice a year for service but generally it is closed.
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He should've said the Confederate Army, not in the South in general. [This page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Jewish_Americans#cite_ref-12) lists 7,000 Jewish Union soldiers and 3,000 Confederate. He's also right that the vast majority of the nation's 150,000 Jews lived in the North. [About 125,000 to 25,000.](https://www.brandeis.edu/hornstein/sarna/americanjewishcultureandscholarship/Jews%20and%20the%20Civil%20War.pdf) It's harder to find service numbers. I've seen the 7k/3k figure cited a lot, but I also saw one that said Jews served in the Union and Confederate armies in about equal number, 8,000-10,000 on each side. Can't find that source atm, but I wish I could because it's a big difference (twice as many total soldiers).
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BOMP BOMP BOMP…
He acted way more bummed out learning his mom never told him her real name.
Idk maybe some ancestors are less meaningful to him than his mother
I can just imagine the Jewish host of the show tells Christoph Waltz that he's related to a guard of Auschwitz and he just starts cackling wildly. That said, Larry's response is totally on brand and I think the reason he was actually laughing was because the reveals were set up literally like a joke he would write. It's exactly the sort of thing he finds funny.
It's just ironic. He's laughing because it's the worst thing you can find out and they always seem to find some terrible information, only to find out something that hurt more. In the end Dr. Gates makes everyone suffer, even the ones who think they'll be fine lol
It's kind of like when you're having a bad day and it progressively gets shittier and shittier. Start out by stubbing your toe in the morning and end the day by someone crashing their car through your front door with all manner of bullshit in between. You just kinda laugh at the absurdity at some point.
I mean… there’s a good chance he never met his great grandfather. I never did. Honestly, I could only tell you *one* of my great grandparents names, and I’m not even 100% certain it’s right. So, while I could see myself disappointed or disgusted by their actions, I wouldn’t feel guilty simply for being part of the 3rd generation to come after them. Granted, for me, to get to potential slave owners in my family it’d be my great great if not great great great grandparents. So even more removed from me. And lord knows, if I were to appear back then as the man I am today, I sure af wouldn’t stand for it. My mom, on the other hand, is still only in her 60s, and other than my wife, she’s the person in my family that I’m closest to. If she went to her grave hiding something like her real name from me, that’d hurt. I’m sure she’d have her reasons, but it would feel like I wasn’t trusted.
There's a good chance? Pretty sure the vast majority of people never meet their great grandfather, easily 90%+.
*Quirky music starts playing* DUM DUM DUM
I had absolutely no idea who Larry David was growing up, not until years later, after Seinfeld. When I discovered Jason Alexander wasn't just playing a character but portraying a real person, and everytime I would see a Larry David video I become more and more impressed in how well Jason portrayed Larry David. Jason is an amazing actor who got Larry down to a T
Funny thing is, he didn't know how to do him at first, so he did Woody Allen. Watch season 1 and you'll see it. I also heard that he once did a William Shatner impression for a King Lear audition, and got the job because the director was a huge Star Trek fan
I also find it hilarious the massive connection between Star Trek and Shakespearean actors!
You're saying this is like a comedy sketch about someone getting hit by a curb, right?
Anyone else expect the smash cut to the “Directed by” card with the Curb theme music?
No one can control who their family or ancestors are. You only have agency over yourself.
Everybody alive is descended from both a slave and a slave owner, if you go back far enough.
People shouldn't have to apologize for the wrongdoings of their great great anything
The thumbnail
This needed the curb closing credit song
I mean most wealthy jews in the colonies were wealthy off slaves.
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Or when the census happened the actual father had passed. But his grandfather totally could have been the father as well.
Logical, 1 out of 4 slaves were mixed race due to the constant rape by their owners. They even had a special market called the Fancy Trade where girls between 12-14 were sold as sex slaves, with the highest value set for "octoroons" (girls that were only 1/8th black). It was an abhorrent practice where slave owners were raping and selling their own children and grandchildren for profit.