When John Mulaney and Anna Marie Tendler announced their separation in 2021, I was certain that the comedian and former SNL writer would no longer make any Jewish jokes. In his earlier comedy specials “New in Town,” “Comeback Kid,” and “Kid Gorgeous,” Mulaney often referenced his relationship with his then-wife for comedic material. As Emily Burack wrote for Hey Alma in 2018, “Anna is Jewish, John is Catholic, hilarity ensues.”
I thought that would be the end of lines like, “My wife is Jewish. She’s a New York Jew. I did it!” or “My wife is a bitch and I like her so much. She is a dynamite, five-foot Jewish bitch and she’s the best.” But I was wrong! On his new weekly late-night talk show, Everybody’s Live, Mulaney has found a way to keep making Jewish jokes.
In a recent episode about funeral planning, Mulaney spent part of his monologue discussing “The Diary of Anne Frank.” “I didn’t trust diaries. I still don’t. I thought a diary was a thing that you leave behind for people to read after you die,” he said. “And the reason I thought that was because the first diary I ever heard of in my life — yeah,” he paused, noticing the audience catching on, “was ‘The Diary of Anne Frank.’”
He continued, “And the reason I heard of it was because every teenager in the world reads it in school. It is psychotic. Stop reading this little girl’s — it’s her diary! Anne Frank was murdered by the Nazis and I guarantee you she is more mad that teen boys everywhere are reading her diary every year.”
Mulaney then joked about how most books are about World War II and suggested parents should tell their kids to speak up in school about Anne Frank’s privacy by holding up the book and saying, “This is bullshit!”
In the second episode of Everybody’s Live, focused on cruises, there’s an unexpected moment with Rabbi David Goldstein of Touro Synagogue in New Orleans. He begins discussing God but gets sidetracked by explaining the plot of the Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington film Crimson Tide.
I’ll admit, the bits are funny and perfectly align with Mulaney’s post-rehabilitation attitude of, “I’m going to do the weird bits I think are funny, no matter what audiences or network executives want.” However, I understand that for some in the Jewish community, his return to Jewish humor may not sit entirely well. Malkah Bressler’s 2021 article for Hey Alma, titled “John Mulaney’s Jokes About His Jewish Ex-Wife Suddenly Don’t Seem So Funny Anymore,” highlights how, after Mulaney and Tendler’s split, the jokes he made about her now feel more like exoticization than celebration. With that fresh in mind, I can understand why some might feel uneasy about Mulaney revisiting Jewish humor.
But I’d like to offer a different perspective. So far, none of these jokes target Jews negatively. They may have even been written or pitched by the show’s Jewish writers, Langston Kerman and Jeremy Levick, or Mulaney’s Jewish collaborator and sidekick, Richard Kind! Particularly with the Anne Frank joke, I think it subtly critiques how “The Diary of Anne Frank” is likely not being taught well in many schools—a valid and concerning point. Sure, the idea that Anne Frank didn’t want her diary read is deliberately exaggerated, but that’s also a common feature in many of Mulaney’s bits (see: his bit about going to college being a waste in “Kid Gorgeous” or his “star-studded” intervention in “Baby J”).
Unless Mulaney crosses a line or something majorly problematic is revealed, I say: Give one of the most popular and insightful comedians a chance!
