There’s nothing wrong with the Seinfeld line, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
A Manhattan judge made the determination in a mostly serious 15-page ruling Monday in response to a $1 million defamation lawsuit by the real-life inspiration for the hit sitcom’s Cosmo Kramer character.
Bronx-based Kenny Kramer sued fellow comedian Fred Stoller last year for depicting him as a gay-bashing hack in his book, “Maybe We’ll Have you Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star.”
In the memoir Stoller accuses guides on Kramer’s popular Manhattan bus ride, “Kramer’s Reality Tour” of shouting like “deranged cheerleaders” the phrase, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” in the historically gay-friendly neighborhood of Greenwich Village.
The chapter has harmed Kramer’s reputation and caused him to lose business, his suit says.
But Justice Barbara Jaffe notes that “on its face, the phrase expressly conveys the notion that there is nothing wrong with being gay. In that respect, it cannot be considered homophobic.”
Since Jerry and George “fear appearing anti-gay,” she finds, “in that context, the catch phrase speaks to the ambivalence a heterosexual male may feel about homosexuality, and says little, if anything, about homosexuality.”
The episode even won an award from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Jaffe notes in her decision to toss the case.
Stoller’s attorney, David Albert Pierce, in an homage to the fictional Seinfeld lawyer Jackie Chiles proclaimed, “This entire case was outrageous, egregious, preposterous!”
Pierce added, “With this decision, my client has serenity now!”
The episode at issue in the suit is titled “The Outing” originally aired on Feb. 11, 1993. It shows Jerry and his straight friend George being wrongly outed as a gay couple by a student journalist.
They “strenuously deny” the story, adding “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
Kramer did not immediately return messages.