The routine even led to tabloid articles about the implied feud, and despite the fact that Larry David promised Griffin that Jerry would never see her special in a “million years,” he totally did and eventually sent her a humorously insulting letter as a response. As a result, she was invited back onto the show to play out what was basically a fictionalized version of their real-life incident; Jerry says something, she perceives it as extremely rude and turns the whole thing into a comedy routine about how he’s a jerk. But in the show’s version of events, Jerry Seinfeld himself isn’t rude; Kramer is. Jerry bends over backward to try and make things right, but Griffin’s character illogically, and maybe even hysterically, continues to blame Jerry to great success.
So the real Jerry Seinfeld and his writers took a story about how he was a giant dick, and in essence, laundered it through his sitcom universe, in turn abdicating all of Seinfeld’s responsibility for being a dick in the first place. And it’s not like the public wasn’t aware of this backstory at the time; even if they hadn’t caught Griffin’s stand-up special, it was highlighted in the press before the episode aired.
The Buffalo News
Even worse, however, is the other incident that seemingly inspired this storyline. Actor and performance artist Danny Hoch was cast as an annoying pool boy character named Ramon who just wants to be friends with a reluctant Jerry in the episode “The Pool Guy.” But during rehearsals, either Seinfeld or director Andy Ackerman randomly asked him to “do the part with a Spanish accent” despite the fact that he was a Jewish Brooklynite with a decidedly non-Spanish accent. Hoch had specifically checked prior to taking the gig to make sure that “Ramon” wouldn’t be some kind of “one-dimensional” racist caricature, but suddenly Jerry insisted it was “funnier” this way. So Hoch refused, got fired, and was apparently never paid. We know all of this because Hoch began telling the story in his act and in his film Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop.