Satirical Commentary Quotes

Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media. What we have now - to quote myself at my most pretentious - is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste.

The Vice President has two duties: To daily inquire about the health of the President and to attend the funerals of third world dictators, neither of which interest me.

In 2002, I was taking an improv class because, as a white male with glasses who was born between 1978 and 1994, it's legally required that I take at least one improv class in my life.

In the sixties, the recycling of pop culture turning it into Pop art and camp had its own satirical zest. Now we're into a different kind of recycling. Moviemakers give movies of the past an authority that those movies didn't have; they inflate images that may never have compelled belief, images that were no more than shorthand gestures and they use them not as larger-than-life jokes but as altars.

I think comedy is an angry art form; it's an outsider art form.

Kennedy didn't beat Nixon. Satire beat Nixon.

What's great about 'The Daily Show' is I can use satire and push the envelope. I couldn't do that anywhere else. Even if I was a journalist.

One parody is worth a thousand polemics.

To be honest, I'm shocked the University of Washington's sports teams are called the Huskies. Why haven't the Leftists that run this entire state demanded they be renamed the 'Athletes of Size' so as to not fat shame anyone?

If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs.

American political culture quickly and always outpaces any attempt to satirize it.

Donald Trump refuses to be politically correct. And just to be safe, he refuses to be correct.

I care about politics, but I have a tough time making comedy out of it. I was so happy to have a chance to be on The Daily Show, and I think Jon Stewart's so funny... but mostly in my own comedy, I care about less relevant things.

Someone asked why I invited Jon Stewart to be the first guest on the 'Journal''s premiere in 2007. 'Because Mark Twain isn't available,' I answered. I was serious.

This weekend the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, featured several speakers including Sarah Palin and Phil Robertson from 'Duck Dynasty.' It was a good weekend for conservatives - and a great weekend for wild animals.

Hillary Clinton said that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is engaged in 'theater.' Which explains the new strategy to defeat him: casting him as the lead in 'Spider-Man: the Musical.'

I think politics have gotten vulgar and we comedically portray that.

Hillary has her work cut out for her. Her Democratic challengers are a 'Who's Who' of 'who's that?' Jim Webb, Lincoln Chafee, Silas Phelps, Peter Wilks... now those last two were characters from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. You didn't even notice, did you?

Someone who makes you laugh is a comedian. Someone who makes you think and then laugh is a humorist.

Over the years, I'd hear Jon Stewart disavow being a journalist and say, 'No, I'm a comedian.' I'd be like, 'Stop pretending. You know you're a journalist.'

I don't like jokes in speeches. I do like wit and humor. A joke is to humor what pornography is to erotic language in a good novel.

You wonder sometimes how our government puts on its pants in the morning.

I'm from Arkansas, so I didn't even know who Howard Stern was until I was about 18 or 19. I only kind of knew what I had heard about him; then I saw him doing his thing. That's what I really liked about him.

Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.

If nothing is serious anymore, then there's nothing to satirize.