topical humor Quotes

In a more intellectually rigorous age, I wouldn't be talked about as a satirist at all. I would just be a topical comedian.

Comedians are always hitting the topical notes that are on everybody's minds.

Satire that is seasonable and just is often more effectual than law or gospel.

The comics that are just conversing with you up there and drawing on their own life, yeah, I guess so. I guess some do political humor, some do topical humor, but the ones that I like, the ones that are appealing to me, were guys who were just talking to you about their life.

I gotta tell you, I do not envy whoever they try to put in David Letterman's chair. Folks those are some huge shoes to fill, and some really big pants.

That's a nice thing about being a topical standup: you can add in things to keep it fresh.

People come to my shows and know that they're going to hear about what's going on in the world - what's happening at the moment. My material is as new as anything on the dinner table.

The beautiful thing about faking a news show is the topicality is delayed.

I would love to see Carl Reiner working in the arena today. He did some marvelous things on our show in the early '60s when it was a little edgy. We did shows about blacks, a couple, three of those. Some thought-provoking stuff.

I'm constantly watching satirical news programs, and just - I never want to be in a situation where someone could yell out a topic and I will have absolutely no opinion on it whatsoever, or just not even know it exists.

In modern America, anyone who attempts to write satirically about the events of the day finds it difficult to concoct a situation so bizarre that it may not actually come to pass while his article is still on the presses.

In the world of late-night comics, Letterman made us feel any hometown boy from Indianapolis could poke fun at celebrities and politicians and do it right to their faces.

There's a theory with comedy that you shouldn't do anything that's too topical in your specials because people won't be able to watch them in five years. But I look at Trump in the same way I look at Mr. T. I can watch comedy jokes about Mr. T in the '80s and still understand what they're talking about.

I wish, in some ways, I was the type of comedian who could do something blistering and topical, but I'm the guy who gets stuck in the revolving door and thinks I should write about that.