I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel - it's vulgar.
I love 'Glee.' I cry all the time when I watch 'Glee' because I don't know if it's satire or melodrama and that makes me feel like the writing is aware of itself, and that makes it okay to cry.
Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize.
The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little - or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.
The purpose of satire has been rightly stated as to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half truth, and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again!
You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.
The British ballads became a new kind of form in their hand. And out of them came the blues, a new kind of song of commentary and satire, a song form which, after all, has become the main musical form of the whole human species.
The trouble with most comedians who try to do satire is that they are essentially brash, noisy and indelicate people who have to use a sledge hammer to smash a butterfly.
The Irish and British, they love satire, it's a large part of the culture.
I never wanted to do political satire because it seems too surface to me.
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.
Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.
I think a playful critique is good for all of us, and that's basically how I see satire functioning. But I'm not interested in a kind of contemptuous satirical vision; I try always, even when I'm knowingly being satirical, to also be humane, but I mean, let's face it: there's plenty in American life to make fun of, and we all participate in it.
Satire is, by definition, offensive. It is meant to make us feel uncomfortable. It is meant to make us scratch our heads, think, do a double-take, and then think again.
Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.
The show is a satire, which gives us freedom to do anything we want. Satire is the magic word that wipes away any culpability. The media is jealous of this freedom.
Satire is what closes on Saturday night.
The most brilliant satire of all time was 'A Modest Proposal' by Jonathan Swift. You'll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.
My show in Egypt was called, 'The Show,' or, 'Al Bernameg' in Arabic. Basically, it was a political satire show. It started on Internet by three, four-minute episodes, and then it evolved into a live show in a theater, which was something that was unprecedented in the Arab world.
When you have satire, it has to be real. No matter how outrageous the comedy becomes, you have to believe in the characters.
I feel like comedy is important, and I think political satire can be really important.
Hollywood is horrible... it's beyond satire.
Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.
Satire, whether it be satire or not, everything has to have boundaries.
I like the George Romero films, which were really great, social satire movies; really twisted.
'Charlie Hebdo' had been nondenominational in its satire, sticking its finger into the sensitivities of Jews and Christians, too - but only Muslims responded with threats and acts of terrorism.
The journey of your first movie is not just beyond belief it can be truly beyond satire.
Satire is focused bitterness.
People say satire is dead. It's not dead; it's alive and living in the White House.
I like to write a lot of satire.
I write for fun. I had written a kind of media satire, but I doubt it will see the light of day. It was just a personal project.
Popular culture bombards us with examples of animals being humanized for all sorts of purposes, ranging from education to entertainment to satire to propaganda. Walt Disney, for example, made us forget that Mickey is a mouse, and Donald a duck. George Orwell laid a cover of human societal ills over a population of livestock.
I started off at the Second City in Chicago... It's an improvisational theater that ostensibly does social and political satire, but when I was there, we generally didn't. We did character work, and we did just the silliest things we could think of. We weren't all that concerned with, you know, changing the world through mime.
Shelley Jackson's 'Half Life' is the textual equivalent of an installation, a multivocal, polymorphous, dialogic, dystopian satire wrapped around a murder mystery wrapped around a bildungsroman.
I have never knowingly, I swear to God, written satire. The word connotes exaggeration of the foibles of mankind. To me, mankind just has foibles. You don't have to push it!
I don't want to sound disingenuous here - controversy is obviously good for business, especially if your business is satire. And it does amplify the discussion - in my view, a good thing.