David Dobkin Quotes

I believe comedy should be free to go anywhere. I believe that there is tasteful and untasteful, I think they're very close to each other, and it's how you handle it tonally. But I'm an equal opportunity offender. I'm happy to go at anything that has a cause to be laughed at.

A word to those of you out there who have yet to be offended by something I have said: Please be patient. I am working as fast as I can.

To me, racist jokes are not funny. I am politically correct, in a weird way. I like to push the boundaries that are politically correct.

Humour very often consists of shrewd perceptions about people. It's usually fun at someone's expense. Nowadays if you're funny at anybody's expense they run to the UN and say, "I must have an ombudsman to protect me." You hardly dare have a shrewd perception about anybody.

The line between humor and bad taste is your audience, in which some people will find everything offensive, and some people will find nothing offensive, but the truth is that most humor originates in what would be called bad taste.

I've skewered whites, blacks, Hispanics, Christians, Jews, Muslims, gays, straights, rednecks, addicts, the elderly, and my wife. As a standup comic, it is my job to make sure the majority of people laugh, and I believe that comedy is the last true form of free speech.

My thinking is, if we're setting out to make comedy in which nothing is off limits, then everybody is fair game.

If you're not offending one group of people, you're not entertaining the other.

There was no joke I could make that was too offensive. I can actually remember at least one time where my mother told me something that, I was like, 'whoa!'

For 35 years, I was a writer. I wrote a lot of jokes. Some of them weren't funny. Some of them weren't appropriate. Some of them were downright offensive. I understand that.

I'm a big fan of comedians not having to apologize for anything. Nowadays it seems comedians are always apologizing for being funny.

In the 1990s, it's OK to do comedy about the Chernobyl disaster or the Space Shuttle blowing up. It's acceptable to ridicule the Pope or the President of the United States, but God forbid you do a joke... about gays. The gay community is the last sacred cow in this society.

It's easier not to make a particular joke in case it offends. But every joke will offend someone, and I've always believed that the audience is bigger than one person. The danger is that things will become bland.

I think satire suffered under Obama, but not because of Obama. People are more sensitive now than ever, and strong satirical voices are stifled because of that. I don't think a Clinton presidency would change that.

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

I don't look at comedy as a sliding scale of offensiveness.

Comedy shouldn't be restrained under the belt of normality.

In Germany, people are saying, "George W. Bush is an asshole. Osama Bin Laden is an asshole." But then I make jokes about Auschwitz, and how the Germans are lederhosen-wearing sausage freaks - and they hate me for this! And I'm like, "You all are sitting there because you want to relax and have a nice evening, and now you're pissed because I put also a mirror in front of you."

I'm from the old school - you go where the power is, and you try to make fun of it. When it becomes off limits to say or do certain things without being brutalized or censored or whatever, it's unfortunate.

I try not to apologize, especially publicly. That's a slippery slope, because I'm a comedian. If you take anything I'm saying too seriously, then you shouldn't be paying attention in the first place. If you find me offensive, don't follow me.

The thing I most hate about the Left is that they want to stop us laughing - to prescribe which jokes are OK and which are not OK to make in public and to draw artificial lines around certain subjects. I find all sorts of inappropriate things funny.

I'm dirty, I'm irreverent - but I'm still a very topical comedian.

Ricky Gervais has jokes about people with disabilities, but do I think that's a healthy thing? Yes, I really do, because he's chosen his targets very carefully, and he's thought about what he's doing.

Insult comedy has been around forever. I can make fun of people, and they won't get mad at me.

I'm not PC all the time in my phrasing, because that meets a wall; people won't hear it.