Cyrus Broacha Quotes

I think up until the point when we started in the business, which was in the early '70s, most of the humor was political. The smart humor was political satire.

Sometimes people say I'm a political comedian, which, actually I'm not. I'm a comedian who sometimes discusses politics, culture - again, the word 'politics' to me is just life.

If the worst thing happening to Middle Eastern people is that Carlos Mencia is doing a joke about them being stopped at airports, that's a pretty awesome state of affairs.

I grew up in a bit of a vacuum. And as a kid, you see 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' and you're like, 'Oh, it's a cartoon.' There's mixed media. It's funny, and there's stop-motion. But as an adult, you figure it out, how the entire underpinnings of their comedy was poking fun at the rank and file of the British aristocracy and the monarchy.

The bipartisan approach filtered up through my typewriter. I used to say, "Mad takes on both sides." We even used to rake the hippies over the coals. They were protesting the Vietnam War, but we took aspects of their culture and had fun with it. Mad was wide open. Bill loved it, and he was a capitalist Republican. I loved it, and I was a liberal Democrat. That went for the writers, too; they all had their own political leanings, and everybody had a voice. But the voices were mostly critical. It was social commentary, after all.

I'm the rap version of Dave Chappelle. I'm not sayin' I'm nearly as talented as Chappelle when it comes to political and social commentary, but like him, I'm laughing to keep from crying.

Humor, in one form or another, is characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which history leaves obscure.

Mixing humor and politics is something that works.

I've always been interested in socially political, or overtly political, comedy.

I've thought for the last decade or so, the only actual place raw truth was seeping through in newspapers was on the Comics Pages. They were able to pull off intelligent social comment, pure truths not found elsewhere in the news pages, and had the ability to make it all funny, entertaining, and pertinent.

I'm looking at some comedic horror films because I have often been accused of being too dark. I'm not dark, not compared with 'Saw' or anything like that. So I'm looking at live-action horror films, but not slasher ones - ones that have humor and maybe some social satire.

I love Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart because they're bringing irony back into American humor, which is a delicious treat. The entire Colbert persona of being extreme right-wing when he's not at all is highly amusing. He does it so well, but sometimes a little too well. My wife is convinced he's completely that way.

I think the problems with comedians that are political, and there are some brilliant ones, are the ones that offer no solutions. Not that there's a moral obligation for a comic to fix things, but I like to see a comic that's upset about something and offer a solution. It can be a funny solution. I like to see the thought process.

You know, I'm a comedian the same as Bill Maher and Jon Stewart. We all came up the same way. The three of us have interest in politics; I call us fundits, we're fundits! We're not pundits!

First and foremost when you're doing comedy, you gotta be relevant and applicable to the times that you're living in. When you try and just do comedy about who is dating who and lifestyle jokes, it gets tiring after a while. It's hard to be funny in that realm.

I don't consider myself a political comedian because it's so hard. It takes time away from me saying terrible things about TV.

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert. Those are the guys I look at who are telling me pretty much the truth. And they throw humor into it which makes it much more interesting to listen to.

I get all of my comedy from CNN.

Bad times for the Republic are great times for satire.

There is nothing wrong with a political joke as long as it doesn't get elected.

'Dear White People' started a conversation about race. It's such a difficult thing to talk about, especially in America because of our history. I love that you can confront it with humour and with satire.

I've always thought George Carlin was brilliant.

Comedy comes from tragedy, and being Iranian in America from 1979 on had been quite tragic. In stand-up comedy, I was able to take the reality and exaggerate it.

Mike Judge is my Jonathan Swift, and I say that because I don't know any other satirists. But the problem with satire is that it's so easily misinterpreted.