Comedy should speak truth to power. It should always be aimed upward. When it's aimed downward, it's called bullying.
Interpretation
Comedy is most effective when it challenges those in power rather than targeting the vulnerable.
In this quote, Jimmy Dore emphasizes the role of comedy as a tool for social commentary. He believes that humor should critique and challenge authority figures and institutions, helping to reveal truths and injustices. When comedy shifts its focus to ridicule those who are already marginalized or weaker, it ceases to serve its purpose of enlightenment and becomes an act of bullying instead.
In practice
A comedian might use this quote as a rallying cry during a stand-up performance focused on social justice issues.
If you're using comedy to shame people for getting informed and questioning authority, you're not doing comedy, you're doing propaganda, 'cause comedy is supposed to poke holes in the status quo and challenge authority and question authority.
Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves.
I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond.
It is a much cleverer thing to talk nonsense than to listen to it.
I hate to lull the audience into letting them think that something is something. It's always fun to defy expectations.
Down there between our legs, it's like an entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage system. Who designed that?
I think that comedy really tells you how it is. The other thing about comedy is that - you don't even know if you're failing in drama, but you do know when you're failing in comedy. When you go to a comedy and you don't hear anybody laughing, you know that you've failed.
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