I'm a satirist, so I've got boxing gloves on if the person is worthy of satire. But I'm not an assassin.
I think I'm more of an absurdist than a satirist. I think I'm more of a - humanist? I hate to say it!
I'm a satirist, so I've got boxing gloves on if the person is worthy of satire. But I'm not an assassin. If that ever happens, it's only because something happened during the interview that got me going, and then I had to translate my feelings to the mouth of the character.
I know that it's probably not a good idea for a comedian, especially a satirist, to support a public policy group or a politician. This is something I learned only too well years ago when I did a fundraiser for Pol Pot. A few years later I saw 'The Killing Fields,' and I've got to tell you, I just felt like a schmuck.
A satirist is a man whose flesh creeps so at the ugly and the savage and the incongruous aspects of society that he has to express them as brutally and nakedly as possible in order to get relief.
Satire works best when it hews close to the line between the outlandish and the possible - and as that line continues to grow thinner, the satirist's task becomes ever more difficult.
In a more intellectually rigorous age, I wouldn't be talked about as a satirist at all. I would just be a topical comedian.
There's so much hate that we direct externally that we forget we have our own psychos. But that's the role of the satirist - you have to examine your own country and say, 'look!'
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 wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.