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We need to in this country begin again to raise civil discourse to another level. I mean, we shout and scream and yell and get very little accomplished, but you can disagree very much with the next guy and still be friends and acquaintances.

It's harder to take politics seriously, to understand the issues, than it is to drown it all in a sea of scorn. And while the world cries out for greater analysis and insight, we are distracted by bread and circuses, aka the 'Great British Bake-Off' and 'Tumble.' We should rediscover our tradition of satire. Of speaking truth unto power.

The stuff that's going on is just so over-the-top, with the banking crisis and destroying the Gulf of Mexico, and the outrage hasn't quite caught up with the people yet. But when it does, I think you're going to see really virulent anti-authoritarian kind of comedy coming out.

Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance.

When you're writing these things, you're in a room making each other laugh, you really have very little sense of political correctness or incorrectness. This is a question that Europe tends to ask and America doesn't.

American people have the ability to laugh at themselves. It is one of the things that makes this country the great country that it is.

We still have a lot of work to do in American culture. More open-mindedness is happening - in some cases rapidly, in some, slowly.

We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship, to the reality, the hard substance of things. And we'll do it not so much with speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that bring people to their senses.

We have dealt with the Arab/Muslim problem in the American media in every single way but through comedy. Hollywood has always been lagging behind comedy... We can make fun of ourselves, too, and I'm inviting us to laugh with us - and all the misconceptions.