Aaron McGruder Quotes

Late to bed and late to wake will keep you long on money and short on mistakes.

I think you should know that real-life white people are not all as funny as the ones on 'Seinfeld'.

Anyone with a gun can go out and commit an act of terrorism, even without a political affiliation.

When I pass, speak freely of my shortcomings and my flaws. Learn from them, for I'll have no ego to injure.

I want the news delivered unbiased. I thought that was the whole point with journalism.

I wonder what it means when your grandson is more crotchety than you are.

I don't want the news to be patriotic. I don't want to see flags on the lapels of the anchors. I don't want any of that.

Good satire goes beyond the specific point it’s trying to make and teaches you how to think critically. Even after your favorite cartoonist retires or [Stephen] Colbert wraps it up, you’re not left believing everything they’re telling you.

One, I push my deadlines closer than anybody else, or let's say it this way: I'm really late.

You know, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have supported individuals and regimes that have slaughtered millions across the globe. And they need to be held accountable for that.

I guess I was a conspiracy theorist when I said "no weapons in Iraq." Now they call that history.

We have to confront the very scary fact that the president is a moron. He's really dumb.

When the news wants to tell you something is important, they put dramatic theme music behind it. They scare you into watching the story.

That's not saying there's not a bunch of good Democrats. I'm sure there's a lot of people who still haven't figured that out yet or simply don't want to have that pessimistic of an outlook, but I think the Democratic Party is completely worthless.

The American people have no control over what the military does. We have no say in American foreign policy.

But I know that in Toronto and Vancouver there are all the comforts of America, and yet there's a difference in the people, and I had health care.

It's not the norm when creators have any protections with regards to creative control. And so it took some time, I think, for the strip to gain enough popularity where I had enough leverage to come in and say, "It has to be done in a certain way or it's not going to be done at all," and then have people willing to put up with that who were ultimately paying for it. You know, for them to be willing to kind of concede those kind of things. It just takes time, you know?

I do think comics are a dying art form because newspapers are a dying medium. But it's not to say that in the next generation, where there's people getting their news electronically, comics won't survive. Right now, they're still largely attached to the newspaper world. And the more they can break away from that, the more they have a chance to live on.

In USA culture is just a matter of commerce. So, you know, I don't really look for that, and I don't expect to find it in any city.

I'm not crazy impressed with New York. I mean, I don't buy into that whole thing: Everyone in New York is all sophisticated, and they're into art and sophisticated things, and everyone in L.A. is just shallow entertainment people. I think people are just shallow across the board.

And I'm not so in love with making people mad that I want to live my life around it.

If your intentions are already bad, and then you still make giant mistakes, it seems like things just get worse. I get little joy seeing this, because what I don't see is the public saying, "Wow, those guys are really bad, maybe we should re-evaluate everything." I don't see that response with the scandals, I don't see it with the indictments, I don't see it after Katrina, I don't see the public going, "Wow, let's really re-examine the entire direction this country is going."

You know, every time a summer movie comes out, people think they're gonna get rich off of the merchandise.

When the news is slow, or when there's just so many other responsibilities bearing down on me that I don't have the time to do it right, that's when it gets frustrating. As an artist, you just don't wanna put bad work out. So when you have to do it seven days a week, you're just gonna have some bad days and bad weeks and bad months and bad years.

At least when I was young, in high school: "Eh, voting doesn't mean nothing." You don't really know that to be true, you just say it. Then you get older, and responsible, and you go, "Oh heck, let me vote." And then you vote and you go away. I was actually right when I was 16.

Voting really doesn't mean anything. I wish I could say something different, but I think it's kind of a sham.

I think the people should demand accountability on the voting. I think there's no point in voting if you're not gonna demand fairness and be able to verify each vote. And other countries can do this fairly easily. So I don't think you really want democracy if you're not willing to take that first step.

Anyone will acknowledge that there's a lot of people other than those who are elected who run the government, and who are in permanent positions, and long-term positions, appointed positions - not voted in by anybody. That kind of gnaws away, I think, at the idea of democracy. The two-party system, again, is an issue. What we see is no desire on behalf of anyone to begin to address these problems.

It's difficult to overcome what you're getting beamed into your brain by the television every day. The worthlessness of journalism today is just making the country confused and bewildered and lost.

I think, ultimately, the problem with something like this is that you actually have so many more opportunities to say something than you actually have things worth saying. And then, as an artist who doesn't want to do bad work, gosh, how do you fill up all that space when you really don't have anything actually worthwhile to say? And that's what makes the job tough, because the fans get mad - "That's not funny," or "You've been sucking for several months now." And you go, "It's not my fault! I'm trying."

Fidel Castro just talked a long time, and he talked and he talked and he talked and he talked... and he talked during the meeting. I think it was about four hours. But I guess that's part of the Castro spirit.

Meeting Fidel Castro was really cool. It's cool because it's Fidel, and it's a world leader, and there's so much history behind the man and who he is in this hemisphere. And then at the end of the day, he's, I think, just like a big mayor. There's only, like, 11 million people in Cuba. He's a big mayor.

I do the interviews and then I read about myself. I understand it and I get what it is. But there's so much stuff that I say, either jokingly or lightheartedly, that gets printed like I'm dead serious.

We did our best to do a Fox show, frankly, I don't think the difficulties we had at Fox would be exclusive to Fox. It's tough to be funny, because there's so many eyeballs and there's so much money at stake that I think everything is just kind of over-thought. And it's tough to be daring and do something different, either with regards to content or even structure.

The biggest thing that I don't like about L.A. is the sort of 2 a.m. shutdown of everything. It really kind of stagnates the nightlife. It's very hard to casually have fun in Los Angeles. If you want to go out and have fun it's like a full-time job, you have to really prepare, and call ahead, and get on a list, and know somebody... It's really rough to relax here.

I think people were a little bit too concerned about what I would or would not be allowed to say. So let me just get that out of the way and get on to the business of telling, you know, a story, or two, or three, or 15. And also to say, "Okay, look. Here it is, don't worry about it. The restrictions and the watered-down and all the stuff that you thought was gonna happen really isn't the case." So we done got that out the way, and now we can just kind of move on.

I think there's a lot of good and bad to L.A. One of the things you have to consider is that you can, if you're lucky, make a decent living here. That's a big plus. That's pretty positive. The weather is OK.

I'm actually kind of angriest about the fact that everybody keeps saying how angry I am.

I just tell jokes, and I think a lot of people take it too seriously. It's not that I don't have things that I'm angry about in the world, and I think most decent human beings are upset about things, and even upset about things in their own country, but I'm not a particularly unhappy fellow.

I have to remind myself - I think the population of the United States has been subjected to the most sophisticated form of propaganda and mind control that any group of people has been exposed to in a very, very long time. It's difficult for people in this country to get any kind of factual information and to make intelligent decisions based on them.

Fame is not your friend. It ain't necessarily your enemy. It is what it is.

We don't need a two-party system. We need something else. Because at this point, the two-party system is really just a one-party system. And that one party is crumbling.

You can't accuse the creator of The Boondocks, ... Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil and the government is lying about 9/11.

You collapse a few times, and you put your head in your hands, and you say, "Oh my god, how am I gonna get through this?" You have a few of those nights, and then you get over it and you keep it moving. And those nights... As you get more used to the strain, I guess those nights are fewer and farther between. So that's the best you can hope for. It's a tough job and it's a lot to pull out of your brain.

Don't get me wrong, it definitely ain't the Democratic Party either. They're so bad, I mean I'm actually starting to believe that John Kerry was just token resistance, that he literally was down with George W.Bush. It was just such a horrible, horrible, horrible thing to see, that campaign. So, you know, I don't know what's going on.

I think revolution is always a little bit possible. I think it won't look or sound anything like what we would expect. But I think revolution is very difficult, and I'm not optimistic for any kind of dramatic change.

The population has to be educated about how the government actually works.

I cannot be made into the commentator for the unspoken black masses.

Perhaps it's time to start examining countries that have made democracy work while still having some kind of the same relationship in covenant with their population. Perhaps we need to look at the Scandinavian countries, or Canada, or something else, but whatever we have now, I think we just have to acknowledge, ain't workin.

I really get a little bit confused by all this "angry angry angry" talk when all I do is tell jokes and at least some people find it funny.