Humor & Life Quote by Dennis Miller

A one-liner that turns a loaded religious phrase into a status joke, Dennis Miller’s “Born again?! No, I’m not. Excuse me for getting it right the first time” is built on a mock-polite shove: “Excuse me” pretends to be courteous while sharpening the blade. The laugh comes from a neat rhetorical inversion. “Born again” is supposed to signal humility, a public admission of error followed by renewal. Miller flips it into self-congratulation, treating spiritual rebirth like a remedial course for people who failed the intro.

The specific intent is provocation with a tuxedo on: he’s needling evangelical culture while keeping enough ambiguity to claim it’s “just a joke.” The subtext is more pointed. It casts conversion as trend, theater, or identity rebrand, not inner transformation. The punchline also sketches a particular late-20th-century American friction: secular, hyper-verbal irony versus the moral certainty of the religious right. Miller’s persona thrives in that tension, performing intelligence as a kind of immunity. If you “got it right” the first time, you don’t need redemption; you need an audience.

Context matters because “born again” wasn’t merely theological language; it was political and cultural shorthand, especially from the Carter-to-Reagan era onward. Miller’s line treats that movement as social signaling, and it flatters listeners who prefer skepticism to testimony. It’s funny, but it’s also a miniature culture-war argument: faith as second chance versus irony as first principle.