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Wit & Attitude Quote by Al Roker

"I get bitter, angry and disbelieving, and I tell my kids there a lot of idiots out there. I also want them to know that being successful is not the real world - that their parents get treated better because they're on TV"

About this Quote

Roker is puncturing a fantasy his own job helps sell: that visibility equals virtue, and that success is a stable form of safety. The blunt admission of getting "bitter, angry and disbelieving" reads less like a celebrity confession than an exhausted parent naming the emotional toll of watching people behave terribly in public and still get rewarded. That trio of feelings matters: it tracks the arc from irritation to moral nausea to a kind of stunned disbelief that the social contract is this flimsy.

The line about telling his kids "there a lot of idiots out there" is deliberately unvarnished, almost pedagogically crude. He is not trying to curate optimism; he's inoculating them. The subtext is that celebrity parenting comes with a unique hazard: children can confuse their household's treatment as proof the world is fair, or that their parents are inherently exceptional. Roker refuses that lesson. He reframes fame as an artifact of the media economy, not a reliable measure of competence or goodness.

"Being successful is not the real world" lands as a quiet rebuke of American merit-talk. Success, in his telling, is an alternate lane with better customer service, softer consequences, and a halo effect that can make strangers more compliant. When he says they get treated better "because they're on TV", he is naming power in its most casual form: doors opening, doubts dissolving, rules bending. The intent is protective realism - teaching his kids to recognize privilege as situational and unearned, and to prepare for a world that won't automatically clap for them when the cameras aren't rolling.

Quote Details

TopicParenting
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Roker, Al. (2026, February 18). I get bitter, angry and disbelieving, and I tell my kids there a lot of idiots out there. I also want them to know that being successful is not the real world - that their parents get treated better because they're on TV. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-get-bitter-angry-and-disbelieving-and-i-tell-my-61627/

Chicago Style
Roker, Al. "I get bitter, angry and disbelieving, and I tell my kids there a lot of idiots out there. I also want them to know that being successful is not the real world - that their parents get treated better because they're on TV." FixQuotes. February 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-get-bitter-angry-and-disbelieving-and-i-tell-my-61627/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I get bitter, angry and disbelieving, and I tell my kids there a lot of idiots out there. I also want them to know that being successful is not the real world - that their parents get treated better because they're on TV." FixQuotes, 18 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-get-bitter-angry-and-disbelieving-and-i-tell-my-61627/. Accessed 22 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Al Roker (born August 20, 1954) is a Entertainer from USA.

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