Humor & Life Quote by David Letterman

Letterman’s genius here is that he lowers your expectations with one hand and picks your pocket with the other. “I know these jokes aren’t great” is the classic late-night feint: a self-own that buys goodwill, disarms hecklers, and sets up the real target. The laugh isn’t just at the jokes’ alleged mediocrity; it’s at the idea that the news cycle has become so grotesquely reliable that a comedian can complain about scheduling gaps like a factory worker between shifts.

“Ladies and gentlemen” adds a faux-master-of-ceremonies dignity, the kind that used to introduce a song-and-dance number, not a constitutional crisis. That contrast is the engine of the line. The phrase “between impeachments” treats impeachment not as a once-in-a-generation rupture but as seasonal programming. Letterman is lampooning the normalization of political scandal as content, with the comic’s own dependence on it tucked inside the punchline. He’s not merely mocking politicians; he’s winking at the audience about the media ecosystem that turns civic emergencies into nightly material.

The specific intent is pragmatic and pointed: acknowledge the room’s lukewarm energy, then redirect it into a sharper laugh by blaming the lull on Washington’s temporary failure to self-immolate. The subtext is bleakly modern: when governance is indistinguishable from spectacle, even satire starts to sound like a status update. Letterman makes that discomfort funny by saying it like a complaint about reruns.