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Humor & Life Quote by Samantha Bee

"I never believe them when they say that, because you really have to sort of be aware of what's going on in the news in order to get the jokes on the show"

About this Quote

Samantha Bee’s line doubles as a jab and a defense mechanism: a jab at the people who insist they “don’t follow the news,” and a defense of political comedy as something closer to civic literacy than lazy snark. The “I never believe them” is doing most of the work. Bee isn’t arguing that everyone is secretly a policy wonk; she’s calling out a culturally convenient pose, a way of laundering disengagement into a personality trait. In a media landscape where checking out can feel like self-care, she treats ignorance less as innocence and more as performance.

Her phrasing is casual, even shruggy, but the subtext is pointed. “You really have to sort of be aware” lands like a soft prerequisite, the minimal entry fee to participate in the joke. That’s also a subtle flex about her genre: satire doesn’t just entertain, it tests whether the audience has been paying attention. If the punchline depends on headline recognition, then the viewer who laughs has already admitted to being informed, at least enough to decode the reference. Bee turns the act of getting a joke into an accidental confession of engagement.

Context matters: Bee’s career sits squarely in the era when late-night and “news” comedy became a parallel information pipeline. Her comment protects that lane against the perennial critique that comedians are replacing journalists. She’s not claiming authority; she’s reminding you that the comedy is parasitic on reporting, and that opting out of the news while consuming political jokes is a contradiction people try to get away with.

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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Bee, Samantha. (2026, February 16). I never believe them when they say that, because you really have to sort of be aware of what's going on in the news in order to get the jokes on the show. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-never-believe-them-when-they-say-that-because-134660/

Chicago Style
Bee, Samantha. "I never believe them when they say that, because you really have to sort of be aware of what's going on in the news in order to get the jokes on the show." FixQuotes. February 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-never-believe-them-when-they-say-that-because-134660/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I never believe them when they say that, because you really have to sort of be aware of what's going on in the news in order to get the jokes on the show." FixQuotes, 16 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-never-believe-them-when-they-say-that-because-134660/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.

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Samantha Bee (born October 25, 1969) is a Comedian from USA.

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