Parenting & Family Quote by Rick Mercer

Mercer takes a slogan that once felt radical and exposes how easily it can become a comforting excuse. "It gets better" was born as a lifeline for queer kids enduring school hallways that felt like daily punishment: hang on, adulthood brings freedom, community, distance. Mercer doesn’t mock the sentiment so much as indict the adult world that leans on it. The line "no longer good enough" is the tell: reassurance, however sincere, has been doing double duty as a way to postpone responsibility.

The rhetoric is deliberately plain, almost parental, and that’s the point. Mercer, as a comedian, understands how public compassion often stops at words. He reframes the problem from an individual endurance test to a collective infrastructure failure. "Kids who are different" is broad, strategic language: it invites listeners who might flinch at politicized labels to recognize difference as ordinary, not niche. The subtext is that bullying, exclusion, and mental health crises aren’t tragic weather events. They’re policy choices, school culture choices, enforcement choices.

The pivot from "it’s gonna get better" to "make it better now" shifts time and agency. It rejects the cruel bargain we offer marginalized youth: suffer today for the possibility of tomorrow. Mercer’s intent is to shame complacency without sermonizing, turning empathy into a demand for immediate action: safer schools, adult intervention, visible support, real consequences. The joke isn’t in the line; the comedian’s weapon is timing. He arrives after the slogan has gone mainstream and asks what it’s been used to avoid.