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Aging & Wisdom Quote by David Letterman

"No one knows if Saddam is still alive. They keep showing old footage of him on TV saying that it's live. You know, it's like the same thing we do with Dick Cheney"

About this Quote

Letterman’s joke works because it treats wartime uncertainty and domestic political opacity as the same kind of TV problem: a shaky broadcast where the audience is asked to suspend disbelief. In 2003, Saddam Hussein’s status was a global obsession, with networks looping grainy clips and officials offering carefully worded hints. Letterman punctures that manufactured suspense by pointing out the medium’s tell: “old footage… saying that it’s live.” The laugh lands on a modern anxiety that news can feel like a rerun dressed up as breaking.

Then he pulls the camera back home. Dick Cheney, notoriously private and often physically absent from the public eye, becomes the punchline that sharpens the critique. The comparison isn’t moral equivalence; it’s media equivalence. Both figures are framed through controlled images, and the public is expected to accept the edit as reality. Letterman’s subtext is that power can be ghostly without being gone, and that visibility is something politicians and regimes manage, not something citizens receive.

There’s also a sly jab at American self-seriousness: we fixate on whether the dictator is “alive” while tolerating a vice president who seems politically “alive” even when he’s offscreen. Late-night comedy here functions like a pressure valve and a fact-check of vibe, reminding viewers that the spectacle of leadership is curated, and that television can make absence feel like presence if it repeats the right clip enough times.

Quote Details

TopicSarcastic
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Letterman, David. (2026, January 15). No one knows if Saddam is still alive. They keep showing old footage of him on TV saying that it's live. You know, it's like the same thing we do with Dick Cheney. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/no-one-knows-if-saddam-is-still-alive-they-keep-147598/

Chicago Style
Letterman, David. "No one knows if Saddam is still alive. They keep showing old footage of him on TV saying that it's live. You know, it's like the same thing we do with Dick Cheney." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/no-one-knows-if-saddam-is-still-alive-they-keep-147598/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"No one knows if Saddam is still alive. They keep showing old footage of him on TV saying that it's live. You know, it's like the same thing we do with Dick Cheney." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/no-one-knows-if-saddam-is-still-alive-they-keep-147598/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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David Letterman

David Letterman (born April 12, 1947) is a Comedian from USA.

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