Politics & Power Quote by Dennis Miller

Dennis Miller lands this like a one-liner grenade: a jab at Americans for turning busyness into a civic religion, then topping it with a deliberately inappropriate visual gag. The setup is mild - a day planner “has fewer holes in it” - the familiar complaint that modern life is overscheduled. The punch is the Ray Charles dart board, a metaphor designed to spike the sentence with shock and instant imagery: of course a blind man’s dart board would have fewer holes. The laugh comes from the absurd comparison and the taboo of using disability as comic fuel.

The intent is twofold. On the surface, it’s a complaint about the cult of productivity: Americans don’t just work hard, they schedule their leisure with military precision, leaving no “holes” for boredom, reflection, or spontaneity. Underneath, Miller’s persona is doing what he often does: flaunting cleverness and provocation at the same time, daring the audience to keep up and to tolerate the sting. The subtext is almost a test of complicity: if you laugh, you’ve agreed that the metaphorical point is worth the collateral damage.

Context matters. Miller came up in a late-80s/90s comedy ecosystem that rewarded edgy riffs and celebrity-name punchlines, before today’s tighter norms around punching down. The Ray Charles reference also timestamps the bit, relying on a widely recognized cultural figure to make the image immediate. It’s an efficiency joke about efficiency culture: no wasted space, no wasted seconds, no wasted scruples.