Wealth & Money Quote by D. L. Hughley

Hughley’s line lands like a barstool proverb: blunt, a little provocative, and calibrated to get a laugh that’s also a flinch. As a comedian-actor who trades in social commentary, his intent isn’t to offer a census-grade truth about women; it’s to poke at the anxieties men carry about what women “really want.” Money is the obvious stereotype, the lazy punchline. Power is the upgrade: sharper, more contemporary, and more unsettling because it suggests money is just a proxy for something deeper - agency, leverage, freedom to leave.

The subtext is doing two things at once. On the surface, it flatters male suspicion: women as strategic, motivated by status. Underneath, it quietly admits a cultural reality: in a world where women have historically been denied power, wanting it isn’t villainy, it’s self-preservation. That’s where the joke tightens. It uses a sexist frame to smuggle in a critique of the frame: if power is “scarce” for women, of course it becomes desirable. The line also hints at a shift in gender politics - the fear that women aren’t just asking for equal pay, they’re asking for the steering wheel.

Context matters: Hughley comes out of stand-up and Black cultural commentary where humor often functions as a pressure valve for real social tension. The bite here isn’t purely misogyny or purely feminist; it’s the uneasy comedy of a society renegotiating who gets to control the narrative, the relationship, the room.