Daily Inspiration Quote by Pat Morita

Pat Morita’s joke works because it smuggles a taboo into the shape of a dad pun. “Smoking grass” is counterculture slang that, in its moment, carried real heat: drugs, youth rebellion, the generation gap. Morita doesn’t meet that anxiety head-on. He sidesteps it with a literal-minded twist - grass as lawn - turning moral panic into yard work. The line’s genius is its feigned innocence: “I don’t know how you feel” performs politeness while quietly daring the audience to admit they know exactly what “grass” means.

The intent is less to advocate than to defuse. By converting weed into a suburban chore, Morita collapses the distance between hippie vice and middle-class routine. That’s the subtext: America’s cultural fights often sound grand and righteous until you change the framing and reveal how ordinary, even silly, the language is. It’s also a comedian’s survival strategy in an era when certain topics could still trigger gatekeepers. The joke lets him touch the hot stove without getting burned: if someone objects, it’s “just” about lawns.

Coming from an actor-comic who spent years navigating how Asian American performers were expected to behave onstage, the bit also reads as an assertion of control. He’s not the exotic outsider; he’s the guy with the same lawn, the same wry eye on American hypocrisy, and the timing to make the room laugh before it can judge.