My cooking is so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor.

In this one-liner, Diller uses self-deprecating domestic humor—one of her signature comic personas—to exaggerate her supposed incompetence in the kitchen. The joke hinges on a comic misrecognition: Thanksgiving (a celebratory American holiday centered on a family meal) is absurdly confused with Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day (a solemn commemoration tied to December 7, 1941). By yoking a burnt or disastrous dinner to a national tragedy, the line amplifies the stakes of “bad cooking” to ridiculous proportions. It also plays on mid‑century expectations that women should excel at holiday meals, turning that cultural pressure into a punchline.