The doctor turned to me and asked, "Mr. Goldthwait, would you like to cut the cord?" And I said, "Isn't there anyone more qualified?"

The line plays on Goldthwait’s established comic persona—anxious, self-deprecating, and suspicious of his own competence—by placing it in a moment conventionally framed as intimate and celebratory (the birth of a child). The doctor’s invitation is a ritual of participation, but the punchline flips it into a question of liability and qualification, implying the speaker is the last person you’d want holding anything sharp in a medical setting. Beyond the immediate gag, it satirizes how social expectations can pressure people into symbolic acts they don’t feel prepared for, and it underscores Goldthwait’s recurring theme: discomfort with adulthood roles and responsibility, expressed through exaggerated humility.