Everything is funny as long as it's happening to someone else.

The line captures a common moral and psychological truth about humor: distance makes misfortune easier to laugh at. Rogers, a newspaper columnist and stage performer known for folksy wit and social observation, often pointed out human hypocrisy without sounding cruel. Here the joke turns into a critique—people readily find comedy in others’ troubles while resisting the same treatment when they are vulnerable. The remark also hints at comedy’s dependence on perspective: what reads as tragedy up close can become farce when viewed from the outside, raising questions about empathy, schadenfreude, and the ethics of laughter.