I wasn’t born a fool. It took work to get this way.

The line is a self-deprecating comic boast: the speaker claims foolishness is not an innate defect but an “achievement” earned through effort. The humor comes from reversing the usual narrative of self-improvement—here, “work” produces a worse outcome—while also hinting at the deliberate craft behind clowning. Read in connection with Danny Kaye’s screen persona, it can be taken as a wink at performance: playing the fool convincingly requires timing, discipline, and intelligence. More broadly, it satirizes how people rationalize their shortcomings by treating them as the product of experience and choice rather than accident.