GQ: Mike, this never happens, but you're the only white straight guy here.

Kathy Griffin (her Laugh Your Head Off tour runs through the summer): It's getting racial. Mike, do you feel oppressed?

Mike Birbiglia (his special ‘Thank God for Jokes’ is available on Netflix; his one-man show ‘The New One’ is at Manhattan's Cherry Lane Theatre from July 26 through August 26): I was very concerned. I called the white police immediately and reported it. You're going to be getting a phone call.

White straight guys have a lot of privilege almost everywhere, but in comedy you're, like, disenfranchised. You have the most jokes that are off-limits to you.

Aparna Nancherla (stars in the Comedy Central series ‘Corporate’; her episode on the show ‘The Standups’ is available on Netflix): I don't think that's true.

Roy Wood Jr. (correspondent on ‘The Daily Show’; his Comedy Central special, ‘Father Figure,’ is available on Amazon): But your tightrope is thinner than comics of other groups.

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Birbiglia: Have you guys watched the National Lampoon documentary [Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead]? One of the things that hit me hard is it's all white dudes. It was the '70s. I found it really heartening to look around at comedy and be like, “Thank God my 3-year-old daughter is allowed to at least consider my fucking profession.” My God.

Griffin: Everything I watch, I count the women. Did they get one in? Did they get a person of color in? A gay person? I'm hyper-aware of that.

Hasan Minhaj (correspondent on ‘The Daily Show’; his special, ‘Homecoming King,’ is available on Netflix, where Minhaj's weekly talk show will premiere in the fall): You've always been?

Griffin: As I get older, I get more militantly feminist.

Wood: But when you started, were you aware of the fucking mountain that you had to climb?

Griffin: I knew it was a long shot, especially being from Illinois and not knowing a single person in comedy. But I just wanted to be Rhoda or Phyllis—the sidekick. I didn't want to be the star, because I knew I wasn't pretty enough. But I was like, “If I can be the funny one getting the jokes, I'm happy.”

Aparna, did you think about what it would be like to enter a mostly male profession?

Nancherla: No, I came from a very comedy-ignorant background—I didn't know you could make it a career. I was a little oblivious, like, “I'm just trying this thing.” All the identity stuff was put on me.

Minhaj: I think that actually plays to your strength. What I love about your comedy is that you're from another planet. The stuff you do onstage comes from this tabula rasa, clean-slate perspective.

The Daily Show satirizes the boxes people are put in. You're the “Senior This Race or Gender or Religion Correspondent.” It's a commentary on it, but it's also true.

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Minhaj: The Daily Show satirized an entire form, and now what you see in the marketplace is all the tentacles of Jon Stewart's children in late-night satire. When Jon retired, I was like, “Why are you leaving?” And he was like, “I've manipulated this chess piece in every single way I could. For what I've been able to do from the desk, looking to camera one with an over-the-shoulder graphic, from the field pieces to the correspondents and them creating their own personas that satirize other personas, to the rivalry between me and Colbert… Now I'm interested to see where you guys can take it—how you can manipulate it.” And I think the biggest challenge we have is the characters have now mutated and evolved beyond just O'Reilly. The villains took steroids. How do you satirize Alex Jones? It really makes O'Reilly look like he's from planet Earth.