I imagine having your act cut by somebody you admire and respect would make your inevitable passing that much more difficult. Letterman’s snub couldn’t have come at a more inappropriate time.
Hicks did an interview with a local-access television show a few months before he went home to die. It’s very painful to watch. He’s pale, he’s lost weight, he’s obviously very sick. He keeps shifting in his seat to relieve the near-constant pain in his abdomen. In the interview, he talks about Letterman and he seems more disappointed than angry. He spent his entire professional life trying to connect with the audience in a meaningful way, and for Letterman to reject his act when he was practically on his deathbed must have come as an incredible blow.
From what Dave said on last night’s show, Bill didn’t tell most people, and I took that to mean Dave wasn’t in the know.
So maybe Bill was really looking at his work like, “I have to leave a legacy before I die, so I’m pulling out all the stops tonight.” If Dave didn’t know that Bill was dying, Dave might have quashed it, figuring he’d touch base with Bill later—there would be future opportunities to mend the fence, have Bill on the show, etc.
A couple of years ago I came across 2 CDs of Hicks’ comedy stuff and eagerly bought them. I remembered Hicks as being funny and daring. I was horrified to find in retrospect that he was neither. I hardly raised a chuckle at hours of material and anything that was funny was the little I already remembered.
I found the Letterman routine horrendous. It was like listening to my parents in those days - how can young people like all these music acts we don’t like? I think if the camera had been turned around we would have seen a bunch of middle-class 40 somethings who thought just like Bill.
By the way, I always thought the Larry Sanders episode “Performance Artist” was based upon the Hicks incident. tv.com references it. But several lists show the episode as airing on August 25, 1993. Hicks on Letterman was October 1, 1993.
I’m sorry, was the discussion restricted to sacred cows of leftists under the age of 22? Anyway, I see plenty of Che Guevara t-shirts on modern teenagers. The Motorcycle Diaries film adaptation is pretty recent, and a new film, CHE, is out later this year. He’s still relevant to young lefties. My favorite editorial cartoon of the last few years was by Lalo Alcarez. It was the iconic picture of Che, but on his beret, instead of the Communist star, there was a Nike swoosh. Satire is where you find it.
Comparable Worth is a rather famous bit of feminist dogma that says women shouldn’t just get equal pay for the same jobs as men, but for comparable jobs as well; a secretary should pull down the same salary as a teamster instead of settling for what the market will bear. You’ve never heard of it? Google it.
And justly so. Its adherants, invariably on the left, find it rather sacred, though.
“People Eating Tasty Animals.” Hee hee!
Their proponents straightfacedly use empty catchphrases out of context, like “a woman’s right to choose,” as though they were discussing Coke and Pepsi, and not what some reasonably view as a potential human life. Hey, it makes me giggle!
She was the face of Lilith Faire and everything that was wonderful and silly about it. Let me guess: That was before your time too, like Pete Seeger, right?
[PJ O’Rourke]A conservative is somebody who owns too many guns; a liberal is somebody who owns too many cats. [/PJ O’Rourke]
Its proponents regard it as a fundamental human right, although recorded human history never has. Overheard on Comedy Central: “My concern isn’t that she has two mothers; my concern is that she has two Jewish mothers!” Yeah, there’s satiric potential there.
Some of the participants are a little strident or something. One activist a couple years back showed up in a giant homemade vagina costume. I thought it was hilarious, but she was dead serious about it. I promise you she didn’t vote Republican!
In conclusion: Yes, the American Left has its sacred cows and yes, it’s fine and dandy to make fun of them.
Sounds pretty obscure to me. Certainly not a “sacred cow.”
Most lefties are not PETA adherents. It’s not a sacred cow, and it DOES get made fun of.
Still not seeing the humor here. If someone doesn’t agree with you that zygotes are imbued with magic spirits, that makes THEM ridiculous?
I vaguely remember Lilith Faire as being some kind of rock festival featuring women artists. I have no idea what was supposed to be “silly” about it (not saying there wasn’t, just that I know nothing about it) It’s not anything liberals care about, though. Mock away.
I don’t get it. Please explain further. What do cats have to do with liberalism?
SSM proponents think it should be a human right? Stop, my ribs.
It sounds like you heard the kind of joke you’re saying doesn’t exist.
How do you know? Aren’t Republicans opposed to rape?
Well. you haven’t really identified any sacred cows, nor have you identified anything liberals are stopping you from trying to make fun of. “ha ha, gay people think same-sex marriage should be human right” doesn’t exactly put me on the floor, though. Maybe conservatives should actually try to be funny. That sometimes helps comedy be more successful.
How many young people are committed enough to even bother? It’s not a lot of people. If you’re political enough to do anything more than wear a Che shirt, most of your peers probably regard you as a big annoyance.
The New Yorker did the same thing a while ago (I don’t know who was first): they had a drawing of Che wearing a Bart Simpson t-shirt. Funniest cartoon I’ve ever seen in there.
That’s hardly surprising. PETA depends on shrill, humorless activism; that’s it’s stock in trade. Reasonable people can’t be bothered with a group like that, so it’s membership is made of strident loons, naive teens and stupid celebrities who think fuzzy animals are cute.
Some people regarded the idea of suffrage for women as hilarious. It’s true that history has not been particularly kind to their jokes, although you can still hear “giving women the vote was a mistake” once in a while.
Yeah, I’m not sure how you could argue it doesn’t. Maybe you’d need to distinguish between the sacred cows of Committed Leftists or whatever, because it’s not like all Democrats care about Che and PETA - most of them clearly do not.
Anyway, back to Hicks: his best comedic stuff was probably about drugs, and he was funny when he was being scathing about Los Angeles (the shallowness in general and the Rodney King riots), and religion in general. The stuff about the Gideons is great.
What makes his later stuff worthwhile for me is that the fact that it’s unhinged. You don’t usually hear anything like that. I don’t buy into the conspiracy theories but I don’t think they’re a product of him losing his mind; I think that’s just how he saw the world. To say his comedy was adversarial would be a huge understatement; that’s what he thought he was up against. He thought he was doing something significant and not just doing jokes about cats and dogs that people could listen to while they ate dinner. I respect that.
I agree, at least with the quoted parts here. I know this is attributed to Hicks
but if anything, the opposite seems true. After a few minutes of “shock” laughter, I realized that Hicks was just yelling at people. Comparing Leary (or Lewis Black) to Hicks is just plain wrong, IMO.