WARNING: This diary has a two drink minimum.
Second Warning: Links Not Safe for Work.
Bill Hicks was one of the few openly progressive comedians to ever work in stand up. He remains one of the few people to use his fame to further the progressive agenda.
How did he do this? More below.
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His style was very fluid. It never seemed as if he was working with written material; more like he was simply regurgitating a stream of consciousness. Each topic flowed smoothly into the next, and it never felt "written" (see Mitch Hedberg, who while extremely funny, always spoke like he was reading from a page).
Bill died in 1994 of pancreatic cancer. But watching his comedy recently, I was so amazed by its relativity to the situation in the world today. It's fascinating that he was so prescient of the current day. He once said there were only two paths: love and fear. He eschewed the fear and tried to spread the love. Had he lived, he would have been one of the most outspoken critics of this administration. And it's such a shame that the last seven years has been wasted exploiting that fear.
Was he a perfect human being? Nope. He had a lot of flaws. But he truly used his soap box to deliver a progressive message. He once ended a comedy routine by explaining to the audience how many people we could feed and educate if we abolished the military and used the money for charity. And he worked progressive themes into his act. He joked that the tech for guiding bombs into air vents could be used to guide food into hungry people's mouths. He called out evangelical Christians for beating him up (for making anti-Christian jokes) and supporting nuclear weapons.
Today, there are fantastic comedians who call the administration and its enablers to the carpet. Both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report do an excellent, almost daily job of exposing the absurdity. But it lacks the raw emotion that Bill Hicks used in his comedy to expose the hypocrisy and banality of the wingnuts.
Don't miss these:
Relentless Part 1
Relentless Part 2
Relentless Part 3
Relentless Part 4
Relentless Part 5
Relentless Part 6
BILL HICKS FOUNDATION FOR WILDLIFE