How to Say "Bill Hicks is Overrated" (or Any Other Comedian) Without Mentioning Social Justice

I

Bill Hicks is one of stand-up comedy’s annointed saints, spoken of in the same reverence as Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Lenny Bruce. He is, in fact, hugely overrated.

That’s not say he’s not funny. I remember seeing him in one of his few broadcast appearances, on “Comic Strip Live,” and cracking me up with a story about pulling pranks in high school that ended in permanent injuries for the prankees. Of course, stand-ups probably consider that material to be put together in order to pander to the masses.

He’s got more than a little whiff of all the elements that come boilerplate in a pop culture icon. He started stand-up as a teen, combining classes and late-night sets. He had a confrontational personality. He had a period of “spiritual” awakening brought on by a post-adolescent exploration of drugs and alcohol (cf. Joe Rogan). He was “censored.” He had his bits (allegedly) stolen by Denis Leary, who went on to great success with them. And, just as he was starting to see success--in Britain, which only adds to his “too XXXX for Americans” appeal--he dies of cancer. Instant saint.

The entertainment world is built on telling stories and, just as a charming man is easily charmed (h/t James Ellroy), they are easily suckered in by a good story. [This is why performers are so consistently Leftists. There are no variables or stressors in the Leftist worldview, only arcs, progressions and moments of transformation.] Hicks can more or less fit into the Lenny Bruce narrative of a performer who was “too real” for his audience and his society, mixed in with a little “child prodigy” and “spiritual seeker,” as well as “iconoclast.”

I’m more interested in the development of stand-up as a form. Bruce expanded what was acceptable to talk about in mainstream nightclubs but he was using the style that Mort Sahl pioneered, that of a guy simply talking to the audience. (Before that, Bob Hope developed the style of a recognizable--if comic--human with a distinct personality telling jokes, which rendered obsolete the funny-looking guy shouting gags style of vaudeville.) Bruce is primarily remembered as a martyr for free speech, especially because so few of his performances were recorded and those that exist are from the end of his career, when he would bring a stack of legal documents onstage and comment on them.

[Another note: Someday I might feel like writing about my love for Albert Goldman’s books. He wrote blistering unauthorized biographies of Elvis and John Lennon but started with one about Bruce. He started as a critic and his most notable tic is that he is the original “I liked his early stuff better” guy. He liked only Presley’s Sun recordings, thought Lennon betrayed his talent the moment Beatles left Germany and pursued a recording contract and thought Bruce was best before he turned “dirty” and told discrete bits like “Religion, Inc.”]

Early in the canonization of Hicks, the desire to turn him into the next Lenny Bruce was so fierce that they tried to turn a David Letterman appearance (or two) into a case of censorship. It’s not worth researching to remind myself whether his jokes were “political” (Hicks was political the way saying, “George Bush is a fascist fuck” is political) or crossed the nebulous language line, but it’s enough to say that not having some jokes broadcast on NBC is not the same as “censorship.” I mean, Bruce had to go jail for what he said; Hicks had to go to cable.

After Sahl established the format and Bruce opened the playing field, there wasn’t much more growth available to stand-up outside of the strength of talent and material. Richard Pryor, for example, is an icon because of his incredible talent, not because of his innovations, although an argument could be made that his work opened the form towards confessional, personal work. Why George Carlin is so esteemed, well, I think that it’s a combination of being in the game so consistently for so long, as well as embodying the attitudes that dominate the underemployed, overeducated bourgeoisie from which most modern comedians spring forth.

[I’d love to put a couple of drinks into Robert Klein and ask him about Carlin. Klein’s been active as long as Carlin and was hot stuff in the Seventies as well, but your average comedy nerd today hasn’t heard of him. David Brenner, too.]

As far as I can tell, the only real innovation in stand-up after Bruce was Sam Kinison’s scream. It’s hard to tell all these years later, but to hear comedians tell it, that scream, in an intimate club with the performer inches off the ground and mere feet from the audience, broke the decorum in a way that performance artists dream.

Hick’s innovation, as far as I can tell, is, instead of screaming in the face of the audience, he screamed at individual audience members. Seriously, take a look at this.

Now, consider that, to modern comedians, this is some sort of glorious moment. Hicks is too smart, too funny, too good for this “drunk bitch” and he gives it her with both barrels. Now, I understand that jabbering rummies are a regular hazard and headache for comedians but imagine you didn’t know that and walked into a room where this was going on. Hicks seems unbalanced, more so when you consider the content of what he’s saying to her. “Go see fucking Madonna, you idiot piece of shit,” he says. It’s a weird thing for him to say, I think, indicative of the media-intensive generation of performers that follow him. He’s saying that she’s a bad person because she doesn’t like his performance; in fact, she so bad that she probably like Madonna or something. [Anonymous Conservative would probably have interesting things to say about Hicks’ behavior here; it looks like amygdala overload to me.]

It’s this attitude that leads me to what I think is the most revealing bit he has, Goatboy. In it, Hicks takes on the persona of a demon (sometimes called a “pagan spirit”) and violates, in graphic detail, none other than Debbie Gibson for her crimes against “rock ‘n’ roll.” [“Rock ‘n’ roll” is one of those terms that always leads me to think, “Thanks for stopping by, Grandpa.”]

For those that don’t know, Debbie Gibson is perhaps the most innocuous teen pop star of the Eighties. I can’t stress enough the fact that there was nothing sexual or enticing about her persona at all. She wore acid washed jeans torn only at the knees, brimmed hats on the back of her head and sang about heartthrobs she kissed only in her dreams and anthems about “Electric Youth.” Oh, and she never expressed any affiliation with rock.

I won’t go all Illuminati agenda here but it seems that Gibson’s only crime was being goody-goody and Hicks put himself and his audience firmly on the side of that which debases her. In this way, I guess Hicks was a defining comic of our age, the age that finds innocence, or the presentation of innocence, and has to humiliate it. His attitude struck me as odd back then and disgusting today.

Beyond that, he takes all the attitudes that one expects of an icon of the American Left. He mocks Christians and Southerners as one ignorant, drawling caricature even as he outsmarts them with his own religious knowledge. He ascribes simple, malignant motives to those in power (as always, a monolithic, all-powerful conservative Right, more conceivable during the Reagan-Bush years than today), greed, racism and blood-lust. Organized religion is for idiots and middle America is full of proudly stupid sheep.

For all his reputation, it’s hard to find anything more concrete than a series of poses and attitudes rather than the hard-edged satire we’re supposed to believe he produced. Usually it’s a matter of reductio ad absurdum delivered as, “Hey, idiot, if you think this, why don’t you do this?” Funny enough as strict jokes but never--never--the speaking-truth-to-power prophet we’re told he was.

I imagine that, had he lived, he would have settled into the kind of anti-authoritarian libertarianism that old Leftists come into when they like to drink, smoke and have sex but still believe everything the Left says as long as they haven’t had a conflicting experience. On the other hand, he might have followed his messianic leanings into the kind of bone-headed, formless universalism that Russel Brand likes to dribble.

II

When I write now, it’s only for two reasons. One is that I’ve got something in my head that won’t leave until I get it out in words. The second is that it’s something I think that I haven’t heard anywhere else. The above is the latter.

When looking at Bill Hicks’ work from the whole of stand-up comedy, it’s hard to see what, exactly, is the big deal. He was, above all, a nightclub comic, meaning that he stood in front of crowds and said the things that got a reaction from the crowd. The difference was in his content and pose, inherently polarizing, not in his joke construction or delivery. Hicks talking about inbred Southerners in a black duster was just a flip of your standard Eighties comic in shirtsleeves and a square-bottomed tie talking about the fags. Even the stereotypical comic might end his set with a bit of maudlin talk, maybe about the unhappiness in the world and his chance to brighten everyone’s day, just as Hicks would pepper his act with syncretic references to a cosmic consciousness.

There’s a lot to criticize Hicks for in terms of material. His confrontational attitude seems more self-destructive narcissism than the passion of an artist. His persona was a simple black-is-white reversal of the dominant stand-up persona. His jokes, while often funny, didn’t break any ground in terms of structure. One can even make the argument that he isn’t that funny, if one’s tastes run contrary to his. There are many non-ideological avenues to take if one wants to take him down off the pedestal.

But look up “Bill Hicks overrated” and you’ll find a number of individual forum posts from bewildered individuals asking, “Isn’t the Emperor naked? He looks naked to me.” Anything done by a professional who dares to question St. Bill says the same thing:  He wasn’t Leftist enough.

Primarily, the from-the-left argument is what you’d expect leveled against a straight white man, a category that now can only be considered as an “ally” rather than a leader in the march of Progress. He’s misogynistic and prone to simplistic sloganeering over deep dialectic. His attitude toward smoking is in conflict with the program for a Happier, Healthier Life for All. He probably slipped in the word “tranny” a time or two.

This is the only avenue of criticism available in the media today. The worst of it is not that it’s outrageous, it’s tiresome.

I’ve written before that I’m a bad-movie fan from way back. I don’t watch them as often anymore [the more you’ve seen, the harder it is to find one that really impresses you, just like anything else], but I do have subscriptions to a few bad movie podcasts. [I recommend, just as everyone does, The Flop House, which is hilarious without entering the territory I’m about to describe.] I’ve got a love-hate relationship with How Did This Get Made? because they tend to work themselves up way beyond what’s necessary. I mean, I went to the last Twilight movie because they made it sound crazy when it was just as boring as any of the others. But, more germane to the conversation, there’s always a danger of the hosts, particularly June Diane Raphael, of venturing into cut-rate progressive deconstruction of the films. One episode in particular I had to shut off, for one reason that the conversation had been entirely hijacked toward discussing the gender attitude problems of a film made in the early Nineties. For another, they talked about that time as if feminism were invented in 2002 and all the years before that were like living in Afghanistan for women. Having lived through that time, I can tell you that we heard plenty about the way women and minorities were portrayed.

I unsubscribed from We Hate Movies for just that reason. While the hosts had a good run for a while riffing on the films, in the past year they’ve settled into a default position of mocking the filmmakers’ outmoded racial and gender attitudes. Finally, I got tired of thinking, “That’s not true at all,” instead of laughing.

A big part of my tortuous path to a bachelor’s degree was this attitude, that the only criticism available is from the Left (the New Left, all identity politics). Worse is the attitude that the critic is not only enlightened--that goes without saying--but that he’s operating at a high level of intellectual sophistication. It’s obvious that the schools have gotten only worse, as nearly everyone in the media is a miniature Cornell West.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that that the opinion industry, social, political and entertainment, is done mostly by recent college graduates. They may not write the large feature pieces; those are still for the more accomplished. But the lower levels, the ones writing the short, anonymous pieces at the beginnings of magazines and, now, the quickie blog posts, are staffed entirely by juniors. For them, it’s just a stepping stone, leading to more powerful, less visible positions in their respective industries.

This is a problem because they create the contextual frame for our social dialogue. It’s increasingly true that they’re coming from the Ivy League or its West coast counterpart and have been well-trained in the social justice perspective. Their educations are exactly the same, no matter where they went, and they come out believing the same set of principles and get to work broadcasting it.

Youth and the perpetually-adolescent culture we’ve created is vital to the progressive movement because ignorance of history is the lubricant necessary to achieve their ever-distant goals. Young people not only don’t know history, they don’t have history, no experiences against which they can judge their hand-me-down opinions. We’ve had almost half a century since the Civil Rights Act, 60 years from the beginnings of desegregation, almost as much time in the era of women’s liberation, not to mention the Great Society, etc, etc, and the only response to that progress is, “There’s so much more left to be done,” and “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Bill Hicks is the model of our modern social justice warrior, even if his progressive attitudes in the early Nineties are considered backwards today:  To be “right” one merely has to find some position to the left, measure the world against that theoretical standard and preen righteously.

Hicks had talent, presence and charisma; today’s blogger working for, say, The Atlantic or The New Yorker, has only an esteemed degree and the Correct Perspective. We get pieces like Flavorwire criticizing the New York Times for not using the neologistic pronouns its transsexual subject preferred or various outlets categorizing as “problematic” Netflix’s Orange is the New Black, one of the most Rainbow Coalition, Grrl Power shows in existence.

However, I do look forward to the day that NYT is so filled with “ze”s and “xir”s that it looks like a report written in newspeak.

III

This weekend I watched Colin Quinn’s Long Story Short on Netflix. It’s his one-man show detailing the history of the world. It’s not bad but it highlights exactly what’s wrong with the Carlin/Bruce model of stand-up comedy and the larger problems with the political attitudes of performers.

I’ve always liked Colin Quinn, though he’s never been one of those whose career I’ve followed. He’s got the tough-guy New York attitude that doesn’t resonate much with me, but, in the era of I’ve-got-too-many-feelings comedians Quinn’s style (like Nick DiPaolo’s, for example) is at least a refreshing throwback. I’m more likely to watch this kind of performer these days because I’m more likely to agree with a performer who has the attitude that everything is bullshit; at least I won’t have to hear them carry water for the Left and parrot talking points that lost me years ago.

The show is pretty funny; I especially liked the finale in which Quinn portrayed the invasion of Iraq as a bar fight at 3:30 in the morning. Still, it was frustrating to watch because, while Quinn’s grasp of history is miles above the average comedian’s, it would probably get him a C on a 300-level college test. He made a few significant errors and his technique was to turn every country into a character type, making his descriptions of conflicts unbearably glib.

I imagine that history buffs would feel the same as I did. It’s not that he wasn’t funny, because he was. It’s that, in order to get to the jokes, he has to simplify the situations; in doing so, it’s easy to oversimplify and miss what’s interesting entirely. Then the audience walks away with an incorrect vision of the world.

I’m not interested a raging at Quinn for portraying England as a beta male pining for a louche France. Its example points towards why performers are usually so unsuited for “speaking truth to power.”

If you’re in the mood for an angry read, try Paul Provenza’s Satiristas, a collection of interviews valorizing comedians who dare to say that some people are racist and that rich guys are jerks. You know, the stuff that The Man won’t let you say.

The book, after a while, becomes a bit pathetic, listening to Provenza and the subjects congratulating each other for having the guts to say what everyone else is saying, all while exaggerating their opposition. But it’s clear that they really believe that their opinions, as righteous as they are, are in danger of being defeated by those whose motivations are downright evil.

I wonder, though, if they’re not feeling a bit of what Hicks did when he was screaming at the woman who didn’t care for his act. What’s most insidious about Progressivism is that it is a narrative, a story that ties up all loose ends. I imagine that some of that opposition is merely the blank stare of audiences who came into the club to have fun, not be subject to a diatribe about the evils of society. The Progressive narrative is not, “I failed at giving my audience what they want,” but, “Obviously, these people are either racists or sheep and uncomfortable with facing the truth.”

We’re seeing this more and more, the overarching social issue explaining away that which could be interpersonal problems. Someone gives you a dirty look in a store? Must be because they are “fat haters” and not because you’re making a scene about the sizes. There’s little anyone can do to dissuade these people because it’s all based on supernatural knowledge of others’ secret thoughts and it all makes perfect sense in their heads.

But what I find most fascinating about liberal performers, outspoken would-be social prophets like Patton Oswalt, David Cross and Louis CK (all of whom have been very funny), is how limited their experiences have been. Almost without fail, comedians start performing in their late teens and do nothing outside of show business their entire careers. They may travel all over the country but their interactions are only with other show business people, outside of cashiers and servers. Regular people are just audience members.

I’m sure that even comedians spend time talking to regular folks but they are missing those experiences that come from being forced to interact with others different from oneself. They don’t have deal, day in and day out, with the snotty receptionist that eats fast-food every day for lunch and sighs loudly every time she has to do some work. They don’t have to deal with the guy that comes in ten minutes late every day, red-eyed and smelling of stale beer. It’s experiences like those that make people say, “Maybe these people don’t need a hand-out; they need a kick in the ass.”

Combine this with the fact that the modern performer is downright obsessed with entertainment media, and they are just as full of Progressive dogma as your newswire blogger at The Atlantic. And since stand-up comedy has become another branch of Geek Culture, the audience is as schooled as they are.

Hicks got the audience he wanted. Isn’t everything perfect now?