Agitprop presents Über-Allies, an ongoing series paying tribute to the individuals of this mad world who stand for truth, integrity, peace, freedom of thought and justice. The first installment of Über-Allies begins with a look at the late comedian Bill Hicks.
"All governments are lying cocksuckers."
"Think of me as Chomsky with dick jokes."
Those two short quotes nicely sum up the raw, take-no-prisoners style of Bill Hicks. Known for his cynical rants against capitalism and consumerism, Bill Hicks was a man who was not afraid to speak his mind. Continuing in the comedic tradition of Lenny Bruce, Hicks broke new ground in comedy by mixing his anarcho-libertarian political views with stinging satirical criticism of American life. No topic was free from the wrath of Bill Hicks.
Hicks took on religious conservatives, The War on Drugs, government malfeasance, consumer culture and The Persian Gulf War among other things. He constantly assaulted his audiences with raw doses of reality. Hicks died in 1994 at age 32 from pancreatic cancer. Click here to purchase the recordings of Bill Hicks.
From Hicks' viewpoint, one of the worst sins an individual could commit is selling out, particularly, selling out to corporate America. One of the things that pained Hicks the most was watching his former idol, Jay Leno, shilling Doritos to bovine America and becoming a corporate fuck-bag for NBC. The routine he created around his loathing for Leno is totally unrelenting and savage. He describes Jay Leno stuffing the barrel of an Uzi in his mouth and blowing his brains out in the shape of an NBC peacock on the wall behind him after having a meaningless interview with Joey Lawrence from the show “Blossom.”
Hicks attacked commercialism with a vengeance. He believed in the purity of the artist and his or her creation. Creating art for the consumer-capitalist system was an aberration to true art. He believed that commercialism and integrity were antithetical. Thus, music designed solely to sell as a commodity was just as satanic as music that sold other commodities. He attacked modern popular musicians as whores for the corporate system.
Hicks on selling out:
"You can print this in stone, and don't you ever forget it: Any -- any -- performer that ever sells a product on television is for now and all eternity removed from the artistic world. I don't care if you shit Mona Lisas out of your ass on cue: you've made your fucking choice."
Hicks on the reality of political power:
"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. 'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!' "
On the oddities of Christianity:
"If child molestation is actually your concern, how come we don't see Bradley tanks knocking down Catholic churches?"
Christianity has a built-in defense system: anything that questions a belief, no matter how logical the argument is, is the work of Satan by the very fact that it makes you question a belief. It's a very interesting defense mechanism and the only way to get by it -- and believe me, I was raised Southern Baptist -- is to take massive amounts of mushrooms, sit in a field, and just go, "Show me."
On the hypocrisy of the Persian Gulf War:
"You know we armed Iraq. I wondered about that too, you know during the Persian Gulf war those intelligence reports would come out: "Iraq: incredible weapons - incredible weapons." How do you know that? "Uh, well...we looked at the receipts.""
On the latent functions of television:
"So there, we have figured it out, go back to bed America, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America, your government is in control again. Here, here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed America, here's American Gladiators. Here's 56 channels of it. Watch these pituitary retards bang their fuckin skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go America, you are free... to do as we tell you. You are free, to do as we tell you."
Bill Hicks was a true iconoclast who assaulted audiences with crude descriptions of reality. I admire this mix of truth-telling and cynicism. People may call me a cynic or a naysayer, but I consider myself to be a truth-seeker. I like to see reality for what it is, warts and all. However, it is important to prevent the negative from overcoming the potential for the positive. Hicks may have come off as a cynical bastard at times but he also expressed an idealism for a society not controlled by profit-motives and consumerism. In his 1990's routine titled "Revelations" he offers a glimmer of hope:
The world is like a ride at an amusement park. It goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly colored and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: Is this real, or is this just a ride?
And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, "Hey – don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride ..." And we ... kill those people. Ha ha, "Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real."
It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. Jesus murdered; Martin Luther King murdered; Malcolm X murdered; Gandhi murdered; John Lennon murdered; Reagan ... wounded. But it doesn't matter because: It's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love.
The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace. Thank you very much, you've been great.
[Sound effect of three shots, Hicks pretends to fall down dead, lights go down.]
Is the dream of a world in which people are valued more than profit even possible? It's as simple as the choice between love and fear.
Thank you Bill Hicks.
