What does it say about me/the world/life when...

[jaunthie]

...my favorite, most-relevant-to-the-world comedian and social commentator has been dead for over ten years now?

Scariest of all, he's still relevant, right down to the name of the President and his attack dogs. Yes, the president is still named Bush.

Yes, I'm talking about Bill Hicks. In the ten-plus years since his untimely death from cancer, there's been a huge explosion in comedy, comedy clubs, comedians. There have been tons of blue-collar comedy tours, def jam comedy tours, queens of comedy tours, dog-bites-man comedy tours, and a long, long, etcetera. But the art of political comedy has been left to the late-night milquetoast of Jay Leno and David Letterman and the like, with Jon Stewart the only shining light in that otherwise bleak landscape. And Jon has to be way, WAY more restrained than Bill in order to stay on the air (not that this stopped him from utterly ripping up the hosts of "Crossfire" a year ago - still one of the brightest moments in recent comedy history. Check it out here if you've never seen it).

But still. Where have all the serious political and social commentary comedians gone? Or were they always rare, because by and large they're just not popular with a populace that would rather watch "Survivor" than examine where it is going?

Comments

[hiker-chick.livejournal.com]

Not sure whether this is picking an LJ fight or merely a "call 'em as I see 'em." But I think 9/11, Katrina, etc. have fundamentally changed the comic landscape. I'm not even convinced that the current administration is the sole cause. Twinkie is surely making it worse, but would Gore or Kerry have been able to restore our innocence and sense of cocky invulnerability? Maybe, maybe not. And you need cockiness to be comfortable thumbing your nose, either as a comic or as a comedy consumer. My .02.

[fisherbear.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I agree that our uniquely American sense of cocky invulnerability is probably dead, but I've seen obituaries dated to Watergate, the Saigon withdrawal, Carter's sweater, Tet, the Korean cease-fire, Pearl Harbor, the Lusitania, the Maine, Teapot Dome, and the Civil War, and if I looked hard enough I could probably find one that cites the Whiskey Rebellion and the First National Bank.

I'm perfectly happy with the idea that it's not all the gubmint's fault; I'm personally more inclined to point one (middle) finger at the half of the media that actively pushes shut-up-and-smile conformity, and the other at the half that pushes whatever tripe will sell advertising at the lowest possible cost (Survivor, anyone? Who the hell are Jessica and What's-his-name anyway, and why are they on CNN?) Mostly, I'm just tired (and cranky - gee, you think?) of seeing this season's calamities trotted out as the Day(s) that Everything Changed, particularly when the trotting is done in the service of the status quo.

The sad truth is that there isn't any money in intelligent comedy right now. The large media are pretty much closed to anything that doesn't fit the right commercial and/or ideological agenda, and the new, free, open-source media have such a staggeringly low signal-to-noise ratio that it would require some kind of comedy SETI program to fish the intelligent voices out. (Again, not a new problem: I grew up in the same town Hicks did, and I never heard his name until he was already dead.)

Bah. Sorry for venting so early in the week. Which goes to show that, with a little careful planning, it's still possible for a newcomer to establish a lasting voice in the global media: sure, I may not hear anyone call out the rising babble of uncritical sectarian and ideological pap, but I'll never be at risk of forgetting how much I hate Mondays.

I'm sure I'll be in a better mood tomorrow.

-- FB

(For what it's worth, I don't think JauntHie was specifically pointing the finger at the Shrubbites either, but rather reacting to one of the more striking features of Hicks' performances: his best political material was done from 1991-1993, but it contains very few apparent anachronisms when played today. When one of the top ten topical comedians of 2005 died in 1994, there's a problem.)

[jaunthie.livejournal.com]

"When one of the top ten topical comedians of 2005 died in 1994, there's a problem." - Yeah, that's about what I was getting at. I don't think that it's Shrub's fault, per se - but I do suspect that the same forces that allowed him to get elected in the first place play into the lack of similar comedians enjoying broad commercial success. And to be fair, Hicks probably never would have been as famous if he hadn't died young - another sick and twisted reality of our world.