5 Feet of Fury

Agreed: The valorization of Bill Hicks is bad for comedy, and society

Rob Lyons writes:

And far from being a purveyor of The Truth (whatever the hell that is), Hicks was preaching to the prejudices of his audience, delivering sarcastic commonplaces while being, for the most part, resolutely unfunny.

His lighter moments – like his line about life just being a ride and it’s so much better when you realise that – are New Age hocus-pocus that suggest he smoked way too much pot and that the rest of us would be better off just giving up caring about the world.

Still, the life and work of a Texan comedian who died in 1994 is hardly worth bothering about. It’s the cult of Bill Hicks that is more worrying because that popularity says something about the times we live in.