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clips of Hicks.
In America, as far as I can gather, he was a genuinely
marginalised figure, and continues to be. There
was a sense, though, that, as in the case of that other
great American maverick export Jimi Hendrix, it was
maybe going to be a case of Hicks making it in Britain
first. I met a journalist in San Francisco, Jack Boulware,
who interviewed Hicks for Arena magazine in
the States. He told me that the reason he thought Hicks
was beyond the pale in America was simply that he
seemed to be so anti-American. It’s often said, quite
rightly, that Hicks was in essence a preacher (indeed
he admitted it himself) and I’ve always thought of him
as Robert Mitchum in Night Of The Hunter, choosing
not self-aggrandisement but enlightenment, beating
sense into comatose America with those fists marked
love and hate.
A fascinating Index on Censorship article from December
2000 details the machinations that prevented
Hicks’s segment from being broadcast on an edition
of the David Letterman show (he’d appeared 11 times
before on the same show). Hicks’s letter to the journalist
John Lahr – his Dear John letter to life in some ways
– is a cri de coeur: “Jokes, John: this is what America
now fears – one man with a point of view, speaking out,
unafraid of our vaunted institutions, or the loathsome
superstitions the CBS hierarchy feels the masses (the
herd) use as their religion.” One of the ‘hot points’ that
BUY Bill Hicks books online from and
CBS highlights as “unsuitable for our audience” is the
following ‘pro-life’ skit:
Bill Hicks: You know who’s really bugging me these
days. These pro-lifers … (Smattering of applause.) Bill:
You ever look at their faces? ‘I’m pro-life!’ (Makes a
pinched face of hate and fear, his lips are pursed as
though he’s just sucked on a lemon.) ‘I’m pro-life!’
Boy, they look it don’t they? They just exude joie de
vivre. You just want to hang with them and play Trivial
Pursuit all night long. (Audience chuckles.) Bill: You
know what bugs me about them? If you’re so pro-life,
do me a favour – don’t lock arms and block medical
clinics. If you’re so pro-life, lock arms and block cemeteries.
(Audience laughs.) Bill: Let’s see how committed
you are to this idea. (Bill mimes the pursed lipped
pro-lifers locking arms.) Bill (as pro-lifer): ‘She can’t
come in!’ (Audience laughs. Bill as confused member
of funeral procession): ‘She was 98. She was hit by a
bus!’ (Audience laughs.) Bill (as pro-lifer): ‘There’s
options!’ (Audience laughs.) Bill (as confused member
of funeral procession): ‘What else can we do? Have
her stuffed?’ (Audience laughs.) Bill: I want to see prolifers
with crowbars at funerals opening caskets – ‘get
out!’ Then I’d be really impressed by their mission.
(Audience laughs and applauds.)
Hicks ends his letter to John Lahr with a passionate
plea for sanity: “This is what I think CBS, the producers
of the Letterman show, the networks and governments
269
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