Wisely, the compilers of "Philosophy" saved for last Hicks's most shocking routine, a relentless, take-no-prisoners assault on redneck stupidity and the so-called Miracle of Birth:
"Where did this veneration of childbirth come from? Trailer parks all over America are filling up with little miracles." Childbirth is no more a miracle, Hicks says, than what happens a few hours after you eat a hamburger.
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The line is almost unbearably rude, but it draws a blast of laughter. This is the end of a set, and you think Hicks is going to cut and run, but he doesn't. He's got his audience off balance, guiltily guffawing at heresy. It's precisely where he wants them, and he keeps going, and what follows is a descent into three of the best, and most disturbing, minutes of modern stand-up comedy. As Hicks waves goodbye, the laughs are laced with gasps of disbelief.
Early in 1993, Hicks learned he was dying. He told only his closest friends, and kept up a ferocious schedule of comedy gigs. That August, he made his 11th and final appearance on the Letterman show, where he did a seven-minute routine that reviewed children's books about the gay lifestyle (he was righteously appalled by "Daddy's New Roommate" but, y'know,kinda dug "Heather Has Two Mommies") and extolled the beauty of the message of Easter (". . . in which we commemorate the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ by telling our children that a giant bunny rabbit left chocolate eggs in the night.")
No, you never saw it. The night the show was taped, the CBS censors informed Hicks that he had pushed too many "hot buttons," and that the entire gig would be edited out.
I have heard the routine, because a few days later Hicks delivered it -- verbatim, cleansed of all profanity, exactly as he had performed it for Letterman -- at a small comedy club in West Palm Beach, Fla. A friend of mine was there. He taped it, and sent me a copy.
I never heard Hicks quite like this. Imagine it: A man who is constitutionally incapable of diplomacy has just been publicly humiliated. In this room, he and only he knows he is dying. He is furious and has nothing -- nothing -- to lose.
The show was terrific. It was irreverent, hilarious, witheringly denunciatory of what he saw as the hypocrisy of social conservatives and religious fundamentalists. When he was done he explained to the audience how he had been censored for trying to deliver it on TV, and he laced into Letterman, and CBS, big time:
"They felt you, the audience, are too stupid to know these are jokes, or to have material on that might have ideas associated with them other than, 'Boy, food on airlines sucks, don't it?' . . . or any number of other stupid, banal, trite, puerile jokes we all know by heart, so they can keep you without any kind of social awareness and keep us separated from each other while they hawk their [expletive] beer commercials."
Hicks went on and on. Much truth, few laughs.
The gig is difficult to listen to now, knowing how sick he was at the time. I have always felt that anger and fear help inform the best humor; this tape seems to be telling us that no, anger and fear can exterminate humor. Just when I thought Hicks had finally lost his way, he said, in his defense:
"Hey, it's not like I said the [very solemn and dignified representative of a major religion] is a [highly objectionable term for a person with an alternative lifestyle]."
Pause.
"Which he is, but I didn't say it."
A roar from the crowd.
I'm saving this tape. I think it may be the actual Best of Bill Hicks.
