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Posted on December 20, 2011 | tags

 
 

Culture: Happy would’ve-been 50th birthday, Bill Hicks. Here’s your finest moment.

  • Alright, this makes up for the last post. Bill Hicks, an fearlessly acerbic comedian famous for his brave commentary, would have turned 50 last Friday — had he not died of liver cancer in 1994, at the peak of his popularity. Slate did us a favor and posted his greatest moment, this 1993 “Late Show With David Letterman” routine, which stayed in the vault for 16 years after (according to Hicks himself) CBS balked at his jokes about Christianity. (Which, mind you, are nowhere near as bad as the action made them out to be.) We couldn’t even imagine what sort of brutal jokes he’d make about the current state of reality television, based on his super-dark Billy Ray Cyrus bit at the beginning. Letterman, regretting what happened, aired the performance in 2009, with Hicks’ mother at his side. source