Gallagher on...Everything?

Comedian Gallagher in an interview with the Onion, talking about everything from politics to comedy to behavior in public...and with enough hatred of 'the youth' to fill a retirement community.

Gallagher on mediocrity:

Well, I don’t think Katie Couric should have been the anchorperson for the news. She was originally a kicky young woman that did the on-the-street interviews, and she was known for her cuteness, and that’s why she was hired. The lady on the desk with all the stature that doesn’t speak good, Barbara Walters, was more of the kind of person you would have as an anchorperson, but in America, they are afraid to take a chance on people who aren’t known. This is how Conan [O’Brien] ended up with The Tonight Show: Rather than take a chance on somebody, they decide to advance from within. We promote people until they reach a point at which they’re incompetent.

Before you think up a retort to Gallagher on the topic of mediocrity, you should go take a look at the interview. It's blunt, angry, bitter, even impassioned, and it's not something I would have expected from the 63-year-old comedian. I'm not saying he's right about what he's saying (or that I even think he's right), but it's an interview that deserves a read-through, because this is the kind of stuff I would imagine George Carlin to be saying rather than Gallagher, and, well, it's intriguing. The Onion AV Club seemed ironically interested in the comic, and I am almost positive the interviewer had no idea that this was going to happen:

Then of course President Clinton ruined oral sex. [It’s] now an acceptable activity for a virgin, and doesn’t qualify as sex. So somewhere in there is a loss of morality—a mediocrity. You know, I think when Clinton ruined the presidency, it certainly made my point of mediocrity. We never pick a president who is above, we pick somebody we identify with: the lowest level, the most common. We didn’t pick the best politician in the Bush family, which of course was the governor of Florida. We picked the beer-drinking good ol’ boy. Ask them to lead us in areas that maybe didn’t require a good ol’ boy. You know, this is what I notice. Of course, I’ve been excluded from a lot of show business in America. So I’ve got a point of view that I don’t mind expressing, because I’m really not ruining a career that’s not really happening.

Interview: Gallagher

Op-Ed: I Miss Bill Hicks

[This post has no point.]

Sometimes I wonder about the dead. Death is a constant source of contemplation in my life, and I can't help but think about people who have already slid off this mortal coil and how they might perceive the world today.

It's not anything particularly enlightening that I mull over. I'm not an existential whiz, by any means, but sometimes I'll be jogging, or watching "the news", or else surfing a web site, and think: "What would so-and-so say about this?"

Mostly, I think about comedians. Oh, sometimes I wonder how Kurt Cobain would see today's rock-and-roll scene, or what would have happened if John Lennon had initiated a long-term bed-in throughout the month of December in 1980. It's interesting to have a bemused moment over situations and how life might or might not have been different if this or that hadn't happened. It's only a natural part of life to envision such things.

But mostly - mostly - I think about comedians. My particular worldview has been irrevocably shaded by their comments, and though I enjoy certain modern comedians - thank God for David Cross - I am more often intrigued by those who have passed on.

Take Bill Hicks, for example. Hicks was, without really knowing it, a visionary of the first order. Well, see, that's part of the problem. I say these things, or I think them, and then I wonder: Is that true? Is praise over Hicks heightened partly because he's no longer with us? Maybe.

But I don't think about that for very long. We can never know a person's potential. Is Keith Richards less influential because he was able to ingest a South American country and persist? [shrugs] I am more concerned with what he might say today, in the midst of Obama's first year as president and all of its surrounding insanity. I also wonder what his thoughts might have been during the presidency of George W. Bush, but that is another post entirely.

It's not even necessarily that Bill Hicks was a visionary, or the funniest, or had his career cut tragically short (even though it was a robust 16-years, which is a lot for a comic). It's what Hicks represents, which relates to his premature death, but also to his place in the world. Hicks was more raw, less packaged, than a majority of even the rawest comics working today. Like artist who takes chances, he wasn't afraid to alienate the audience, or to challenge their sensibilities outright, and then pull them back in with a dick joke. Well, most artists don't pull listeners back in with a dick joke, but you get the idea.

His comedy was less slick but also distinctly his (depending on your opinion about Dennis Leary), and though in being topical some of it doesn't translate to this time and place - his bits on Billy Ray Cyrus, though, have become ironically relevant again - most of it still resonates. Before he died of cancer in 1994, Hicks was able to ponder issues like: gays in the military, the (first) Iraq War, right-wing radio hosts running the Republican party, and drug legalization, all of which are still prescient today. 'Relentless' may be my favorite comic album, and for good reason. It stands out for being more than a comedy album. It's a manifesto, and like 'Rant in E-Minor', encapsulates everything in the man's demented philosophy.