"I'm Bill Hicks and I'm dead now."

The thing about Bill Hicks is that he was a genius. That, and the fact that he's dead.

He did some of the most powerful stand-up comedy and diatribes of the past 20 years. While frequently compared favorably to the infamous Lenny Bruce, comparisons of the two tend to give credence to the view that Hicks was the better comedian. Bruce denied his role as a comic, Hicks embraced it. He had no desire to be anything other than the best comic he could possibly be: entertaining, hysterical, intelligent, and quick.

With the exception of a well-received HBO special, he never took off on TV in the States. American television and Bill Hicks are antithetical, to a large degree. Hicks hated the culture that surrounded television, and television tended to dilute him to the point of being unrecognizable. The BBC aired Hicks uncensored, and he was much more warmly received in Britain as a result.

He had heavy political and religious messages in his acts, but they were done with such clear and simple logic it was difficult to gainsay him. His stance on gays in the military was, to say the least, unique: "ANYONE dumb enough to want to join the military... should be let in."

Anti-government, anti-organized religion, and thoroughly libertarian, he spoke the Truth as he saw it and cared none if anyone was offended by his rants -- "I would rather have one mind in the audience than 100 butts." He generally felt organized Christianity to be a sham, but he appeared to be a deeply religious man who preached a gospel based on conclusions reached by him, without deference to dogma or sacred text.

Personally, he has affected me to such a large degree that it can safely be said that he is the god of my current idolatry. Few people have the will to stand up, night after night, and preach controvesial gospels to an unwilling and dimwitted public. He said what many Americans already know to be Truth, but that so many in the media, universities, and legislatures are afraid or unwilling to say.

The jester is the most important analyst of public policy a democracy can have. He shows us where ridicule is warranted, what sacred cows deserve slaughter. Jesters of less competence exclusively ridicule the mundane: flights, ex-girlfriends, their haircut. But the true jester speaks Truth as he sees it about matters larger than these. Hicks was the King Jester, able to find and communicate where hypocrisies lay.

Like so many gifted and rebellious spirits, he died at the relatively young age of 32 in 1994 of pancreatic cancer. His fan base exists and grows, and he has moved into that canon of immortals such as John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Lenny Bruce, Jim Morrison, and other disenfranchised visionaries who were struck down in their prime. Our social consciousness would be well served by having him still alive.

We can only hope that another will rise to such levels as those achieved by the immortal Bill Hicks.