Greatest American Ever:

Forget all the usual suspects, your Lincolns, your Roosevelts, your Washingtons, all those power-mad, bloodletting douche nozzles whose only real claims to fame are wars started and fortunes plundered. Forget also the politically correct choices, folks like your Martin Luther Kings and your Susan B. Anthonys. Sure, they were really good people, they fought for far-sighted and noble goals and did so effectively, but not a one of them could tell a decent dick joke. That is why Bill Hicks is the greatest American of all time. He spent twenty years beating against the stone walls of American cracker dumbassery, mixing dizzying hope and vision with blood-curdling bitter invective. He would stare out EVERY NIGHT at a sea of bleeting, drunken sheep and try to get their blood moving and brains firing for the first time in their entire lives by weaving an impossible combination of black humor and social insight. It didn't work forty five times out of forty six. The audiences surely filed out confused and angry, wishing they'd gone to see Gallagher smash fruit instead. But throughout this country, in the audiences he played to and in the bedrooms of young people finding his stuff on one of his albums or rare television apperances, thousands of individuals made personal communion with his words. And that's what made him the greatest American: the power of his words and worldview and sheer, blistering heart to alter the brain chemistry of young impressionable minds on an individual basis. He was a public performer, but his power was personal. Sure, he didn't save the world. But he did die young, killed, I'm sure, by his own broken heart and churning guts. The only hope is that his word virus continues to infect the unsuspecting youth of the nation, hollowing out our Empire of Hatred and Dumb-Assness from the inside. Listen to him, and pay him forward.