https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Also, please don't fulminate and please omit name-calling from your comments here. Those things are also in the guidelines.
I admit that the tone of my post may have been inflammatory. However I don't think that it's fair to characterise my post as a shallow dismissal. I maintain that my opening rebuke of Hicks: "For all of his criticism of the stuffy conservative establishment..." constitutes more than a superficial critique. My dislike of Hicks stems from my view that his worldview discouraged people from joining in the task of reforming the system in which they live. He did nothing to encourage people to invest in themselves, or strive for lofty goals for the sake of humanity. I really dislike his attitude, and I loathe the insinuation that there is any profound insight to be gained from his apathy, and smugness. My opinion is that if you subtracted the establishment that he so limply derides, there would be no substance remaining in him.
I'd say 30 years later his material is a little more obvious but being 30 years ahead of the curve is a pretty nice compliment. In my State pot is now legal, some psychedelics are decriminalized (and small amounts of any illegal drug is no longer a felony), and my partner does intense therapy on MDMA (via legal trials). We may not be living with Bill Hicks presently, but we live more in Bill Hicks's hopeful future than ever before.
There are lots of 90's comics that are now pretty irrelevant, but Hicks ain't one of them. He wasn't trying to be universally loved, which may be what you're hitting against. He also wasn't positioning himself out as some super intellectual. He self-identified as being simply a, "dark poet". Being a comic was - and is, a pretty tough gig.
The latter is more pretentious, in my view.
And he didn't say he was a, "little dark poet" while sitting around in a comfy chair with some literally intellectual, it was part of a bit. He said it while bending down, looking through a small opening made between his thumb and forefinger, with a nasally screech in his voice. Like, "this is all I am, this little turd". And we're all that little turds too, that he's looking at, through that opening.
That's good stuff.
Anyways, "It's all just a ride"
It is not (always) the job of the critic to also play the advocate.
that sounds like something that would take a significant amount of time - people who die young often do not achieve many things that take significant amount of times, especially not things that are outside their main occupation in life. His main occupation was being a comedian, it seems reasonable to limit analysis of his achievements to that field.
Like you're doing now, I suppose. One hopes you find your perspective of today judged in 2050 with more charity than you bother showing here.