You wouldn’t normally consider David Letterman to be an asshole, except towards those who deserve it, but fifteen years ago, Letterman was an asshole to Bill Hicks. For reasons only known to Dave, he removed the entire comedy bit that Hicks had performed on the October 1, 1993 show.
Hicks passed away less than half a year later.
This slight was unusual as Letterman was generally supportive of comedians and Hicks had performed on his old NBC program on several occasions. Letterman, it seemed, was a fan of Hicks, and when he transitioned over to CBS and a higher profile time slot, Bill was one of the comedians that was asked to return.
After learning that his entire routine was removed from the October 1st broadcast, Hicks became rightfully irritated. He wrote a scathing review of the account and both the Late Show and the network itself denied that they had anything to do with the removal.
They were right: the censor came from Letterman himself.
It’s unclear whether his regret was immediate or a result of Hicks’ passing five months later, but Letterman did express it and it was apparently deep enough for him to continually refer to his disappointment with himself that he recalled the incident regularly. Tonight, Letterman finally made amends to himself and the Hicks family by inviting Bill’s mother on the program to formally apologize and to air the missing segment for the first time in over 15 years.
It was clear that Mary Hicks did not think the world of Letterman for what he had done to her son and Dave, in a moment of humility, acknowledged this and did what so many politicians fail to do, take responsibility for the event and sincerely apologize for it.
“It says more about me as a guy than about Bill because there’s nothing wrong with it.”
Indeed, watching the bit you wonder what the fuss was all about. The only explanation was the one that Dave somewhat provided. Having recently been offered the time slot that NBC failed to give him, Letterman was trying to avoid any controversy that would create public backlash or increased scrutiny from the CBS executives. Of course, now that he’s proved his worth to the network, he’s less inclined to fret over such things, but back then, he wanted to sock it to his rivals over at the Tonight Show. An offending Bill Hicks might create enough of a stir to have a few advertisers pull their ads and enough high-strung do-gooders to switch over to Leno.
It was an edited Hicks, by his own doing for television, but he does manage to voice contempt for right-to-lifers and encourage the murder of Michael Bolton, Billy Ray Cyrus, and other celebrities that most rational people would agree swift, violent action is necessary.
To provide Mary Hicks with this forum for a public apology is major. There were no other guests (aside from a musical act), so the entire show was devoted to making amends. It was clear that Dave felt like a heel about it, particularly since Hicks already knew he was dying from cancer at the time of the original taping. And while he didn’t tell anyone except his family about his health, I’m sure the harsh reality played heavily on his tone when he learned about being removed from the final broadcast.
This was a man dying from cancer, and even in the face of death, he was forced to contend with the bullshit of uptight censored.
It surprised me that Letterman was one of those uptight assholes, but the bigger surprise was the way he acknowledged it and tried to redeem himself.
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