Comedian, political satirist and activist Barry Crimmins has died
Source: Twitter
Posted by his wife just now on Twitter. He had been battling cancer. He was 64
Read more:
Link to tweet
Crimmins' satirical writing and comedy routines have focused through the years on the need for political and social change.[7] In the 1990s, in a more serious vein, he led a crusade against images of child abuse on the Internet, calling for police investigation of Internet service providers.[8] Crimmins received the "Peace Leadership Award" from Boston Mobilization for Survival, and was honored by Community Works with the "Artist for Social Change Award" for his years of activism.[9] Howard Zinn presented Barry Crimmins with "The Courage of Conscience Award" from Wellesley College and The Life Experience School at The Peace Abbey in Sherborn, Massachusetts.
Crimmins was featured on the podcast WTF with Marc Maron in 2013, discussing his personal life and career as a political activist and his role in the Boston comedy scene.[10] In 2016 he appeared on Stuart Goldsmith's podcast The Comedian's Comedian, which was recorded while Crimmins was performing in London.[11]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Crimmins
He was one of Randi's writers on Air America and is probably best known for his book, "Never Shake Hands with a War Criminal."
At one point, he was a writer for pre-sellout Dennis Miller's ABC talk show.
He wrote a pretty blistering take of his old boss converting into a FOX News shill - original link is long gone, but you can find the archive of it, from 2003, here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/misc.legal/IYKT7H6sp0U
= new reply since forum marked as read
I had most of his rants on tape, would listen to them on the way to work, and memorized a lot of them. They were several factors, among many, that made me the outspoken liberal that I am today.
So it was like shifting from overdrive down to first with no clutching and no sequential shifting when he went from left to right-wing.
I started reading his rants (the ones that hadn't been committed to tape yet) with mystification and eventual stupefaction. What the hell happened to the erudite, funny guy who once penned an impassioned defense of liberalism? (I imagine now that this was actually written by Barry Crimmins...)
Dumping on Bill Clinton?
And Hillary?
Sucking up to W?
It's been close to twenty years since I've paid attention to anything Miller has said or done. He's dead to me.
