Us vs. The World
Written by: The CinCitizens
Robin Fuckin' Williams
No one should like Robin Williams.
I think everybody, deep down, knows that. Everyone knows he’s the physical manifestation of how you feel when you realize that the adrenaline has gone to your head at a social outing and you’ve been talking way too much, way too loudly, trying way too hard to be liked.
This pretty much sums it all up.
The confusion comes because it’s okay to like Robin Williams in small doses. In small doses, this tiny, hairy, strange man with the speaking cadences of a meth addict is some kind of medical marvel: a human being who’s thought patterns bypass the normal loops through the brain and instead project directly onto his vocal chords.
But the statute of limitations on liking Robin Williams ran out in 1997, on Father’s Day, when he and Billy Crystal forged a Dream Team of shitty comedy. One year later, the world was barraged with a $300 billion ad campaign by Universal Studios that shoved Robin Williams and that fucking clown nose and his bathetic piece of shit movie Patch Adams into every conceivable corner of public space it could seep into. How Williams survived the year without a deranged, put-upon person who’d heard, “You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person I'll guarantee you'll win” one too many times is beyond me.
1999 was a banner year for Robin Williams haters, seeing the release of both Jakob the Liar and Bicentennial Man, two more “heartwarming” “comedies” that proved just how much damage the Patch Adams publicity shitstorm had done to his career. These movies lost as much money as Hurricane Katrina, and not only did Williams offend any right-thinking person by giving the Holocaust a Robin Williams Makeover in Jakob the Liar, but he released it after Life is Beautiful, an already shitty movie crammed down the public’s throats with the same poor taste plot.
Of course Robin Williams still gets put in movies. And of course he got his Oscar. And of course he’s tried to “reinvent” himself by playing psychos in One Hour Photo, Insomnia, and probably a bunch of other movies who’s ad campaigns I’m lucky enough not to remember. And of course talk show hosts still pretend they love him. And of course Middle America still does love him. I can live with this. What more vindication do you need for the theory that he sucks other than Middle America ’s love affair with the man? What I can’t live with is the occasional seemingly sane college graduate under the age of 40 who still likes him. Usually this comes up when I’m at a party, say at my former job in Chicago , and I’ve had a few drinks, say two Sam Adams, and I turn to the group of people next to me and start bad-mouthing Williams, expecting that this alone will make me popular. Once in a great unlucky while, someone who is otherwise normally cool and in a bunch of local bands who always has great facial hair and who has an otherwise stellar sense of humor will say, “Actually, he’s not that bad.”
You’re such an asshole, Anthony Burton
-Lance Carmichael