Tim Dillon Is America’s Subversive Poet Laureate
I have this theory. Everyone who is great at one thing is actually something else. Bob Dylan is a great songwriter because he’s actually an experimental novelist. David Lynch is a great film director because he’s actual an abstract painter. Donald Trump will go down in history as America’s most infamous president because he’s actually a crime boss. Etc.
So…Tim Dillon. Here’s my theory:
Comedian and podcaster Tim Dillon is currently the funniest person who regularly screams into a microphone because he’s actually America’s poet laureate.
Listening to Dillon talk about America is an amazing experience. He sees the things we all see in America—the excess, the narcissism, the ungratefulness, the wealth, the poverty, the endless longing for freedom and power… But Dillon doesn’t just acknowledge or, you know, poke fun at these aspects of America just as any number of other comedian/podcasters do. Rather, he embodies and exemplifies these qualities. “I am the narcissism and the excess. I am the excess and the wealth. I am the freedom and the power.” He seems to say. And then he takes it too far. And then he takes it farther still. And even though his charade is still oddly convincing even taken to the most extreme lengths, you know the thing he’s embodied has just been utterly crucified.
I don’t know what this is if not brilliance.
Dillon talks about America quite a bit, often as an aside to a larger diatribe. But for his recent Fourth of July-themed episode, Dillon went on a 30-minute “what American means to me” rant that goes above and beyond, even to the point of inspiring and bringing a renewed sense of wonder and awe to his fellow cynical Americans.
From the YouTube comments:
“Tim’s ‘What America means to me’ speech should be performed during the next State of the Union address.” - JD50
“I’m realizing how proud I am to be an American after Tim speaks of what it’s like to be an American. God bless the USA.” - Brandon Lee
“What is America” speech will be used by government torturers on a loop in prisoners cells. Truly soul crushing terror.” - Lord Shittington
“Tim’s speech about America moved me to my core. Thank you for existing Tim, you are an angel.” - ADP
“I got all emotional and teared up with his ‘America to me’ speech. Beautiful.” - Aaron Demers
If he wasn’t already, Tim Dillon is now truly America’s subversive poet laureate.
Here is his full speech, transcribed below. It’s obviously best to listen to his delivery, but there’s a distinct power to the written word, and I’m a firm believer that poems pack more of punch when read than when heard spoken out loud. So, in that spirit, enjoy:
What America Means to Me
To me America means having an abortion with a gun. It’s about eating a sandwich that’s made of a sandwich. It’s about being on a boat and being fucked by a boat on a boat. It’s about hitting a dog and unlike you not adopting it, driving on. That’s what America is about to me, you know?
It’s about drinking gasoline and lighting your inner fire. It’s about crushing pills on a CD case and snorting them to feel good. It’s about finding friends that you only are friends with because they have drugs. It’s about getting a job that you hate in the hopes that one day you can get another job you hate that pays more money than this one. It’s about finding someone to fuck who hates you.
Being an American to me is about traveling without truly ever leaving. Never really appreciating anything. Being handed stuff. Getting a lot of things you don’t deserve and nothing you do. Being handed things, squandering opportunities, always attacking others, blaming, never being introspective and looking down deep in yourself as to why you are where you are or how you could have handled things better.
Being an American means being entertaining at all times, even when killing someone. It means that everything in life should be a spectacle, kind of an O.J. Simpson trial. Everything. From your divorce to an argument at breakfast. Everything should at all times be insane. Nothing should truly make sense outside of the idea that it is all entertaining and for sport.
Being an American to me means being inconsiderate in a very considerate way, meaning, offending people only when you’ve gotten to know them pretty damn well. Knowing the buttons to push and pushing them.
Being an American to me means figuring out that everything is full of shit when you’re about nine. And oscillating between drug-food-sex addiction and the mismanagement of your money, knowing at any time that your government has orchestrated many different attempts to kill and enslave you and still enjoying Top Gun. It’s a good film.
Being an American to me means never feeling sorry for a feral cat knowing that it will figure it out…just like you will.
Being an American to me means looking at a disabled person and knowing somewhere down deep they deserve it.
Being an American to me means you can summon up a murderous rage at the slightest inconvenience. If someone refuses to seat you in an appropriate period of time at a restaurant, praying that they get in a car accident where they bash their head off the glove compartment and they live to deal with the debt. Being an American doesn’t mean wishing death on someone, it means wishing bankruptcy multiple times, that they have to go in and out of court. It doesn’t mean that they lose their children, it means wishing they have to raise them.
Being an American to me means everything and also nothing at all. We’re a country of three-hundred and fifty million people. Being an American means watching people from all walks of life, from all corners of the world, come here and learn to be a psychopath.
Being an American to me means being jealous, vindictive, petty, hostile, vicious, cowardly, brave, also being a liar, being a cynic, but being ultimately hopeful that one day the people you agree with kill everyone else.
Being an American to me means concerning yourself with tunnels of children under the ground or the government controlling the weather, but never with your actual position in life and who’s fucking you that could actually reach out and touch you, because they’re out there.
Being an American to me means understanding that TGIF was a good group of shows on ABC and yes the kids got raped. Being an American to me means understanding that Wendy’s in the 1990s was maybe the greatest restaurant that God has ever given man. That the Monterey Ranch chicken sandwich with bacon (in the Ranch dressing!), lettuce, tomato, and Monterey Jack-ish cheese on a soft bun, while eaten in a Mazda Navajo you had financed on the way to a house that you can’t afford but somehow figured out how to pay for that month, was a great joy.
America is a collection of minutes. It’s a collection of cigarette breaks. It’s a collection of finding a bathroom in a mall. It’s a collection of shitting. It’s a collection of lost friendships, unrequited loves, opportunities you didn’t take, failures, small successes, broken families, bitter, horrible, nasty, hopeless people that all come together every Fourth of July to eat.
That’s what America is. There’s something beautiful about it. The most beautiful places in America, our national parks, have become playgrounds for killers to murder people who go seek out their majestic beauty.
America means that the government may kidnap your children and try to turn them into sex slaves or assassins, mind control victims, and brainwash them, but at the end of the day Entenmann’s is a good cake. And everyone likes it. I do.
Being an American to me is about telling your children to go to college so that they can go and haze other kids and kill them. That’s what America means to me.
Being an American to me means you can start a podcast with your friend and end up on an FBI watch list. Being an American to me means you can move to the greatest city in America, Austin, Texas, and live there in one-hundred-degree swamp heat for a year, because it’s a truly moving experience.
America means the great comedy clubs, the Comedy Store, the Comedy cellar, the Stand, and others will be full of young children—and by young children I mean forty-one-year-olds—trying to make it as a buffoon. That’s beautiful.
Being an American to me means that one of our most American sports, golf, will like everything else, eventually be owned by the Saudis.
That’s what America means to me. It’s a great country. It’s a beautiful place. I’m happy to be here, but I would go anywhere else. Do you understand? That’s what America means to me.
I’ve been incredibly blessed to live here. I’ve met some of the most interesting people—in my business and other businesses. And I’ve realized that they’re not that interesting. And that’s a blessing. That’s a blessing. I’ve met some of the wealthiest people in the world, some of the most powerful people in the world, and I’ll tell you right now, there’s nothing more fun than doing cocaine with your friend in the back of a rental car. That’s America to me.
America to me comes down to three words: shut your mouth. Shut your mouth because someone else is talking and that person is smarter than you or at least they’ve robbed more people.
America to me is about endless options for pancakes, so many types of fluffy pancakes that you can put your head on and sleep.
America to me is about the chalky taste that a pharmaceutical leaves as it slides down your throat headed to your bloodstream to make it all better.
America means finding your child OD’d in the bathroom, getting the Narcan out and reviving them so they live to rob you one more time. That’s what America means.
Never give up. Never surrender. We have a beautiful and very, very disgusting country. I’m proud to live here. I’m proud of all of our problems. Our school shootings, our tent cities—they are our greatest strengths. It’s all a matter of perspective. That’s what America means to me.
America means to me sitting at a bar next to someone—and I’ve done this—where you’re doing shots and their child, their eleven-year-old child comes in crying and says, “Daddy please come home.” And he goes, “You’re not old enough to be in here. You have to leave. Okay, little angel? Daddy will be home soon.” And then the mother comes in and goes, “How can you sit there as a man while your daughter cries and asks for you to come home?” And he says, “Bitch, get the fuck out of my face.” And she leaves. And then he looks and me and he goes, “She’s very selfish.” And I said, “I think she is.” And he goes, “Would you like to split an order of clams?” That’s what America means to me. What a selfish bitch.
Whatever America means to you out there, I don’t care. It doesn’t mean anything to me. All I ask is that you keep listening to our show and keep paying us, whatever else you do. Whatever genocides you commit, just know that all we care about is that you support us. You can beat your wife, you can torture your children, you can be like Jenny’s dad in Forrest Gump, just rape ’em all. But if you buy our products, if you buy tickets to see me, and you support our Patreon—oh ho, like they say in the opening scene of The Wire, it’s America, man. It’s America.
So, with all of that, our show is exclusively moving to Saudi Spotify. It will be available only in the country of Saudi Arabia. And they’re giving us a hundred million dollars. The most American thing I can think of to do would be to sell this podcast to Saudi Arabia. The most American thing I can do would be to open this podcast next week sitting in full Saudi garb from a palace in Riyadh, and don’t think I won’t do it. Don’t think for a minute that I won’t do it. Oh Christ I’ll do it. That is the most American thing that I can do. It’s the most American thing I can do. It’s really the most American thing that I can do.