Sometimes, though not often, people wonder why I constantly praise Penn & Teller for having the best show in Vegas. In fact, they have the single must-see show in Vegas. But the reason is certainly not the obvious: that they have more money for stagecraft or they have sexy showgirls or great choreography. Rather, Penn & Teller offer a form of perfection and that is priceless. You leave their show not just entertained but thinking. That combination is always hard to accomplish with an audience anywhere, but this is especially unprecedented at a Vegas show.

 

Anyway, this week Las Vegas Weekly has done the annual "Best Of Vegas" issue where we named Penn Jillette "Best Resident Genius" in town. This is a title that usually goes to a casino executive or professor, but as I wrote in Weekly (where I am staff): "No headliner or casino executive or politician has managed to find so many ways to share with the public his views on so many issues. From his half-million followers on Twitter to his regular video blogs, Jillette manages to get the word out on whatever his quirky yet libertarian-atheist mind is thinking. He may be a juggler, comedian and magician, but when someone wants deep thought in Vegas, Penn Jillette is also a colossus of quantity and quality of genius."

By coincidence, you do not need to be in Vegas right now to appreciate that. Last night I saw Jillette on the Fox News show "Red Eye." I noticed Penn did one of his playful humiliations by forcing the host to stand up, thus showing Penn's height and making the host look very tiny. This visual generally offers a physical reality as well as a metaphoric truth. Penn once told me how he had done this "stand up for the photo" with another exceptionally short celebrity at an event. "But isn't he about my size?" I asked. "Yes, short," Jillette replied. Always, be ready for honesty talking to Jillette.

Another Fox show Jillette appeared on was "Glenn Beck," where he turned the questioning around, forcing Beck to answer questions about gay marriage and other social conservative causes. What is interesting is Penn exposes Beck as theoretically agreeing with the magician on issues, but then falling back into the typical television partisanship by noting that the other side wouldn't join up for Jillette's freedom cause. Of course, if it is the correct thing to do, does it matter if the "other" side won't change?

 

Jillette creates moments like this in every conversation. Agree or disagree, when talking to Penn Jillette you are dealing with a mind fully engaged in trying to understand the world around him, and not for pointless intellectual satisfaction, but for an immediate reckoning of what correct and ethical action must follow.