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TechnoratiI think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.
-- George Carlin
The last vote that George Carlin said he cast in a presidential race was for George McGovern in 1972.
When Richard Nixon, who Carlin described as a member of a sub-species of humanity, overwhelmingly defeated McGovern, the comedian gave up on the political process.
"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians," he explained in a routine that challenged all the premises of today's half-a-loaf reformers. "Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.'"
Needless to say, George Carlin was not on message for 2008's "change we can believe in" election season.
His was a darker and more serious take on the crisis - and the change of consciousness, sweeping in scope and revolutionary in character, that was required to address it.
Carlin may have stopped voting in 1972. But America's most consistently savage social commentator for the best part of a half century, who has died at age 71, did not give up on politics.
In recent years, in front of audiences that were not always liberal, he tore apart the neo-conservative assault on liberty with a clarity rarely evidenced in the popular culture. Recalling George Bush's ranting about how the endless "war on terror" is a battle for freedom, Carlin echoed James Madison's thinking with a simple question: "Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?"
Carlin gave the Christian right - and the Christian left - no quarter. "I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State," Carlin said. "My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."
Carlin's take on the Ronald Reagan administration is the best antidote to the counterfactual romanticization of the former president - in which even Barack Obama has engaged - remains the single finest assessment of Reagan and his inner circle. While Carlin did not complain much about politicians, he made an exception with regard to the great communicator. Recorded in 1988 at the Park Theater in Union City, New Jersey, and later released as an album -- What Am I Doing in New Jersey? - his savage recollection of the then-concluding Reagan-Bush years opened with the line: "I really haven't seen this many people in one place since they took the group photograph of all the criminals and lawbreakers in the Ronald Reagan administration."
But there was no nostalgia for past fights, no resting on laurels, for this topical comedian. He read the papers, he followed the news, he asked questions - the interviews I did with Carlin over the years were more conversations than traditional Q & A's - and he turned it all into a running commentary that focused not so much on politics as on the ugly intersection of power and economics.
No one, not Obama, not Hillary Clinton and certainly not John McCain, caught the zeitgeist of the vanishing American dream so well as Carlin. "The owners of this country know the truth: It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."
Not just aware of but steeped in the traditions of American populism - more William Jennings Bryan and Eugene Victor Debs than Bill Clinton or John Kerry - Carlin preached against the consolidation of wealth and power with a fire-and-brimstone rage that betrayed a deep moral sense that could never quite be cloaked with four-letter words.
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying - lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else," ranted the comedian whose routines were studied in graduate schools.
"But I'll tell you what they don't want," Carlin continued. "They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. You know what they want? Obedient workers - people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."
Carlin did not want Americans to get involved with the system.
He wanted citizens to get angry enough to remake the system.
Carlin was a leveler of the old, old school. And no one who had so public a platform - as the first host of NBC's Saturday Night Live, a regular on broadcast and cable televisions shows, a best-selling author and a favorite character actor in films (he was even the narrator of the American version of the children's show Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends) - did more to challenge accepted wisdom regarding our political economy.
"Let's suppose we all just materialized on Earth and there was a bunch of potatoes on the ground, okay? There's just six of us. Only six humans. We come into a clearing and there's potatoes on the ground. Now, my instinct would be, let's everybody get some potatoes. "Everybody got a potato? Joey didn't get a potato! He's small, he can't hold as many potatoes. Give Joey some of your potatoes." "No, these are my potatoes!" That's the Republicans. "I collected more of them, I got a bigger pile of potatoes, they're mine. If you want some of them, you're going to have to give me something." "But look at Joey, he's only got a couple, they won't last two days." That's the fuckin' difference! And I'm more inclined to want to share and even out," he explained in an interview several years ago with The Onion.
"I understand the marketplace, but government is supposed to be here to redress the inequities of the marketplace," Carlin continued. "That's one of its functions. Not just to protect the nation, secure our security and all that shit. And not just to take care of great problems that are trans-state problems, that are national, but also to make sure that the inequalities of the marketplace are redressed by the acts of government. That's what welfare was about. There are people who really just don't have the tools, for whatever reason. Yes, there are lazy people. Yes, there are slackers. Yes, there's all of that. But there are also people who can't cut it, for any given reason, whether it's racism, or an educational opportunity, or poverty, or a fuckin' horrible home life, or a history of a horrible family life going back three generations, or whatever it is. They're crippled and they can't make it, and they deserve to rest at the commonweal. That's where my fuckin' passion lies."
Like the radicals of the early years of the 20th century, whose politics he knew and respected, Carlin understood that free-speech fights had to come first. And always pushed the limit - happily choosing an offensive word when a more polite one might have sufficed. By 1972, the year he won the first of four Grammys for best comedy album, he had developed his most famous routine: "Seven Words (You Can't Say on Television)."
That summer, at a huge outdoor show in Milwaukee, he uttered all seven of them in public - and was promptly arrested for disturbing the peace.
When a version of the routine was aired in 1973 on WBAI, the Pacifica Foundation radio station in New York,. Pacifica received a citation from the FCC. Pacifica was ordered to pay a fine for violating federal regulations prohibiting the broadcast of "obscene" language. The ensuing free-speech fight made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 against the First Amendment to the Constitution, Pacifica and Carlin.
Amusingly, especially to the comedian, a full transcript of the routine ended up in court documents associated with the case, F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978).
"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," recalled Carlin. Proud enough that you can find the court records on the comedian's website: www.georgecarlin.com
There will, of course, be those who dismiss Carlin as a remnant of the sixties who introduced obscenity to the public discourse - just as there will be those who misread his critique of the American political and economic systems as little more than verbal nihilism.
In fact, George Carlin was, like the radicals of an earlier age, an idealist - and a patriot --of a deeper sort than is encountered very often these days.
Carlin explained himself best in one of his last interviews. "There is a certain amount of righteous indignation I hold for this culture, because to get back to the real root of it, to get broader about it, my opinion that is my species--and my culture in America specifically--have let me down and betrayed me. I think this species had great, great promise, with this great upper brain that we have, and I think we squandered it on God and Mammon. And I think this culture of ours has such promise, with the promise of real, true freedom, and then everyone has been shackled by ownership and possessions and acquisition and status and power," he said. "And perhaps it's just a human weakness and an inevitable human story that these things happen. But there's disillusionment and some discontent in me about it. I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word 'cynic' has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. 'George, you're cynical.' Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?"
John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written The Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.
Copyright © 2008 The Nation
34 Comments so far
Show AllDUSTDEVIL
I don't know, but perhaps Maher is tightly constrained on this subject, as I saw that show, and he was dumbfounded by his on stage ( rap star ) personality agreeing - later - with the 9!! protesters position about everything.
It was as if MUCH of that effort to destroy the 9!! protesters' credibility was wiped out, and Bill was left having to acknowledge his guests opinion ( he couldn't call him a nut case ).
I believe that ponerology ( science of psychotic evil doers ) illustrates that the strings of power even pass through the COMIC's limbs -- as they work for a paycheck and can thereby be directly influenced.
¿ Why would we think it to be any other way ?
Namaste « Presence »
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world » — Gandhi
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed » — Gandhi
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — ML King
RSJ--Maher doesn't have to spout conspiracy theories, but he also doesn't have to have 9/11 protesters thrown out of his audience without any dialogue. And he doesn't have to call them nutcases.
With his attitude, I would prefer he not be on the air. He is not to be trusted.
I know the media is not going to cover this issue unless we the people force them to. If enough people know the truth, it may be possible. More and more prominent people are going public every day.
dustdevil [June 27th, 2008 7:54 am] just because someone is smart doesn't mean they 'know' or buy into conspiracy theories. If you have no source where Maher has confirmed he 'knows' that 9/11 was an inside job, then your claim that he does is nothing more than conjecture.
Besides, even accepting that he does 'know,' if Maher started spouting 9/11 conspiracy theories, just how long do you think he would be on the air, or on HBO, for that matter?
What happened on 9/11 is a matter, like the JFK assassination, that will be resolved by historians long after we're dead, unfortunately. In the present state of the US media, you're just not going to get any kind of a fair hearing.
help enact the National Initiative. it's the antidote to a broken system that individuals like George Carlin railed against.
TRULY empower the American people:
www.ni4d.us
Maher is extremely critical of Bush, but he helps cover up the one thing that could bring Bush and all the neocons down.
Maher knows the towers were controlled demolitions because he has above average intelligence. He obviously reads beyond the mainstream news. It only takes average intelligence to analyze the facts and determine that the official story is false.
I challenge you to go to the site below and read what 490 courageous architects and engineers have to say about the
building collapses.
http://patriotsquestion911.com/
dustdevil [June 26th, 2008 8:56 am], on issues of religion, the Bush administration and social justice, Bill Maher has been at the forefront of criticism, even before it was socially acceptable to bash Bush and, it seems to me, he honestly speaks his mind and takes the heat for it, as he did in 2001, at the height of America's goofy patriotic frenzy, when he made the comment about the 9/11 hijackers not being cowards that lost him his show on ABC. He even caused Bush's press secretary Ari Fleischer to warn Americans they'd better watch what they say.
He's also the only TV host I know of who has called Ann Coulter as nutty as a fruitcake to her face and, on other occasions, has simply told her to shut up.
I have never heard him say he "knows the WTC bombings were controlled demolitions so, unless you've read his mind somehow, I can see no way you would have that information.
Re-RSJ's post, Bill Maher does not belong in the group mentioned as Carlin's heirs. Maher's public support for the governments'conspiracy theory makes him part of the coverup.
When asked whether there should be an investigation of 9/11, Carlin said, "People don't investigate themselves. It would be a whitewash. Just like the Kennedy thing. Just like everything."
Maher knows those buildings were controlled demolitions. His public denial borders on treason.
George, you have no idea how much I will miss you. You were my first taste of stand-up comedy (when I was young). Though Bill Hicks (RIP) comes close, no other comedian has ever touched my soul and rocked my reality like you have.
John
"I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don't believe anything the government tells me."
-- George Carlin
I saw George Carlin at the old McCormick Place in Chicago in the early '70s and, even though my friends and I were in nosebleed balcony seats and Carlin appeared smaller than my little finger down on the stage, we heard every word clearly and I laughed until my sides ached – it remains the funniest live comedy show I've ever seen, all two hours of it.
Between him and his predecessor and inspiration Lenny Bruce they set a high standard -- writing their own material, unlike most comics before them, and always challenging the audience to broaden their consciences and consciousness, and stop buying the controlling propaganda they were force-fed by those in authority. They hinted that there's a better world beyond the crawl space where you've parked your mind, but the ticket to getting there is abandoning your delusions and illusions and thinking about who you are and what really motivates the society and nation in which you live and its most sacred institutions. Religion, Sex, War, Obscenity, Patriotism, what have you – throw them all in the pot, turn on the heat, and see what boils up to the surface.
Carlin also left a tough legacy of something rare in this era of 'Hey, Mofo' comics who stoop for the easy laugh – he had real wit in his writing and performances and there are only of few of his contemporaries and heirs – Richard Pryor, Woody Allen, Bill Maher, Bill Hicks, Lily Tomlin, Chris Rock, et al – who could match Carlin's humane intelligence, sharp eye, versatile knowledge and agility with words.
If there is a God, it'll be a perfect cosmic joke on George, one he can laugh about in comfort because people as honest as George Carlin don't end up in hell; and, if there isn't, that's what he figured all along.
"Yes, we did lose the wrong George, as cruel as it is to say such things. We lost the class clown but the village idiot still roams about unchecked."
Darn, I wish I'd said that. Its great!
LOL! Good one, hybridoma2001!
"The wrong two Beatles died first."
--George Carlin
Mean, but funny, and funny because if you devote even the smallest thought to why someone would make such a seemingly obnoxious comment, you'll find yourself inclined to agree.
The wrong George definitely did die first.
I'll have to re-read "Braindroppings".
Amen to mordechai's earlier comment. The passing of people like George Carlin and Cyd Charisse was a FAR bigger loss to America than that of the late moderator of "Meet the Press".
"When you're born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front-row seat."
I hope, overall, you enjoyed the freak show, George, and thanks for participating. I'll miss you.
George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Kurt Vonnegut - I loved them all. They had a way of speaking of human nature and society that wasn't simply funny (to me) but so insightful. We could laugh at ourselves because nobody was safe from their wit. As I wrote yesterday, in my eyes they were the Mark Twains and Voltaires of our day.
I had the good fortune of seeing Carlin live in 1978 and will never forget the experience. At times I laughed so hard I cried.
There is so much to quote or paraphrase from George Carlin that I don't know where to begin. But I'll stick to the first two which come to mind: "Tonight's weather - dark with scattered light." And, "You can prick your finger but you can't finger your prick."
Yes, we did lose the wrong George, as cruel as it is to say such things. We lost the class clown but the village idiot still roams about unchecked.
~ GEORGE CARLIN ~
Just wanted to drop you a note, since that "other" posting on the previous thread was suppressed ( made vacuous ).
Love ya, and know that things are even more joyous for you now. We sure do need more laughter here, so many too serious wanna BEs ( pseudo people ). Namaste
In his parlance, he was an old smart fuck and now he's an old dead fuck and we're left holding the bag, all of us young sad fucks.
opeluboy June 24th, 2008 9:28 pm
For once I agree with T More. We have lost the wrong George.
Come on opeluboy, surely more than once!
jesusofjonesboro June 24th, 2008 8:55 pm
We'll just disagree. But I see no purpose in kicking dirt on a dead man, whoever they are.
For once I agree with T More. We have lost the wrong George.
Sorry, Thomas, but the "crack" about Russert is spot on. He never displayed the courage that Carlin showed on a regular basis.
jj
Sister Mary Discipline with her steel ruler.
"Mrs. Carlin, George seems to be flunking Penmanship."
"I don't know why."
Memorized most of AM/FM, Class Clown, and Toledo Windowbox. RIP George.
John Nichols gives us a good collection of George Carlin's wit and wisdom over the years. I'm really glad I heard him once live, in the late 60's when he was in Ann Arbor on a college campus tour at the height of the Seven Dirty Words controversy. His routines, as continually rebroadcast on HBO, are invariably a joy to revisit.
Much like Lenny Bruce, Carlin's penchant for free wheeling use of F word vulgarities and his fearless willingness to savagely critique religious topics as well as secular ones guaranteed his stand up routines would be just a little too hot for the big time commercial TV prime time. He self edited only sparingly, but never really compromised.
His brief cameo role as a cab driver in the movie "Car Wash" showed George could function as a good character actor too.
It says a lot about our society that for thirty years the darkest truths about America's dysfunctional political system had to be articulated by a comedian, much like our best analysis of daily news events nowadays comes via Comedy Central.
Bill from Saginaw
Excluding the crack about Tim Russert, every post here is the exact truth.
We've lost the wrong George.
A man of words.
Seven ...I believe.
They wouldn't let him say.
We heard him saying them loudest then,
Now was that cool or what?
You know Carlin really was cool.
Carlin was cool man!
Hell yeah!
HERE is Mr. Carlin at his finest!: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/34319#comments
Normally when I hear some celebrity die I go, "Oh well..thats sad!" When I heard Carlin died I really felt horrible because
1) I am a stand-up comedy lover
2) Carlin was one of the most intelligent and well rounded comedians that I've ever listened to.
His last standup on HBO that I saw was where he was talking about suicide, asphyxiation, etc and I watched it with a group of friends. I thought it was deep and more philosophical than comical. Some of my friends who had never heard him before were uneasy in the beginning but appreciated his message. Rarely do you ever go for a standup comedy act and come back with a message. George Carlin's comedies were a message from his inner self - a man who thought deep like a modern philosopher and turned his thoughts into simple and eloquent message which tickled some and made some uncomfortable.
I will surely miss the genius of a man that he was!
I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.
– George Carlin
Perhaps Nichols ought to embrace the same standard for Journalism: Chris Hedges does, while Nichols pays lip service to it.
The earth ain't going nowhere; WE ARE!
Thank you, John for sharing Carlin's gift. What was he said, " Scratch a cynic and you'll find a disappointed idealist?".
A good one I read " When you're born, you get a ticket to the freak show. If you're born in America, you get a first row ticket."
His riff on growing up in a changing community was multiculturalism before that word was created.
Thank you, George Carlin, wise foole.
George Carlin & Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.--we need you both.
We'll definitely miss him !
In his uncanny ability to put the harshest realities of American culture into straightforward language, Carlin was a nopareil. In his capacity to make us laugh at our frustrations, he was a savior.
jj
George was America's funniest 'commie', no doubt. And many say that he was too bitter and acerbic? Too much so.
But just compare his humor to that of the 'Conservatives' if you want to see what mean spirited humor is really like. George loved people and that's what him talk the way he did.
And he was a patriot when most that describe themselves as patriots are capable of nothing more than waving their little American flags around every time the government smashes into some poor country on the other side of the planet.
Dear Mr. Nichols: George Carlin, unlike Tim Russert, deserves the praise.
Thank You George. You were right, most people are stupid, or full of shit. You were right about a lot of Stuff, and made us laugh. And so very right about that religion is bullshit!
Ah George, the Class (conscious) clown. His humor and insights are very familiar to so many of us who come from working-class backgrounds. It's the view one gets from the back of the line, where you know those ahead of you were told to line up first or cut in or had someone save a place for them, where you know that when and if you finally reach the front, there's a damn good chance nothing's much left. The working class has been exploited and ignored and manipulated, but it has had wise men like George to express our take on things. Thanks Bro.