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The Sad Death of a Dangerous American
The only good thing about George Carlin's death on Sunday at the age of 71 -- and there is no good thing about George Carlin's death on Sunday at the age of 71 -- is that he has already given us such a rich body of thought, analysis, observation and truth that it will take us the rest of our lives to work through it all -- and even then, we probably won't be able to absorb or act on even a percentage of what he's said.
For example, before you put that Obama sticker on your car, think about why Carlin believed the American educational system can never be improved: "The owners of this country -- the big wealthy business interests that control things -- they've got the politicians; they're just put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice; you don't. They own you. They own everything. What they don't want is a population of citizens capable of critical thinking... It's against their interests."
Carlin, bless him, was dangerous. Yes, it was Lenny Bruce who set him free, and yes, at the same time Richard Pryor was doing the same thing in a different area. But these three giants told giant truths to an America that didn't really want to hear them.
"It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it," he said.
Carlin was fearless about religion.
On God: "Something is wrong. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty. crime, torture, corruption and the ice capades. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. This is not what you expect to find on the resume of a Supreme Being. It's what you expect from an office temp with a bad attitude."
On abortion: "Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers... How come when it's us, it's an abortion, but when it's a chicken, it's an omelet?"
Which led him to the One True Commandment: "Keep thy religion to thyself."
Carlin was proud to play the jester -- to be the only person at court who could tell the king when he was making an ass of himself. In his last long interview, with Jay Dixit of the Psychology Today website, he talked about being a young comedian and recognizing himself in the writing of Arthur Koestler:
"The jester makes jokes, he's funny, he makes fun, he ridicules," Carlin said. "But if his ridicules are based on sound ideas and thinking, then he can proceed to the second panel, which is the thinker -- (Koestler) called it the philosopher. The jester becomes the philosopher, and if he does these things with dazzling language that we marvel at, then he becomes a poet too. Then the jester can be a thinking jester who thinks poetically."
Carlin had a poet's gift for language.
"He worked over an idea like a diamond cutter with facets and angles and refractions of light," Jerry Seinfeld said in a recent New York Times tribute. "He made you sorry you ever thought you wanted to be a comedian. He was like a train hobo with a chicken bone. When he was done there was nothing left for anybody.
Carlin credited his Irish heritage for this gift, and told Dixit that his grandfather, a New York City policeman "wrote out Shakespeare's tragedies longhand just for the joy it gave him."
Because he loved words, like George Orwell before him Carlin hated euphemisms. He knew that when we hide the truth behind language (including "The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television," which led to the U.S. Supreme Court voting against the First Amendment) we would be lied to until our pockets are empty and we are all in our graves.
He recognized that Americans have become afraid of words, and because of this fear, are turning themselves into robots. He knew that we need those seven words, and many other, sometimes hateful words -- the "N" word, the "K" word, the "C" word, all the words -- out in the open where we can all see them, talk about them, criticize the ideas behind them, and scorn and reeducate the people who have those ideas.
As he pointed out, the words themselves aren't bad -- they're just words. It's the thinking behind them that must be addressed. To the end, Carlin rejected the idea that he was an angry man.
"I'm just very disappointed and contemptuous of my fellow humans' choices," he said.
Damn, I'm going to miss him. We're all going to miss him.
A collection of Joyce Marcel's columns, "A Thousand Words or Less," is available through joycemarcel.com. And write her at joycemarcel@yahoo.com.
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18 Comments so far
Show AllSome of Carlin's best later moments. I'm transcribing these, from "Life is Worth Losing". I know I could stick a link in here that would take you right to a video, but I'll censor out parts of the deadly words (Why in print is it okay to say f**K y** or use that bleep that doesn't completely hide what the bleeped out word was. That implies it's the word itself, not what it means that is seen as the problem. Three year old know what's behind all the beeps, but they words weren't actually said. Congenital hypocrisy of a uniquely human kind.)
So here are my fingers, channeling GeoCarlin:
"I think about stuff like that. Interesting . . . Life is full of interesting things. I'd never commit suicide. I'm having too much fun. Keeping an eye you folks, what you do, human behavior. That what I like. Humans do some really interesting things. Like besides killing ourselves, we also kill each other . . . Human beings, interesting folks, murderers. Here's an interesting form of murder we've come up with. Assassination. You know what's interesting about assassination. Well, not only doe sit change those popularity polls in a big f***in' hurry, but it's also interesting to notice who it is we assassinate . . . It's always people who told us to live together in harmony and try to love one another. Jesus, Gandhi, Lincoln, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, John Lennon . . . Try to live together peacefully. Bam!"
I loved his work and think that's one Bad Temp that could give us the wonders of a George Carlin.
But in the end I have to go with the words of the poem Desiderata "With all it's sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it's still a beautiful world. Be careful and strive to be happy." Carlin looked like a happy man despite the sham, drudgery and billions of broken dreams in the world. We bought his albums; that probably wasn't the only good choice that some of us have made.
The voices of truth become fewer and fewer and fewer.
RIP George Carlin
"He knew that we need those seven words, and many other, sometimes hateful words — the "N" word, the "K" word, the "C" word, all the words — out in the open where we can all see them, talk about them, criticize the ideas behind them, and scorn and reeducate the people who have those ideas."
And, yet, the author herself is afraid to say the actual words, sticking to the "politically correct" euphemisms. How ironic. GC would have been disappointed in her choice for sure...
I'm sure heaven is LOL at his comments and biting humor!
My 'evil' side speaks - FUCK
PissantNobody,
wasn't it marx who said it wasn't enough to understand the world, the point was to change it? it's easy enough to see what's wrong, or to agree with someone else who sees what's wrong; it's harder to begin to make things right. world government. international socialism. a new political party. sure. but those will be the results of changed conditions (modes & relations) of production. in other words, it begins at ground level, so that power will proceed upward. and that means literally millions of people need to create partnerships in all of life's endeavors, partnerships that are democratic & non-exploitative. not exactly the dominant business model of the era we live in. until then, the best that can be expected or worked toward is rational regulation & disinterested oversight of all those entities that if left alone will rob us all blind, pollute the earth, own political leaders - and on and on. it isn't illegal to create such economic models. they are, however, the alternative to "business-as-usual". they already exist here & there. but they receive little if any attention, even in liberal media, which critiques the way things are but does not shine a spotlight on the way things could be. of course, criticism must continue, but without a presentation of the alternative(s), it merely continues the sense of frustration, exasperation, and alienation that is so widely felt by all who simply do not have the temperament for a what-the-market-will-bear way of life. and wasn't that george carlin? exasperated with, alienated from, the prevailing absurdities of our present way of life.
Interestingly, I just attempted to type Carlins "7 words" into this comment. It was rejected twice.
Tells you something.
carlin was a word master
fuckin' carlin was a sharp cocksucker
Words are just that, words....
tihs, ssip, kcuf, tnuc, rekcuskcoc, rekcufrehtom, stit...
Carlin made us look in the mirror, even if we didn't like what we saw.
pissant nobody said:
"Still, despite spot-on jabs at injustice, our departed friend never (to my knowledge, anyway) connected the dots, and identified that war, poverty and general injustice are inherent to a capitalist economy, and that only international socialism offers a solution. Maybe he did not realize this, or maybe he realized that a single sentence advocating communism would likely deny him further opportunities in his chosen career."
Carlin did indeed link these things up, at least as far back as "Occupation:Foole" where he talks about Vietnam, and how that's our modus operandi in the U.S., invade a country and "whip a little industry on them...U.S. industry...those are, after all, the middle two letters of industry 'u-s'"--
He augmented this bit with cheering sounds for the words "industry" and "U.S. industry"--and, thirty years later, his latest stuff regarding education, designed to create obedient workers smart enough to do the paperwork but not smart enough to feel the red white and blue dildo being shoved up their ass", and so on...all of this is readily available on youtube and I suspect on the latest release of all the HBO specials...I don't recall him ever explicitly advocating "international socialism" but I don't see why that matters. Your conjecture that he "didn't connect the dots" is simply not supported...the bulk of his work was a scathing indictment of capitalism in general, and America in particular, and any alleged failure to endorse a specifically labeled solution matters little, if at all. His primary goal was to pull the scales from your eyes, to expose the hypocrisy. What you did with your clear vision was left up to you.
It seems to me that your insistence on a particular solution is as result of your own bias and not any failure on his part. He did expect audiences to do a bit of thinking on their own, and "international socialism", whatever that is, is just one possibility, among others.
Anyone advocating socialism needs their head read. Socialism requires ownership (or control) of the means of production by the State. the State is run by politicians. So your solution to the problems of greed, cronyism, corruption and war, is to EXTEND the influence of the very folks who CREATE all of those things?
Apart from that, you also ought to make yourself more aware of the fraudulent scholarship of Marx and Engels - and of Marx's abject failure in his private life, to show any of the principles that are a pre-requisite for Socialist man. He was a leech, a lecher, a drunk and a fraud.
Paul Johnson write a scathing critique of Marx in the 1990s, reprising research that investigated Marx's citations and found that 70% of them were fabricated or misrepresented.
It's all very well to get carried away with some idea that life seems to be a bit unfair at times, and bad things happen to good folks, and folks who work hard seem not to go forward while the Cheneys and Bushes and Sarkozys of the world live in palaces. But to advocate socialism as the solution indicates a breathtaking ignorance of economics AND politics. If you're concerned about the Military-Industrial complex, ask yourself how an increase in that form of socialism would suit you...
The ONLY possibility - literally, the ONLY one - is anarcho-capitalism. It is the only form of societal organisation that refutes all aggression (although it doesn't say that aggression would not exist - just that it would be explicitly unacceptable).
One thing that Marx got half-right, was that eventually the State would cease to exist. Marx postulated that it would 'wither away' - that it wold voluntarily cede control over populations and their resources as the productive efficiency of socialism (HA!) helped ameliorate the problems of scarcity.
In this he was wrong - the State could be done away with TOMORROW with no adverse economic effects, but it will not go quietly into that god night... it will kill and maim its own citizens in order to keep its monopoly on violence.
Prior to that, I advocate Sortition - the appointment of political officeholders by ranndom selection from the adult population.
That way the US would have only a 1 in 150-million chance of having a suppressed-homosexual cokehead fratboy as President. And the odds of having said fratboy AND Dick 'dick' Cheney chosen at random... 1 in 22500000000000000.
Give me those odds any day.
Cheerio
GT
France
PS This thread is mostly about George Carlin. He was reasonably funny, but what I liked about him most was his sensible view on language. You can't say 'fuck' in the Senate, but you can vote for things that result in the death of other people's children. That shit ain't right, yo.
Pissantnobody and others, the vision is realised on Green Island http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greenisland.html . If there's an afterlife, George may be having a look around. He'd be welcome.
Onelove, that was one of the most incredible posts I have ever seen. That was beautifully simple . . . and quite genius.
Joyce,
Thank you for a fine tribute to G.C. That was a dark week for millions of us and our world has been diminished. Thank you George for the treasure of stuff you left us. We will need it. Joe Bless you George.