The Chris Moeller Archives

George Carlin

Like all comedians, George Carlin was a truth-teller, but Carlin dealt in the most unpopular truths there are. His style didn't lead to giant paychecks in movies or on TV sitcoms. Nobody in prime-time takes on religion and white middle-class conventions the way Carlin did. That's biting the hand that feeds you. But Carlin never bowed, never compromised. His thankful audience recognized this, and that's why he was still filling concert halls up to the very end.

Carlin was one of the first of the Lenny Bruce acolytes, a direct artistic descendant of the notorious Jewish comic who reinvented the profession in the '50s and '60s and wrestled it away from its old bortsch belt conventions. Bruce "democratized" comedy with his unfiltered style, and with that as his inspiration, Carlin was able to discover the personal "truth-telling" voice inside of himself, shifting on-stage during the 1960s from a more buttoned-down joke teller to the pony-tailed bomb-thrower he would remain for his final three decades on the stage.

He tackled America's preoccupation with "profanity" and censorship with a routine entitled the "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television"-- highlighting (at that time) shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. The list-- and routine-- welcomed controversy, obviously, and its recitation got Carlin arrested at an outdoor performance in Milwaukee in 1972. When a New York City radio station played a recorded performance over the air in '73, the FCC intervened and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, leading to the creation of television's "family hour" broadcast requirement.

The 7 dirty words got America's attention, but Carlin became a stage crusader in the '90s and throughout this decade taking on religion (Carlin was a long-avowed atheist), the war culture, and human injustice. The comedy grew dark, and Carlin admitted in an interview in 2005 that his split from humanity as a whole was irrevocable. "I sort of gave up on this whole human adventure a long time ago," he said, "Divorced myself from it emotionally. I think the human race has squandered its gift, and I think this country has squandered its promise. I think people in America sold out very cheaply, for sneakers and cheeseburgers. I think they lost their way, and I really have no sympathy for that. And I don't think it's fixable."

In his new book "Comedy on the Edge," author Richard Zoglin writes that Carlin, during his long career, had a hand in the creation of almost every comedy form we witness today,

"Carlin's impact was broad and deep. He carried on Bruce's crusade against hypocrisy, cant, and social injustice-- for a generation that was more receptive to it and willing to turn it into action. His early takeoffs of DJs and TV commercials set a gold standard for scores of media satirists to follow, and his jokey newscasts provided the template for news parodies from Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update to Jon Stewart's Daily Show. His riffs on schoolroom pranks and bodily functions and the little absurdities of language showed the next crop of "observational" comics that nothing was too trivial or mundane-- or tasteless-- to become fodder for smart comedy.

Just as important, he showed that stand-up comedy could be a noble calling, one that required courage and commitment and that could have an impact outside of its own little world. And you could make a lifetime career of it, without burning out or self-destructing."

A guy I used to work with in radio had a first career as a limousine driver, and his favorite story involved driving Carlin once from the Des Moines airport. From the backseat, Carlin asked him, "What do you think all the poor people are doing today?" and the guy responded, "They're driving limos." He was so proud of his line, but I like the story because it's so particularly believable. That strikes me as exactly the way Carlin would talk when he was off-stage-- still committed to the performance and always searching for a fresh angle on the world.

There will be no sappy stuff in this obit upon the death yesterday of Mr. Carlin. It wasn't his style, and since he didn't believe in a heaven, I'm not going to be the one to conjure an image of Carlin floating amid the clouds with the other revolutionaries-- Bruce, Richard Pryor, and Sam Kinison. To do so would be a profanity.

posted by CM @ 4:41 PM