George Carlin, 1937-2008
Monday, June 23rd, 2008
I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately. –George Carlin
I’m not normally big on dead celebrities. Often as not–though there are exceptions–they’re gone when they’re well past their prime, and this seems especially true of comedians. Bob Hope would be Exhibit A, keeping good company with George Burns, and others of that ilk.
But then there are the exceptions. Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and one George Denis Patrick Carlin. The same “safe” Carlin who was a frequent guest on the Tonight Show (starting back in the Jack Paar days) would, soon enough, be the same Carlin who gave America the Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television (the original seven, which grew to something close to 2,500, were shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits, in case you were curious), “A Place for My Stuff,” and Brain Droppings. Carlin could be maddeningly hit-or-miss, but when he was on, he was as much standup philosopher as he was comedian, holding a mirror up to the uglier bits of human nature and playing them for laughs. He could be as dead-on (forgive the pun) about politics as he was about religion and so much else.
Usually when a great personality dies, someone ends up saying that the world seems like a smaller place without them in it. In George Carlin’s case, though, the world seems somehow more serious, which in its own way seems an even bigger shame…