Jun 23 2008

George Carlin has Died

I just heard George Carlin died.  When I was very young, he was in his prime. Carlin was the first political stand up comic I knew.  Regarded, then at least, at the successor to Lenny Bruce.  He was the first person to host Saturday Night Live, which some of you know was once a huge cultural event (back in the days of Ackyroyd, Belushi and Murray).

Carlin is a much more important figure than some might think.  His 7 words you can’t say on the airwaves was actually a Supreme Court Case, which he lost 5-4.

Here are some favorite quotes and remembrances:

*Carlin also introduced the “Two Commandments”, a revised “pocket-sized” list of the Ten Commandments, ending with the additional commandment of “Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.”

*While appearing in Las Vegas, Carlin stated that he couldn’t wait to get out of Las Vegas, stating “People who go to Las Vegas, you’ve got to question their fucking intellect to start with. Traveling hundreds and thousands of miles to essentially give your money to a large corporation is kind of fucking moronic.”

*”Tonight’s forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning.”

*”When you’re born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front-row seat.”

Finally:

“Take a fucking chance! Put a little fun in your life! … most Americans are soft and frightened and unimaginative and they don’t realize there’s such a thing as dangerous fun, and they certainly don’t recognize a good show when they see one.”

Feel free to share your thoughts.

15 comments

Skip to comment form

    • robodd on June 23, 2008 at 07:49
      Author
    • #

    Fuck, shit, piss, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.

  2. …for all free-thinking people everywhere.

    Of all the things I adored about Carlin, that he viewed politics in general as a sort of sick joke was my favorite.  I love political theory and philosophy.  But I don’t have any doubt that we’d all be better off ignoring this shit and focusing on how to be better people in our own lives.

    Our good fortune in having been alive at the same time that he was is vast beyond measure.  

  3. We should all remember, as the memorials to him come out over the next few days, that if he could see it, he would tell us all to go fuck ourselves.  He was never, ever, maudlin, and we ought not be either.

    • robodd on June 23, 2008 at 08:07
      Author
    • #

    hat tip OPOL

  6. at Salon this year here I am very much saddened by his passing he was way more of an important person to me than Tim Russert was, nothing aginst Russert but Carlin was just brilliant.

    • TMC on June 23, 2008 at 15:21
    • #

    May the Goddess guide him on his journey to the Summerlands. May his family, friends and all of us who enjoyed his wit and insight find Peace. George, you will be very missed. Blessed Be.

  8. As demonstrated above, neither of the factors relied on by both the opinion of my Brother POWELL and the opinion of my Brother STEVENS – the intrusive nature of radio and the presence of children in the listening audience – can, when taken on its own terms, support the FCC’s disapproval of the Carlin monologue. These two asserted justifications are further plagued by a common failing: the lack of principled limits on their use as a basis for FCC censorship. No such limits come readily to mind, and neither of the opinions constituting the Court serve to clarify the extent to which the FCC may assert the privacy and children-in-the-audience rationales as justification for expunging from the airways protected communications the Commission finds offensive. Taken to their logical extreme, these rationales would support the cleansing of public [438 U.S. 726, 771]    radio of any “four-letter words” whatsoever, regardless of their context. The rationales could justify the banning from radio of a myriad of literary works, novels, poems, and plays by the likes of Shakespeare, Joyce, Hemingway, Ben Johnson, Henry Fielding, Robert Burns, and Chaucer; they could support the suppression of a good deal of political speech, such as the Nixon tapes; and they could even provide the basis for imposing sanctions for the broadcast of certain portions of the Bible.

    Oh how greatly we miss Justices Marshall and Brennan, too. Makes you want to shout, “fuck, shit, piss, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits.”

  9. this is kind of spooky – just last week I did a Pony Party with a little Carlin, starting with this quote:

    The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating…

    …and you finish off as an orgasm.

    Right on!   I love GC!  

    Thanks to everyone for sharing their favorite moments too.

  10. and another one comes

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Comments have been disabled.