George Carlin died three weeks ago and it's taken me that long to figure out how to write about him. There just weren't words. Initially it was embarrassment - revulsion at just how amateur every joke or opinion I've offered appears after watching his routines. That as Jerry Seinfeld eloquently noted, whatever joke anyone's been telling for the last thirty years, Carlin told it first. And better.
But there was more to it than that. Carlin was "post-commentary." Not in some cheap silly fashion, as artists are "post-modern" or candidates claim to be "post-politics." The universal truth and clarity of Carlin's observations placed them as close to "beyond dissection" as any entertainer's work could ever be. Media's cheap and most of it's full of shit. We can parse and qualify the points of ninety percent of the mouths we hear on television, radio or the internet. Not Carlin. There were no two meanings to anything he said, and whether you liked it or not you knew in the end, He Was Right.
I won't embroider that point here. Better to let Carlin explain himself. Watch these video clips from his last HBO special, It's Bad For Ya.
Start at minute 4:00 of the first clip and move through the following two. If those fifteen or so minutes don't savage all the delusions and absurdities at the heart of our aggregate national idiocy, you're not living in reality.
George Carlin was far more than a comedian. He was one of our great individualists, in the air of Mencken and Twain.1 He didn't believe in faiths, factions or parties. I think he believed in people, in the inherent decency of humans alone, one on one, uncorrupted by the forced affiliations that drive us to so much groupthink - to zealotry, bubbles, wars and superstition... To the ludicrous insistence some omniscient hand has the wheel. That or in a tough moment like the present some elected official or policy can "make it all better" - as if a McCain, Obama, universal health care or "social justice" tax reform might save us from the bogeymen we read about in the business pages.
I never met George Carlin and I don't know anyone who knew him. But I do know his work, and the thrust of his message is particularly important in year like this, facing an election like this and its endless marketing tentacles. If there was a way to honor a person like Carlin, someone who gave us so many laughs and so much spot-on social criticism, it'd be to stop, if just for a day, and tune out all the assholes telling us what to believe. To consider what we each want to do, what we think and what makes sense to every one of us as individuals. Turn off the Sean Hannities, Keith Olbermanns and Bill O'Reillys. Click off Townhall, HuffingtonPost and DailyKos. Tune out the Limbaughs and Frankens and Savages and in the words of another eminent voice silenced this year, "stand athwart" the idiot wind of the chattering class and the interests that feed them advertising dollars. Say "Thanks, but I'll think for myself instead." If you do that - if we all do that instead of buying into the misrepresentations and spin - we'll have voted correctly this November, whoever gets elected.
Carlin wouldn't have voted at all, of course, and that's fine, too. If you examine the candidates' platforms and conclude it doesn't make any rational sense to cast a ballot, by all means, stay home on Election Day. Just so long as you make your own decision, based on actual facts. That's all that matters. And that's all Carlin ever asked us to do. If he had any message or mantra it was aptly plagiarized from Benjamin Franklin - "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see."2 It can't be repeated enough... Think for yourself.
George Carlin was Right. We're not at our best when we're caught up in a fervor for aimless "revolution" or pumped full of bullshit by the mouthpieces of K Street and Madison Avenue. We're at our best when we observe, consider and apply our judgment rationally. So thanks, George, for pressing us toward that end, as futile as it might be.3 And Godspeed, even if you didn't believe in her.
----------
1 Fittingly, Carlin will posthumously receive the The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for Humor this fall.
2 Often attributed to Lou Reed, who reversed the quote in "Last Great American Whale" ("Don't believe half of what you see and none of what you hear"). New York, 1987.
3 In a country where one third of the people refuse to believe in evolution, it's hard to image "thinking for yourself" ever becoming the majority norm.
Posted by PhilaLawyer at 9:20 PM