Tag: Death

“The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things — bad language and whatever — it’s all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition,” Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview

In a typical wry response, Carlin said: “Thank you Mr. Twain. Have your people call my people.”

Carlin told The Associated Press this year he was “perversely kind of proud” to be “a footnote in American legal history.”

Few Comedians will have the balls and chutzpah that George Carlin carried around in his pants, his stuff was portable and palatable. At times he seethed with loathing for the trappings of society, struggling to suffocate the failings of others in prosaic language and invective. Other times you could see that he wanted so much for us to understand his world view that he was a wits end trying to use crude language (crude in the sense of imprecise for the task, not crude as in vulgar) to express his point of view.

George Carlin was a man of the monologue, streaming hours of precise and cutting commentary or just sputtering vituperation at his audience.  The only real tradgedy of Carlin’s work is that the people who stood the gain the most from it, his targets, were likely to be the selfsame people who would ignore or overlook it as brash, uncooth or un-pc.

I think we might see, over the coming days a number of groups trying to claim Mr. Carlin’s Corpse for their own, whatever stripe they may wear.  They will look at his death as an opportunity to say that he was in in their Camp, shaman of their particular tribe as it were.  I think George would have said it best, “go fuck yourself!” he was his own man and walked his own path, wearing only his own stripes and speaking only his own words.

Good-bye, you crazy hippy.  May you rot in the earth and fertilize a lawn or two.