It's hard to see how there could have been a Sam Kinnison or a Bill Hicks if there hadn't been a Carlin (or, for that matter, a Carlin if there hadn't been a Lenny Bruce). But for as popular and inflential as he was, I must confess I was never a big fan. There were moments, of course--who couldn't love the "hippie dippy weatherman," the 7 words, and wonderful WINO radio?--but something about his approach often just missed me. I thought he was best when, as in a live performance I saw in the early 90's, he took on the politically correct and celebrated the power of language to communicate essential things. I remember him scoffing at the term "post-traumatic stress syndrome" as a preposterous mouthful of gibberish, and preferring "shell-shock" as the perfect agenbite (I take the term from Joseph Bottum), a word that, through its own sound sense, perfectly illustrates what it denotes. Carlin felt that it carried within it the very sound of artillery fire.
But then he'd take a turn toward the inane: railing aginst golf as an elitist sport and asking that golf-courses be confiscated and made into developments for the homeless; making the absurd claim that feminists are more concerned with their pocketbooks than with equal rights (as if equal pay for equal work isn't a legitimate issue?); or that people who suffer from bulimia and anorexia are just rich bitches who don't deserve our sympathy. The last sticks with me quite vividly: "Where else but in America would you have a disease like bulimia? Rich c*** won't eat? F*** her!" People walked out on that one--one young girl in tears. (But I did wonder, what did she expect from a George Carlin concert?) In fact, that joke became a perfect emblem of Carlin for me. Somewhere in that rude, crude remark there is an element of truth, but the brutality that rams it home seems unecessary, seems in fact to be designed to make the knuckle-dragger in me pump my fist in the air and grunt my approval. More hurtful than funny. (For an alternate take, see my friend R. Hughes's blog, the Well-Executed Buffet, in my blogs list.) In any case, we were better off with him than without him, and I salute his genius and his ballsiness. R.I.P.
And here's Ian from last February:
Hast Luego,
JBF
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