BartBlog

Requiem for a Heavyweight

More so than a deceased president or a news talk-show host, George Carlin had tremendous influence on American culture, yet you won’t see days of mourning for him on TV, except perhaps on Comedy Central, and you won’t find any magical rainbows sprouting from his funeral service, except perhaps in an oil slick on the surface of the East River. Such is the way America treats its truly great.

Like his predecessor Lenny Bruce, Carlin went from being an ‘acceptable’ nightclub comic who appeared on such mainstream television programs as The Ed Sullivan Show in the early 1960s – remember Al Sleet the Hippy Dippy Weatherman? – to a mordant social satirist who held up a mirror to the false morals, ditzy mores and blatant hypocrisy of the American Power Structure and made ‘The Suits’ uncomfortable while he entertained their kids and made them think. He pioneered the modern one-man arena comedy show – no band, no music, no props, just one lone guy rambling back and forth across a vast stage doing his ‘shtick’ – and pulled it off with brilliance, although the tradition springs from his comic brethren Mark Twain’s pomposity-puncturing lectures in the late 19th century. I saw him at the old McCormick Place in Chicago in the early ’70s and, even though my friends and I were in nosebleed balcony seats and Carlin was smaller than my little finger down on the stage, we heard every word clearly and I laughed until my sides ached – it remains the funniest live comedy show I’ve ever seen, all two hours of it.

Between him and Bruce they set a high standard — writing their own material, unlike most comics before them, and always challenging the audience to broaden their consciences and consciousness, and stop buying the controlling propaganda they were fed by those in authority. They hinted that there’s a better world beyond the crawl space where you’ve parked your mind, but the ticket to getting there is abandoning your delusions and illusions and thinking about who you are and what really motivates the society and nation in which you live and its most favored institutions. Religion, Sex, War, Obscenity, Patriotism, what have you – throw them all in the pot, turn on the heat, and see what boils up to the surface.

Carlin also left a tough legacy of something rare in this era of ‘Hey, Mofo’ comics who stoop for the easy laugh – he had real wit in his writing and performances and there are only of few of his contemporaries and heirs – Richard Pryor, Woody Allen, Bill Maher, Bill Hicks, Lily Tomlin, Chris Rock, et al – who could match Carlin’s humane intelligence, sharp eye, agile knowledge and versatility with words.

If there is a God, it’ll be a perfect cosmic joke on George, one he can laugh about in comfort because people as honest as Carlin don’t end up in hell; and, if there isn’t, that’s what he figured all along.

Here’s the MSM story.