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.
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George Carlin is Dead at 71 of Heart Failure
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.
(more…)