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.
The Tattlesnake — Random Head-Slapping Flapdoodle Edition
– How’s That Drug War Working Out for You? Traces of cocaine can be found on 80 percent of the US currency in circulation, according to The Discovery Channel’s ‘Mostly True Stories’ series. Come on, folks, let’s increase the budget for the War on Drugs and get that number up to 90 or 95 percent.
– A Prediction: In 50 years all of the ugly truth will emerge about the Reagan and Poppy Bush presidencies, should the country survive, and they will be relegated to their proper places on the list of US presidents, lounging down near the bottom with Milliard Fillmore and James Buchanan. While you may find the occasional Ronald Reagan Memorial Corn Crib or George H. W. Bush State Penitentiary for the Insane in parts of the south and Midwest, the Reagan Airport in Washington will have a new name and the aircraft carrier that bears Bush Senior’s moniker will have turned into rust in dry dock. And what of Bush Junior, the worst president in our history? Americans will spit disgustedly after saying his name and he will have the distinction of coming in dead last on every presidential scorecard, if he manages to avoid jail. San Francisco has shone the way regarding appropriate memorials for Shrub’s occupations of the nation’s highest office – some of the city’s residents have plans to name a sewage treatment plant in his honor. Speaking of shrubs, perhaps a future landscaper will create Mount Bushmore – a large hedge trimmed to look like Mad Magazine mascot Alfred E. Newman reading ‘My Pet Goat.’
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