Yeah the old bastard is dead. As you may have heard, George Carlin recently “passed away” effectively stripping me of one of my three living idols. It’s hard explaining the significance of a man like Carlin in a culture so saturated with the fruits of his labours that it becomes difficult to imagine what came before. It scares me that there may very well be a generation that doesn’t know who this man was, nor understand the relevance of his work. Not all of his jokes work any more - his social examinations were relevant and pervasive, and he was able to critique our world in a way that was funny but thought-provoking.

For me personally, George Carlin helped shape the way I view free speech, religion and reason. He refused to allow anyone to limit what he could say or think, and challenged us to fight for our own freedoms alongside. He tore apart the coddled and pretentious douchebags in our society, who hide behind soft language and censorship to remind the “economically disadvantaged” [SIC] and “differently abled” [SIC] how they should think.

“Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins, it’s as simple as that.”

“We don’t have any cripples in this country any more… these poor people have been bullshitted by the system in to thinking that if you change the name of the condition you’re going to change the condition. It doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen…. It’s getting so bad now that any day now I’m waiting for someone to refer to a rape victim as an unwilling sperm recipient”.

Penn Gillette shared a story about how the late, great, comedian Lenny Bruce was the last man to be arrested for publicly using “obscene language” in America. During his stage act, Lenny attacked a system that had effectively abandoned its own lower classes, and he presented his material in a language that was discernible for his audience. He didn’t condescend to his fans, resulting in jokes rife with the same bad language they used in their daily lives, leading to his eventual incarceration. As Bruce was getting thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, the cops were harassing the audience members, which happened to include a dirty-haired hippie that refused to present any identification. Claiming he didn’t believe in official I.D., this teenager got arrested and thrown into the back of the same wagon that Bruce was in, leaving the two together for a number of hours. That teenager was George Carlin.

Over the next few decades, George Carlin fought against the illiberal and unjust regulations of a government that tried to control how its people could express themselves. The FCC is a regulatory commission that controls American broadcasting networks (basic television, the radio) that can effectively censor what gets on the air - there’s a reason you’re not allowed to hear swearing before a certain time on FOX, etc. This bureaucratic branch of government is getting federal sponsorship - tax dollars from supposedly free individuals - to tell the general public what words we are mature enough to hear. Premium cable and the internet are free of their restrictions, which is why pervasive media like the Sopranos, Q.A.F, and streaming video can actually represent uncut realities. George Carlin went before the supreme court, albeit unsuccessfully, to protect the integrity of artistic expression and honest and rational discussion. There is no such thing as bad words, only bad people, and Carlin fought against those that try to distract us from the real evils of the world with cozy language or by shaming us in to political correctness. Our world is a worse place without this man in it.

The following two videos are your homework, hopefully the internet survives long enough for you to see ‘em: