Every now and then you run into a story, says, “some guy broke into a house, stole a lot of things, and while he was in there, he raped an 81 year old woman.”
And I’m thinking to myself, “WHY??? What the fuck kind of a social life does this guy have?”–George Carlin
It was far from his funniest bit. Even during that particular special, Doin it again, I wouldn’t rank it as one of the show’s most brilliant moments. But damn it got me in a lot of trouble. Their was a brief time while I was in fourth grade that I was going to be a stand-up comic; not sure why, I wasn’t particularly funny then (or now). Jim Carry was huge at the time, his goofy face-changing antics were inspiring kids all over the country to act like morons. Robin Williams, Nickelodeon’s All That, the resurgence of SNL: The early nineties saw a unlimited amount of popular–and mediocre–American comedy. Anyway, I too had decided to become a goofy comedian–somewhere between being a fireman and a baseball player. So when this ten year old asked his video store clerk for a recommendation of “really good comedians” and he passed me an aging VHS with an old, supremely goofy looking man on the cover, I sat down with a school notebook and began to do “research” in front of my TV (this was before parents were supposed monitor everything you watched). I still remember the first line:
“Why is it that people who are against abortion don’t look like people you’d want to fuck in the first place?”
My mouth dropped. I was young, I knew what abortion was and I certainly knew what fucking was, but I’d never heard them spoken together, by an adult, by someone who was supposed to be funny. I looked around my living room, scared that I’d get caught with such filth, but too transfixed to shut it off. I just turned the volume down (slightly) while this old man attacked every sacred cow, breached every unspeakable subject, and spoke every word that I’d been told for a decade never to speak. And he did it casually, with confidence. It was mind-blowing. 
The next day I went to school and told an unsuspecting student a joke about an 81 year old getting raped. He didn’t laugh. Neither did the next student I told, or the next, or the next. Or the teacher. Or the principal. Or the administrators. Or my parents. It didn’t matter though how much trouble I got in; while I did apologize and promised never say it again, the truth was, still is, that I’d ceased to see language and ideas as offensive or bad–the moment a child apologizes with a painful grimace that says “Sure, I’ll play by your rules. For now.” is the moment he’s truly become a free thinker. Thanks George!
But it wasn’t just me who George Carlin brought to an intellectual maturity. While Christoper Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are currently the patron saints of Atheism, no one person is more responsible for helping Americans–raised in a deeply religious society–overcome the god myth. And the religion myth. And the death myth. And the germs myth. And the “The Children” myth. And every other myth that permeates this highly superstitious land. He exposed them for what they were: At times ludicrous, at times dangerous, but always very, very funny. With every new saying, slogan, and belief, George seemed to be standing there with a grin, asking “What the fuck are you people talking about?”
To call him simply a “stand-up comic” would be dismissive and missing the point and if stand-up comedy itself is an art form, it’s only because he made it one. No thinker had a greater grasp of the American language since perhaps Mencken (and if Mencken, only Mencken). Not even strategists and pundits understood as well as he did that language and words didn’t just come about and transform for functional reasons, but for political ones. The opening monologue from one of his last shows, called “A Modern Man“, is a grand-finale of millennial linguistics that is both terrific and terrifying and includes lines like: “I’m an alpha male on beta blockers” and “I bought a minivan at a megastore”; this short bit of anti-postmodern poetics ranks high among America’s great works, and may be a better way for coming generations to understand what it was like to live in these times than pages of straight history and hours of video.
People keep asking me, “Does George Carlin ‘rest in peace’, I mean he didn’t believe in god, so…” etc. etc. The funny thing here is, no one would have found more humor in the question than George himself. Of all our dysfunctions, none made him laugh more than our discomfort with mortality; the way we dress up corpses, plan elaborate funerals, shout on and on about the “sanctity of life” (he once pointed-out the obvious bias here: only alive people care about life). If George was still here (he isn’t) and saw people looking over his own sticking carcass, he would’ve smiled and declared: “I’m not resting, I’m fucking dead.”
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what a great recollection of how carlin inspired your warped sense of humor!
it reminds me of when i watched SNL [in its early years] when i was 10 or so. that was when i tried saying loudly to the teachers pet, a sweet little catholic girl:
‘jane, you ignorant slut!’
not that i knew what a slut was but the whole class gasped as if i’d shanked her. i guess _everyone else_ knew what a slut was. i did not.
lots of anger and detention, my budding comedic career was over before it really started.
but back to mr. carlin. i was not so knowledgeable about his comedy but it was his intellectual rigor in defending his atheism that made me take notice. a great mind that, like you said, didn’t get the respect it deserved.
Yes, Sean, he was unfortunately written off by many as “just a comedian” and not an intellectual, artist; but I do wonder if history will treat him better or worse.