George Carlin passed away Sunday.
There are not many people who I consider heroes, but he was one of them. And not just because he is a personal hero, but because Carlin literally embodied the worst, and the best, of what he saw of the world. He was a comedian who dredged up some of the darkest, most profane, sickest humor one could ever hear, particularly in his last two routines dubbed Life is Worth Losing and It's Bad for Ya!. Yet, it made us laugh.
I've mainly been covering the election year in my sham of Internet political journalism for The Fhiz, but I've touched on some touchy subjects: the decline of the United States, suicide, terrorism, fraud, and Facebook to name a few. Despite that, I never try to let the tone get too serious, and inject some (often off-color) humor into it, be it making silly comparison of McCain to an office employee who shows up for work high on valium or just tossing a grumbled "fuckberries" in there somewhere. In George's words, "Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits."
That, which has become the veritable centerpiece of my writing, comes from George Carlin. The argument that I'm only 25 and he is "before my time" holds no water here. Carlin was just as relevant to youth culture on the day he died as he was in 1971 when he was arrested with Lenny Bruce, or in 1967 when he was just a feature on the Ed Sullivan Show. The man spanned generations in a bigger way than hit movie stars or famous bands: he, in a sense, grew up with the legend. Paul McCartney might be a "living legend," but anything he does is not going to live up to The Beatles or Live and Let Die. Carlin managed to avoid that trap, never passing a real prime, and never allowing the fame to get the better of him before he could create something new and meaningful.
These traits have followed over into all of my writing, from fiction to poetry to blogging. Comedians, and comedy itself, are important because of two things. Humor makes issues accessible. Nobody, not even me, wants to talk about politics all the time. But everyone loves a chuckle. Mixing the two allows the writer/speaker/poet/whoever to draw in a bigger audience from a wider range of backgrounds and opinions than if they stood behind a podium and listened to a politically correct, gender neutral, nonracial, formal English speech. In particular, humor does not concern itself with being offensive, so issues that make us squirm are all dealt with. Eddie Murphy did this in the 1980s with AIDS, and Jon Stewart does it today with politics. Most of what is covered in this not-news is bigger, more relevant, and more important than the news itself.
Secondly, and going hand-in-hand with the first, is humor's ability to soften the blows. By nature, we humans are pretty fragile mentally. We can only take so much bad news before there is some effect of it. Imagine if you watched Fox News all day, and all you heard about was how the A-rabs were going to come and kill you and how you need to tape your doors shut when the drop the chemical bomb and how Bird Flu is rampant and that your kids will go insane unless you get them on the hot new prescription and your husband will leave you and the President doesn't care about and God will send you to Hell unless you hate this, hate that, hate me, and hate yourself.. If you were sane, you'd change the channel, but given that Fox is still around, it is safe for me to assume most people don't. Humor does not stop all of the negativity, but, like unspoken issues, it makes it accessible. It's the unbreakable, full-body wetsuit you wear when jumping into a big pile of cow shit.
If there is a "most important thing" I'll take away from Carlin, it is this, which I believe is the lesson that comedy itself teaches: Never. Stop. Laughing. Ever. Because, if we laugh at it, we can deal with it. "It" could be our sham of a country, poverty, crime, suicide, the collapsing market, international terrorism, racism, the new disease that's wiping the human race out, global warming, alien invasion, World War 3, the cool new drugs your precious teens are sucking down, twelve year olds having babies, cancer, giant corporations polluting our back yards and giving us diseases, rednecks shooting anything that looks like its wearing a towel, or fucking nuclear bombs. Desperation, pointlessness, hopelessness, and doubt can all be kept at bay with a well-timed joke. I think, and I hope I'm right, that one thing George Carlin stood for was facing all of the evils the world has to offer without guns and bullets, without laws and police, without big ideas about encompassing philosophies - just facing the world clear-eyed and naked, with a damn good joke.
George Carlin: thank you.
There are not many people who I consider heroes, but he was one of them. And not just because he is a personal hero, but because Carlin literally embodied the worst, and the best, of what he saw of the world. He was a comedian who dredged up some of the darkest, most profane, sickest humor one could ever hear, particularly in his last two routines dubbed Life is Worth Losing and It's Bad for Ya!. Yet, it made us laugh.
I've mainly been covering the election year in my sham of Internet political journalism for The Fhiz, but I've touched on some touchy subjects: the decline of the United States, suicide, terrorism, fraud, and Facebook to name a few. Despite that, I never try to let the tone get too serious, and inject some (often off-color) humor into it, be it making silly comparison of McCain to an office employee who shows up for work high on valium or just tossing a grumbled "fuckberries" in there somewhere. In George's words, "Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits."
That, which has become the veritable centerpiece of my writing, comes from George Carlin. The argument that I'm only 25 and he is "before my time" holds no water here. Carlin was just as relevant to youth culture on the day he died as he was in 1971 when he was arrested with Lenny Bruce, or in 1967 when he was just a feature on the Ed Sullivan Show. The man spanned generations in a bigger way than hit movie stars or famous bands: he, in a sense, grew up with the legend. Paul McCartney might be a "living legend," but anything he does is not going to live up to The Beatles or Live and Let Die. Carlin managed to avoid that trap, never passing a real prime, and never allowing the fame to get the better of him before he could create something new and meaningful.
These traits have followed over into all of my writing, from fiction to poetry to blogging. Comedians, and comedy itself, are important because of two things. Humor makes issues accessible. Nobody, not even me, wants to talk about politics all the time. But everyone loves a chuckle. Mixing the two allows the writer/speaker/poet/whoever to draw in a bigger audience from a wider range of backgrounds and opinions than if they stood behind a podium and listened to a politically correct, gender neutral, nonracial, formal English speech. In particular, humor does not concern itself with being offensive, so issues that make us squirm are all dealt with. Eddie Murphy did this in the 1980s with AIDS, and Jon Stewart does it today with politics. Most of what is covered in this not-news is bigger, more relevant, and more important than the news itself.
Secondly, and going hand-in-hand with the first, is humor's ability to soften the blows. By nature, we humans are pretty fragile mentally. We can only take so much bad news before there is some effect of it. Imagine if you watched Fox News all day, and all you heard about was how the A-rabs were going to come and kill you and how you need to tape your doors shut when the drop the chemical bomb and how Bird Flu is rampant and that your kids will go insane unless you get them on the hot new prescription and your husband will leave you and the President doesn't care about and God will send you to Hell unless you hate this, hate that, hate me, and hate yourself.. If you were sane, you'd change the channel, but given that Fox is still around, it is safe for me to assume most people don't. Humor does not stop all of the negativity, but, like unspoken issues, it makes it accessible. It's the unbreakable, full-body wetsuit you wear when jumping into a big pile of cow shit.
If there is a "most important thing" I'll take away from Carlin, it is this, which I believe is the lesson that comedy itself teaches: Never. Stop. Laughing. Ever. Because, if we laugh at it, we can deal with it. "It" could be our sham of a country, poverty, crime, suicide, the collapsing market, international terrorism, racism, the new disease that's wiping the human race out, global warming, alien invasion, World War 3, the cool new drugs your precious teens are sucking down, twelve year olds having babies, cancer, giant corporations polluting our back yards and giving us diseases, rednecks shooting anything that looks like its wearing a towel, or fucking nuclear bombs. Desperation, pointlessness, hopelessness, and doubt can all be kept at bay with a well-timed joke. I think, and I hope I'm right, that one thing George Carlin stood for was facing all of the evils the world has to offer without guns and bullets, without laws and police, without big ideas about encompassing philosophies - just facing the world clear-eyed and naked, with a damn good joke.
George Carlin: thank you.
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