Since it's all anyone can talk about, I suppose I should say something about George Carlin.
A lot of people, and by "a lot," I mean millions of people, found George Carlin to be a comedic genius. I'm not sure I hold him in the same esteem. I mean, he had funny moments, and certainly a few funny lists, but I don't rank him anywhere near the top.
First of all, he was profane. I'm all for profanity, I use it frequently. Too frequently, perhaps! But when "fuck" is mentioned, in some derivation, four times in one sentence, that's overkill.
Second, he pledged no allegiance to anything: not to a god, not to our country, nothing. I couldn't care less about his lack of religion/spiritualism; hell, I applaud it. But no allegiance to our country? As a red-blooded American who's proud as all get out of being an American, I can't wrap my head around that concept.
Mexicans are proud of Mexico (so much so, in fact, that they'll fly their Mexican flags while they're [maybe] citizens of American living on our American streets), Canadians love Canada, Greeks love Greece...how does an American-born man, granted all these great freedoms, a man who is known for pushing the envelope of the coveted freedom of speech, not love America?
I don't know. I'm sad he died, of course, I'm sad when almost anyone dies. I'm just not as sad now as I was, say, when John Ritter, or Jack Lemmon, or Johnny Carson died. They were funny.
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Passing The Baton
11 months ago
3 comments:
Interesting take. I know alot of people were talking about him today and all I could think was, "is that the guy that cusses alot?"
I never knew that about him... hmmm. I remember back in the day when he was first saying those Seven Words (I was maybe 15 or so). It was a huge deal.
(via cre8Buzz)
I hear you on this completely! During the week, HBO kept playing old shows of his, and at one point I put one on from the 70's, expecting to be soon annoyed as usual. But it turns out the Carlin of the 70's was much funnier and used less profanity in his comedy. My husband and I laughed it up, and he confirmed that GC did change a lot over the years. In the same evening, we watched a few minutes of something from the 90's. Sure enough, I wasn't laughing much. Sad that he went from one end of the spectrum to a much unhappier one.
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