Bye George

I missed much of George Carlin’s early career, so first came to his comedy by the time he was a dirty old man- a wise, wise-ass grandpa. At the end, Carlin appeared in all black, a belligerent mime. After forced trips to church in high school, I made him (a recovering Catholic too) my personal anti-catechist.

Whether his target was religion, class hierarchy, empire, over-consumption, language use and censorship, bankers, sexual custom, or the general failings of human nature, Carlin told polite society and euphemized conventional wisdom to fuck off. He was a master of wordplay, lewd sound effects, and a pacing physical comedy that drove it home.

And he was versatile: (He raised a generation as the out of place narrator for the pre-school hit show "Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends," which could only have been part of some community service stint for swearing in front of a class of Kindergarteners.)

Carlin’s bullshit detector was devastating, but he used simple means of inquiry to dissect authority and ideology. And drawing simple questions about “the way things worked” all the way out to their illogical end, he was able to lay bare the absurdity of so many bankrupt American mythologies.

Carlin on "the greatest bullshit story ever told":


On "the american dream:"




Here's what they're calling Carlin's last interview (in Psychology Today). Originally slated for a back page, they published it nearly in full on the web.