After the sudden passing of George Carlin, I started to think back to when I used to watch/listen to his acts. It’s a natural thing, especially with Carlin because he always talked about the fear of death. He made sure we knew we were all going to go at some point, and that how we were going to go would haunt us until the final day. Thanks George!
His thoughts on death lead me down another road. He also talked about the use of language in our society. According to George Carlin, people no longer die in our society. They pass on. They go to a better place. They rest in peace. He inspired thought, which is something you can rarely say about today’s comedians. Everything is about fart jokes and slap-stick comedy now. George Carlin would at least mix in a little philosophy…with his fart jokes and slap-stick comedy.
I didn’t agree with a lot of what he said, but one thing I could agree with him on is the prominence of “soft words”. We have replaced a lot of our language with words and phrases that make us feel better about the world around us. In the words of Carlin, we are bullshitting ourselves.
He used examples like the phrase, “Today, I am 40 years young!”
“Your getting old”, he would say.
He is absolutely right about this. Our culture is trying so hard not to deal with the harsh realities in life. So much so that we are changing our language to make ourselves feel better. But when does it stop. It didn’t stop at language. Now we have started to regulate television to the point where even the Disney channel has to watch themselves.
Remember Monday Night Football with Terrell Owens and the Desperate House Wife? They went after the television station because they depicted the stereotype that African-American males are attracted to white women! Had nothing to do with the girl taking the towel off (nothing was seen anyway). I still can’t understand that.
Carlin mocked this sort of censorship. Everyone remembers “7 Words You Can’t Say on Television” right? He is told what he can’t say, and he runs out to his next show and repeats them. Just so everyone in the crowd new what the rules were.
My problem with this soft language is that it absolutely does bullshit the general public. People need to know that life can be brutal. Too many people are walking around our cities and have no idea what the world has in store for them. They just choose not to think about it. Most people vote Republican or Democrat based on who their families vote for. They don’t know policies, and they never found the point in educating themselves on how the world works. If you ask a normal person, “Hey, what do you think about George Bush?” A majority of people will say, “Oh…he’s an idiot.” Whenever I ask them why they think that, I usually get a response like, “He just is.” They know there is a war but they can’t tell you why it is being fought. They can tell you that the political system sucks, but they can’t tell you why. They say the economy sucks, but they don’t know how it works.
They don’t want to know.
George Carlin will be missed in the comedy world. Much like Lewis Black, Richard Pryor, and Bill Cosby he was a comic who made you think. He made fun of the establishment, and made us laugh along with him.
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