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Aside from Lenny Bruce, George Carlin is without a doubt one of the most gifted and controversial stand-up comedians and political and social commentators in the modern cultural history of the US. His wit, delivered with Irish impishness, is simply unique in its ability to zero in on the myriad absurdities punctuating everyday American life. Fact is, as the Wiki puts it, "Carlin openly communicates in his shows and in his interviews that his purpose for existence is entertainment, that he is 'here for the show'. Unrepentant, he acknowledges that this is a very selfish thing, especially since he includes large human catastrophes as entertainment.
In a late-1990s interview with Art Bell, he remarked about his view of human life: "I think we're already 'circling the drain' as a species, and I'd love to see the circles get a little faster and a little shorter."
In the same interview, he recounts his experience of a California earthquake in the early-1970s as: "...an amusement park ride. Really, I mean it's such a wonderful thing to realize that you have absolutely no control... and to see the dresser move across the bedroom floor unassisted... is just exciting." Later he summarizes: "I really think there's great human drama in destruction and nature unleashed and I don't get enough of it."
A routine in Carlin's 1999 HBO special You Are All Diseased focusing on airport security leads up to the statement: "Take a fucking chance! Put a little fun in your life! ... most Americans are soft and frightened and unimaginative and they don't realize there's such a thing as dangerous fun, and they certainly don't recognize a good show when they see one."
What appears to some as the prototypical outbursts of a nihilist, are... in actuality... the pained cries of a badly disappointed humanist constantly on the edge of total misanthropy...
Carlin has always included politics as part of his material (along with the wordplay and sex jokes), but by the mid-1980s had become a strident and perceptive social critic, in both his HBO specials and the book compilations of his material. His HBO viewers got an especially sharp taste of this in his take on the Ronald Reagan administration during the 1988 special What Am I Doing In New Jersey? broadcast live from the Park Theatre in Union City, New Jersey.
Carlin, always the rebel, the irrepressible nonconformist in a society where to passively conform is to be complicit in a large catalog of wrongs, crimes, and idiocies, ranging from wholesale mendacity to imperial wars, has gone, true to form, against the current. Thus, while most ordinary souls travel rightward as they acquire more property, Carlin has cheerfully and defiantly traveled left. Now 70, with his sharp wit as cutting and on target as ever, he continues to tell it like it is, cutting through the thick layers of national bullshit as some form of high-octane nuclear laser. He has important warnings to communicate, warnings that we should take to heart, once we stop laughing, that is. He probably wouldn't have it any other way.
George Carlin is a rare national treasure. It's good to know that he's around.
—Patrice Greanville
Note: This video clip is an excerpt from George's latest album: LIFE IS WORTH LOSING (an HBO special).