Rethinking George Carlin

A history of not too long ago

Comedy, Jordan Peterson tells us, is the canary in the coal mine. Comedy, that is, the comics, are a harbinger of things to come. They can talk about ideas before those ideas become a thing. The canary, harbingers of toxic air, warn miners of the toxins in the mine, by dying. 

Comedy is dying. 

George Carlin was a harbinger. The cynic of cynics, the commentator on the human condition as we know it in America, the nag of presidents and billionaires, with his rough edged voice, he harangued us all, left, right, liberal, conservative, no one was untouched. Carlin, two years before 9/11, did a bit on airport security that describes perfectly what it was, then, and the exaggeration it has become now. And how it was bull shit. Oh so prophetic, that, as those Saudi butchers gingerly walked through the airport with their box cutters tucked away, because they knew the drill, just as Carlin described it: Window dressing security. No one took it seriously, least of all the thugs.

Another bit had to do with germs, and our incessant fear of germs. And this is 20 years before the Covid. Ye gods in heaven, Carlin is surely turning over in his grave.

Unless, of course, he’s been cremated. 

Sometimes the cynicism boils over into the nastiness that reminds me of a bitter old man. Carlin looked old before his time. Because he was old in his mind. Was that because he saw through too much? Had he become worn down with the weight of the ridiculous?  If that is so, and had he lived, the toxins we put up with now would surely kill him. 

Carlin is best taken in small bites. Listening to him nag on, it became tiresome. I had to wonder, any Carlin fan would, how would George do his comedy today? Would he be cancelled? Or would he be woke? 

In 1999, he was the canary. But so what? No one changed their ways. Because with cynics it is the other guy that must change his ways. The scoffer is there to point out the flaws of others. The prophets warn us to change our ways. Few listen, and even fewer change their ways. No wonder prophets age quickly, and grow bitter.  

People need a direct call to action, and the leader to get them there. Besides, if we all did change our methods, what would the Carlins of this world do for a living? 

What really went on with Carlin? He got us to laugh at ourselves, at our own impotence. That’s the best of what comics do. Hold up that mirror which allows a good look of us, at our behaviors, and then we can laugh at those flaws. It releases tension. But does it motivate us to change? 

Back in the day, in old Athens of 2500 years ago, the playwright, Aristophanes, was good at poking fun at the leading citizens. But did it change them? Did Lysistrata end the wars? 

I’ve never known anyone changed by comedy. Changed by love, yes. Because love lasts, and laughter doesn’t. Love is an undertow that compels us to do better. Laughter, I repeat, releases tension. It is what people laugh at that gives us a clue to the condition we find ourselves in. Comedy can make us think.

Carlin the commentator told me something was amiss, but he could not quite put his finger on that thing, the amiss part. He edged around it, but there was no grabbing it. I played with the idea that part of that thing that is amiss, is him. Those were his demons he was obsessed with. That’s the common ground we all have with a favorite comic: we share the demons. The performance is an attempt at an exorcism. For the comic, and us.  

Your favorite comic says a lot about you. 

I didn’t laugh at everything Carlin commented on. That’s where he played the canary well, that part of him that was angry. Anger turns me away. Perhaps because I have moved on from those places. A lot of water has run under my bridge in 23 years. My anger has worn out, replaced by the will to take on the issues. In reassessing Carlin, I can see he made me think, and ask the why questions. 

Carlin’s canary sang about our ridiculous fears. That it was those fears that had fouled the air. And that we ough

t to smell the stench of our bull shit and then get out, before it’s too late. Before the fear chokes us, before we are dead, and do not know it. 

Live. That is what Carlin was saying. Live. 

Do it.