George Carlin is great.
Carlin is a cool guy. I can’t illuminate or recap his career any better than anyone else, but I think his material is funny and it holds up.
I listened to his inappropriate jokes with my approving parents. I missed most of the bite from the sex references and as a kid I remember hating the joke, “beef in a brogan” but other than that I recognized good stuff. I acknowledge his self hating, Catholic upbringing, and his “New York” attitude as relatable qualities.
I liked his books, too.
What could he, or I, or anyone hate more than someone feeling all those things above and then saying, “Um, uh, George Carlin, was a funny guy, but, uh, not, uh a perfect…”
Now is the time to deify him because “comedian” doesn’t quite do him justice.
We can’t just call him a comedian and we can’t just use the term “painter” to describe the great Renaissance artists. *As the foreword of his somewhat autobiography claims.
This “somewhat autobiography” is what is buggin’ me man.
It’s good and informative, that’s not the problem. Its calling it a “somewhat autobiography” that bothers me. This actually epitomizes my beef with Carlin, the Beef in my Brogan so to speak.
Carlin didn’t want to publish an “autobiography” or a “memoir.”
These “autobiographies” and “memoirs” are written by corporate stooges, they are the self congratulating words of the man at the cost of real truth or meaning in that man’s life.
My problem is that this is too easy. It’s a shift of blame in a right to left, up or down way. Those bad words belong to the enemy.
Before I explain that rationale, let me put it simply: I want good examples of people doing good things, not another lecture on what to be afraid of. Show me a good autobiography Carlin. Come back from the dead, and own your memoirs. Please.
I AM afraid though. I am afraid that either Carlin himself or his contemporary fans of “boomer humor” actually believe his rhetoric word for word.
What I want to believe is that he is a liberal character, that the artist understands these such distinctions such as “memoir” versus “personal history” don’t define us or worse destroy us. These are useful analogies, road signs of possible trouble ahead. When we remember where others have fallen, we say, “Ok, I am not going to fall prey to my own ego, I will speak as truthfully as I can and corroborate my facts wherever possible.”
Instead, Carlin’s lessons seems like a sound byte, ironic epigrams. Like Oscar Wilde in reverse, Carlin criticizes the trappings of the bourgeoise instead of celebrating it. However, in both cases, the underlying message subverts the literal meaning of his words.
Yes, I understand that it doesn’t matter. If he believed what he said on stage, if he believed what he told his friends, if he believed what he told his family: it doesn’t really matter.
The work speaks for itself. The work is comedy. There is SUPPOSED to be subtext, stupid.
No, I am cutting through all those true things, and I want to believe that Carlin thinks like I think because he was a clever, funny, hardworking guy and I want to be those things, too.
I listen to George Carlin and I want others to listen to George Carlin, but I don’t want anymore people to miss his good points. Sex is good. War is bad. People are materialistic. People are mean, they don’t have to be.We worry about the wrong things. All these things, we already know. What we don’t know is how to address those things.
I think lots of people that “get” Carlin, are thinking in a literal way about his words. They are scared of words just like television censors used to be scared of ass. They are not afraid of cursing, they are afraid of memoirs.
