If George Carlin is standing before the Pearly Gates, he's going to be upset. And St. Peter is going to hear all about it. Carlin died Sunday at the age of 71.
Carlin was a realist, living in the here and now with little regard for false promises and, for him, that included religion.
His talent -- a gift for us and perhaps a curse for him -- was the ability to see the absurdities of life clearly and speak them back to us in simple language. Carlin was a Progressive that believed we should be better people with higher ambitions and he never missed an opportunity to let us know when we failed to meet his expectations.
Carlin never gently poked fun at anyone. His monologues, always a brilliant mix of slow, thoughtful comments and rapid banter, were delivered like knives, intended to penetrate hard and deep. He was never content to simply pull back the curtain on society's ugliness. He turned a light on it and examined it blemish by blemish.
Carlin began his career giving us innocent observations on life and characters such as Al Sleet, the Hippy Dippy Weather Man. But underneath it all was a guy who realized “I was entertaining the fathers and the mothers of the people I sympathized with, and in some cases associated with, and whose point of view I shared. ... I was a traitor, in so many words. I was living a lie.”
In blue jeans and a t-shirt, Carlin was reborn as the radical comic voice of a new generation. And as that generation aged, he continued the rebellion and never let us forget what we had been fighting for.
As he got older, Carlin did not mellow. He continued his attacks on society and the things he thought were absurd.
George Carlin was always a gut check for those of us who aged along with him. He knew that people were always more important than Volvos and he let us know when our priorities were out of line.
George's vision for us was greater than the standards we set for ourselves. If his humor was laced with anger, it was because he was disappointed that so many of us placed a higher value on property than living peacefully with one another.
An important American voice has been lost, but because it lives on in print, audio and video, it can never be silenced. It would do us well to go back from time to time and review what he had to say about us and see if we learned anything from his wisdom.
-- Jim Grinstead
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