Yesterday's LA Times obit for George Carlin appropriately notes that his main claim to fame was his counter-culture "Seven Dirty Words" radio rap, that generated FCC and federal court proceedings and led to the "indecency" add-on to "Obscenity" jurisprudence. But in a way, the life of George Carlin saw, in him and others, the death of comedy. Carlin's childhood ambition was to become his generation's Danny Kaye. Anyone who saw his 60s routines could see the resemblance. Carlin was funny, expressive, creative and clean. "There'll be a massacre at the fort at 9 PM tonight; White Eagle will lead...."
Carlin even satirized the counter-culture he later embraced ("This is Al Sleet, your hippy-dippy weatherman...."). Which came, as the LA Times piece notes, after Carlin saw Lenny Bruce and had his cultural "epiphany." LB is hailed as a hero by today's politicized comics, but LB in reality killed comedy by vulgarizing it beyond redemption. Carlin, tragically, fell in line behind vulgar humor's pied piper. Not that political humor was always obscene. Mort Sahl was, famously, literate and funny; Jackie Mason is both, today--one of few stars who are not "dead" in the sense of being terminally vulgar and hyper-politicized, as Carlin became and too many are today. Even LB could be non-profane funny, as in his famous "Father Flotsky" routine on 1940s prison flicks, that was released on a comedy LP record. But LB debased comedy's culture, and dragged down much talent with him. We are all the losers. How many comedians or comics (as Milton Berle explained, a comedian "says things funny" while a comic "says funny things"--Carlin was both) are funny today? They are too busy making statements, or cracking serial obscenities, which no longer shock, and simply are not funny.
It is tragic that Carlin, an immense talent, will be best remembered by many people for an episode of mindless, serial vulgarity and the legal footnote he became, rather than for his talent. Thanks to his warped talents, and other LB acolytes, Comedy--in the old fashioned (and far better) sense, R.I.P.
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