In Memoriam: George Carlin

We’ve lost yet another great talent of our generation. On Sunday, June 22, 2008, the popular and controversial stand-up comedian George Carlin passed away after suffering a sudden heart attack. He was 71 years old.

It’s doubtful that you hadn’t heard of George Carlin, whether you were a fan or not. His stand-up routines, featured in numerous HBO specials, were full of his views on politics, society, industry and of course, religion. But as controversial as they were (especially his religious views, where he constantly ripped on whether or not there really was a God or if we really needed Ten Commandments when only a couple would really do), they still made us laugh. Not only that, they made us think, proving that Carlin may very well have been the smartest man on the planet. At least in my opinion.

As many might know, he didn’t start out as we came to know him. When he began his career back in the “60s, he was as clean-cut and well-dressed as all the other comedians at the time, appearing on a number of variety shows, most notably the most famous of them all, “The Ed Sullivan Show”. He was also a regular on “The Tonight Show” during the late Johnny Carson”s thirty-year run. Like many comedians, he had a variety of on-stage personas, the most notable being Al Sleet, the “hippie-dippie weatherman”, proving even then he was giving us his views on society. Just in a more cleaned-up kind of way.

It wasn’t until he caught a performance of Lenny Bruce where the comedian was arrested for obscenity that Carlin changed into the man we knew him best as. Gone were the suits and clean-shaven face, and in their place was the beard and street clothes (which soon gave way to the all-black look that he became best known for). He also began include more social satire and foul language into his routines, which occasionally got him arrested but at the same time earned him more notoriety and bigger fanbase, becoming one of the greatest comedians of our time. It was after this transition that Carlin gave us his best routines, which include “A Place For Your Stuff”, “The Difference Between Football and Baseball”, his numerous “complaint” bits and the most famous of them all, “The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”, which was used as part of the famous Supreme Court case, “F.C.C. vs Pacifica Foundation”.