It’s a sad day in comedy. One of the most well known, hard hitting, counterculture comedians, George Carlin, died last night of heart failure at the age of 71. This was not the first time Carlin has, had heart trouble, he had a long history of it. On Sunday he check into St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica and died later that evening.
Carlin had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Vegas. He was known for being poignant and yet downright ridiculous all at the same time. From performing “Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV,” which he was arrested for in Milwaukkee in 1972 after saying all seven in a live show, to his appearance in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” he covered all the ranges of comedy. Over his lifetime he worked on 14 HBO specials, he won four Grammy’s for best spoken comedy album, was nominated for five Emmy’s, produced 23 comedy albums, wrote three books, a couple of TV shows, appeared in many films, and was about to receive the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
“He was a genius and I will miss him dearly,” Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s.
When the words “Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV” were later played in a radio station in NY in 1978, The Supreme Court stepped in and made a ruling “upholding the government’s authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.”
Carline later told the Associated Press: “So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of.”
Despite his reputation as unapologetically irreverent, Carlin was a television staple through the decades, serving as host of the “Saturday Night Live” debut in 1975 — noting on his Web site that he was “loaded on cocaine all week long” — and appearing some 130 times on “The Tonight Show.”
Carline fought his entire life for freedom of speech and the freedom from the fear that people have of their own bodies.
“The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things — bad language and whatever — it’s all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition,” Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. “There’s an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. … It’s reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have.”
His comedy, attitude, and educated yet offbeat humor will be missed.
Here is a video of George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV.”
Photo by Mister Scratch
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1 Matt // Jun 23, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Definelty a legend in comedy, his wit and wisdom will be sorely missed.
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