Comedian George Carlin Dies In Los Angeles At 71

[SamuelKhan]

MOTHERFUCKER.

George Carlin was my first introduction to true standup comedy after Eddie Murphy (Delirious was required viewing at 11-14 when I was young), and I've never missed a standup special since. I was making shitty tape-recorder-up-to-the-scrambled-HBO-signal recordings long before DVD came out to listen in the car. He was also my sister's favorite.

He came to the town I'm living in about 4 years ago (just before the news story about his painkiller addiction came out) and held 2 shows back to back, the second one of which I made it to. It was the rawest, most hardcore shit I'd ever heard out of his mouth in my life and I was howling. He was still using notecards to test out the material and he was NOT a happy man (I'm assuming he was tired, because it was 9:00 at night and he'd already done the show less than 40 mintues earlier); At one point, there was a drunken heckler--because the venue served alcohol--who was giving incoherent accolades to him, and George snapped at him saying:

"Hey I don't need help motherfucker, your name's not on the ticket!"

The audience cheered, and on went the show. I'm just extremely unhappy that it all happened before his "It's Bad For Ya" show (his 15th HBO special) and his acceptance of the Mark Twain Award. The things he would have said on that show, I'll unfortunately never know.

Exactly

His funniest bit was about A Nice Day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16Rxys_uBsw&feature=related

 

[brianspencer66]

You know people think of Carlin as a counter culture comedian, but the fact is he was doing stand up long before there was a counter culture. In 1961 he had a role in the movie "Its a mad mad mad mad world" along with a laundry list of comedians from Sid Cesar to Jonathan Winters. I think when the counter culture came along he sort of adopted it and his career sort of took off.
I saw him live way back in the seventies as I saw Robert Klein another "Counter Culture" comic icon and I really did enjoy both perhaps Carlin a little more. Im really a little suprsied at this news, thanks again feather finger I really dont know how you always manage to beat everyone to this kind of news.

 

[chicago]

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[Artoo]

Here's something for the Thomas fans:
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lqfvEal6AHM&hl=en"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lqfvEal6AHM&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

I never realised he did Thomas...it was Ringo Starr who did it in the UK.
What a legend. He will be sorely missed...

 

[Sultrybrunette]

What a thing to wake up to this morning. I have been following his career for years. Absolutely loved the man and what he stood for. I would sit there watching him hysterically laughing but also shaking my head going...ya your right George. Talk about a black hole that will never be filled. Sitting here trying to imagine George at the Pearly Gates lol. Could you imagine the things he would tell them? lol If there is a heaven it sure as hell will never be the same again. RIP George

 

[Sammy Scales]

A good friend of mine who is also a comic called me with the news earlier tonight... He doesn't usually get emotional, but he did tonight... I have to admit, I was pretty torn up about Tim Russert last week... but this news was even worse... No comic had a better grasp of words, language, and slang and he was the most brilliant artist ever to watch in that realm... Many of his bits on religion really come to mind now as I think of him debating with St. Peter in front of the pearly gates on whether he really wants to float on a f%#@ing cloud!!!!! And I believe some more of the argument might go a little like this...

Religion convinced the world that there's an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there's 10 things he doesn't want you to do or else you'll go to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! ...And he needs money! He's all powerful, but he can't handle money!-George Carlin

Good night old man... You gave us one hell of a show!!!

 

[badreligion]

This is a sad day indeed

 

[Deleted member 66627]

Ugh.

My stomach is still in knots. You know that large group of people that are close to you that you perhaps wish above all else that the little "Death thing" doesn't apply to them?

Carlin was on my list.

I was never lucky enough (or old enough) to catch him live. But the man impacted regardless of if he was taped or in real time. The man spoke the truth and didn't give a damn who was offended. But, he did so in a way that is so obvious.. spoke of shit that happens ALL the time that we all as a society are too almost 'ignorant' to see.

When he pointed that shit out, you could almost hear the collective; "Ohhhhh yeahhhhhh I never thought about it like that!" through the audience.

He gave outspoken folks a mentor.
He gave tight assed folks an enemy.

He gave us all knowledge. Whether we wanted it or not.

Gonna miss ya, old man.

<img src="http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i42/8ax/George_Carlin.jpg" border="0" alt=></a>

The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other going in opposite directions.

- George Carlin

The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.

- George Carlin

The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept.

- George Carlin

And my personal favorite;

I don’t have pet peeves — I have major psychotic fucking hatreds!

- George Carlin

 

[venray]

"Shit piss fuck **** cocksucker motherfucker and tits......"

 

[falcon]

I was at work this morning when my sergeant came out and announced that he had just heard the news on the tv. I was in total shock and awe and still am. Much less, I was really bummed the rest of the night. I was fortunate enough to see him live a couple times here in Vegas when he was performing at Bally's. This was back in the mid-late 90's when I was stationed here. The man was simply amazing and, as CrystalLight said, spoke the truth and I believe he did so in a way that society was also too afraid to do it. It is a maddening sad day, indeed. The king has fallen. You will be greatly missed, GC!!

Here's my little GC tribute:
"Rat shit, bat shit, dirty old twat. Sixty-nine, asshole, tie it in a knot. Hurray! Lizard shit! Fuck!"

 

[Lauren Tyler]

I didn't know him that well, but I can still respect him for who he was and his unique style of comedy. Rest in Peace, George.

 

[Capnmad]

Just heard this morning. I miss him already...



"I love words. I thank you for hearing my words.

I want to tell you something about words that I think is important. They're my work, they're my play, they're my passion.

Words are all we have, really. We have thoughts but thoughts are fluid. Then we assign a word to a thought and we're stuck with that word for that thought, so be careful with words.

I like to think that the same words that hurt can heal, it is a matter of how you pick them.

There are some people that are not into all the words. There are some that would have you not use certain words. There are 400,000 words in the English language and there are 7 of them you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to 7. They must really be bad..."





...we've lost another genius, and a fellow lover of words.

 

[Dave2112]

George was far beyond simply being a comedian. What George Carlin managed to do was to take the inherent "funniness", the smooth way the world really flows when you strip all the bullshit off of it, and expose it so everyone could gain perspective in even the most controversial topics.

When I was about 13 or so, I received a copy of Class Clown (on vinyl, even)...and played it so much that I had to go get the cassette. It really changed the way I looked at a lot of things. or, more accurately given my age, helped cement what was already there.

This may come as a big shock to people...but I like to say "Fuck" a lot. Maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't....who gives a fuck? It's a damn punctuation mark for me half the time. That's Carlin. That's what I learned from him about the true meanings of words. How they can't hurt you. How the intent is all that matters.

Over the course of so many skits and bits, I gained a persepctive from George Carlin about how words can be weapons or bandages, friends or enemies. This perspective, while so seemingly small, helped formulate a philosophy that opened the doors to everything else. It launched my love for using words. It led to my desire to see underneath people's surfaces and into thier core selves.

George's political commentary was so fucking smooth....so grounded in reality, that even the most jaded could see the underlying simplicity in the most seemingly complex concepts.

And he made it all ...so....fucking.....funny. His delivery was perfect, his facial expressions flowing so easily from one to the next, and his voice....it was a tool he used to drive home a point or a punchline, often making the moment even funnier just by the nature of the way it reached your ears. He took an audience in....wait...no....he took each individual in to his world and befriended you....even when hitting you over the head with your own stupidity.

I'm still shocked. I just always thought George would be there. I'm just really...really...fucking bummed. I feel like I've lost a personal friend. George Carlin was more than a comedian to me, he was a personal icon of mine...one of maybe six or seven people who had a profound impact on my core philosophies. I just don't know what else to say....I'm really....fucking.....sad.

 

[slacker2114]

George Carlin holds a special place in my heart. He was the first stand-up act I ever saw on tv when I was about 12 or 13. The main bit of that particular stand-up was "A Place For My Stuff". Even then, I was blown away by how funny and insightful he was, even though at that time, I didn't know what being insightful meant. Ever since then, I've loved Carlin and really enjoyed stand-up shows in general.

Farewell, old friend. The darkness of your humor shed a lot of light for so many. If there really is a God, then I'm sure he can forgive you for the things you said about him for all the laughter and inspiration you brought to all of us. If there isn't a God, then you finally know that you were right all along.

You'll have to excuse me now. I need some time to reflect on all George taught me over the years.

 

[Sleepy Jean]

I remember my older sister coming home from her first semester at college for Thanksgiving. She had two LPs under her arm -- Carlin's "AM & FM" and "Class Clown." She said this was what everyone was listening to in the dormitories. I was blown out of the water. I had never heard anything so funny in my life. A stand-up comedian using language like that yet still making salient points about life and the human condition? I had not been a fan of stand-up comedy (think Ed Sullivan Show for those of you old enough) but this was something I could really sink my teeth into. I, my older brother and my younger sister wer practically cramping up with laughter. I'll miss you, Mr. Carlin.

 

[featherfingers]

Here's a more complete obituary I found just now:

Comedian George Carlin Dies

By Keming Kuo
Washington
23 June 2008


One of America's most popular and often controversial comedians, George Carlin, died in Santa Monica, California. He was 71.

From the early 1960's, through the beatnik, folk and hippie eras, to today's cutting edge humor, George Carlin has entertained generations of Americans. He starred in several movies, wrote a popular book, "Brain Droppings," appeared in several television series and was a guest 135 times on legendary talk show host Johnny Carson's Tonight show. But George Carlin will be best remembered as a wise and witty stand-up comedian.

George Carlin was born in New York City, the son of newspaper industry parents. His father was an advertising sales representative for several newspapers; his mother was a manager of the Philadelphia Bulletin's New York office, as well as Good Housekeeping magazine. During a 1999 visit to the National Press Club in Washington, Mr. Carlin recalled how his "Aunt Aggie," who produced the Sunday comics sections, helped him be the first boy to know what was in the newspaper - and a popular kid in school.

"Here's the great thing about Aggie's job. Not only did she bring home the funnies every week. She brought them home four weeks early," Carlin said. "Are you hearing this? Every week, I had the Sunday funnies a month before the other kids. I guess you can realize the power this gave me in the school yard -- to be able to predict weeks ahead of time precisely the way 'Mandrake the Magician' would escape from the lost cave. Or to describe in advance the details of whatever well-deserved catastrophe was next in store for 'Little Orphan Annie.' It doesn't sound like much today. But in the days before television, and when you're eight years old, it was power beyond belief!"

With that introduction to comedy, via cartoon strips, George Carlin said he was blessed with good schoolteachers in his early childhood.

"In the 1940s, I attended a school still in existence: Corpus Christi in New York City. It was not a typical Catholic grammar school education. For one thing, we had boys and girls together. We did not wear uniforms. The desks were all movable. And, there were no report cards - no grades or report cards of any kind. It was a garden; it was a place that let me flower," Carlin said.

But George Carlin's fortunes changed in high school. Its harsh disciplinary rules led him to drop out before graduating. He said that experience helped foster his contempt for euphemisms and being told what he could or could not say. In 1973, a monologue by Mr. Carlin that was broadcast on the Pacifica radio network was declared indecent by the government's Federal Communications Commission. The case was ultimately upheld by the United States Supreme Court. And, George Carlin became forever known as the comedian who uttered the "seven dirty words that can't be said over the air." Reflecting on the incident, more than 25 years later, Mr. Carlin wondered what the fuss was all about.

"There will always be language taboos in any culture. There are aspects of our bodies that certain religions have put beyond the pale. I don't think it's cheapened our discourse. I think it limits people," he said. "I've always said I enjoy using all the language. Human beings invented all of this language. When I was a little boy, I was told to look up to policemen and look up to sports stars, and look up to the military. And we all know how they speak. Apparently it hasn't corrupted them morally. So. I think these words are overrated for their power."

George Carlin's notoriety from the "seven dirty words" incident helped make him one of the highest-paid comedians in the 1970's. In the 1990's, Mr. Carlin starred in his own situation comedy, which lasted one season, and provided the voice of a train conductor in the children's series "Shining Time." But he told the Washington audience he was, most of all, a comedian - an art form of which he was proud.

"I found it was an honest craft and that art was involved," Carlin said. " I do like to point out that there is an artistic process involved in observing the world, interpreting it, and then writing something about it and performing it. It's the low end of the scale in art. Perhaps it's not fine art. But it is art. I found that out and it gave me a purpose and strength."

And here's another recent tribute:

George Carlin Mourned As Counterculture Hero

By KEITH ST. CLAIR, Associated Press Writer 8 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES - Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. Some People Are Stupid. Stuff. People I Can Do Without.

George Carlin, who died of heart failure Sunday at 71, leaves behind not only a series of memorable routines, but a legal legacy: His most celebrated monologue, a frantic, informed riff on those infamous seven words, led to a Supreme Court decision on broadcasting offensive language.

The counterculture hero's jokes also targeted things such as misplaced shame, religious hypocrisy and linguistic quirks — why, he once asked, do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

"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, told The Associated Press.

The actor Ben Stiller called Carlin "a hugely influential force in stand-up comedy. He had an amazing mind, and his humor was brave, and always challenging us to look at ourselves and question our belief systems, while being incredibly entertaining. He was one of the greats."

Carlin constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the "Seven Words" — all of which are taboo on broadcast TV to this day.

When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.

When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government's authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," he told The Associated Press earlier this year.

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."

He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a few TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" in 1989 — a testament to his range from cerebral satire and cultural commentary to downright silliness (sometimes hitting all points in one stroke).

"Why do they lock gas station bathrooms?" he once mused. "Are they afraid someone will clean them?"

In one of his most famous routines, Carlin railed against euphemisms he said have become so widespread that no one can simply "die."

"'Older' sounds a little better than 'old,' doesn't it?," he said. "Sounds like it might even last a little longer. ... I'm getting old. And it's OK. Because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won't have to die — I'll 'pass away.' Or I'll 'expire,' like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital they'll call it a 'terminal episode.' The insurance company will refer to it as 'negative patient care outcome.' And if it's the result of malpractice they'll say it was a 'therapeutic misadventure.'"

Carlin won four Grammy Awards for best spoken comedy album and was nominated for five Emmys. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.

"Nobody was funnier than George Carlin," said Judd Apatow, director of recent hit comedies such as "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." "I spent half my childhood in my room listening to his records experiencing pure joy. And he was as kind as he was funny."

Carlin started his career on the traditional nightclub circuit in a coat and tie, pairing with Burns to spoof TV game shows, news and movies. Perhaps in spite of the outlaw soul, "George was fairly conservative when I met him," said Burns, describing himself as the more left-leaning of the two. It was a degree of separation that would reverse when they came upon Lenny Bruce, the original shock comic, in the early '60s.

"We were working in Chicago, and we went to see Lenny, and we were both blown away," Burns said, recalling the moment as the beginning of the end for their collaboration if not their close friendship. "It was an epiphany for George. The comedy we were doing at the time wasn't exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction."

That direction would make Carlin as much a social commentator and philosopher as comedian, a position he would relish through the years.

"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."

Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, and grew up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, raised by a single mother. After dropping out of school in the ninth grade, he joined the Air Force in 1954. He received three court-martials and numerous disciplinary punishments, according to his official Web site.

While in the Air Force he started working as an off-base disc jockey at a radio station in Shreveport, La., and after receiving a general discharge in 1957, took an announcing job at WEZE in Boston.

"Fired after three months for driving mobile news van to New York to buy pot," his Web site says.

From there he went on to a job on the night shift as a deejay at a radio station in Fort Worth, Texas. Carlin also worked variety of temporary jobs, including carnival organist and marketing director for a peanut brittle.

In 1960, he left with $300 and Burns, a Texas radio buddy, for Hollywood to pursue a nightclub career as comedy team Burns & Carlin. His first break came just months later when the duo appeared on Jack Paar's "Tonight Show."

Carlin said he hoped to emulate his childhood hero, Danny Kaye, the kindly, rubber-faced comedian who ruled over the decade Carlin grew up in — the 1950s — with a clever but gentle humor reflective of the times.

It didn't work for him, and the pair broke up by 1962.

"I was doing superficial comedy entertaining people who didn't really care: Businessmen, people in nightclubs, conservative people. And I had been doing that for the better part of 10 years when it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong things for the wrong people," Carlin reflected recently as he prepared for his 14th HBO special, "It's Bad For Ya."

Eventually Carlin ditched the buttoned-up look for his trademark beard, ponytail and all-black attire.

But even with his decidedly adult-comedy bent, Carlin never lost his childlike sense of mischief, even voicing kid-friendly projects like episodes of the TV show "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends" and the spacey Volkswagen bus Fillmore in the 2006 Pixar hit "Cars."

Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997. He is survived by wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin.

 

[the wiz]

A great advocate for common sense has left us; the world already seems worst off for it. 🙁

 

[Redmage]

We've lost a legendary intellect disguised as a comedian.

 

[the wiz]

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[Soda Bobinski]

Dammit.

I just logged online & saw this terrible news ... this really , really blows.

Like a lot of you , I don't get truly upset when a celebrity dies ... I'm not personally affected by it ... but this is different.

Not only was George Carlin one of the funniest "motherfuckers" I've ever seen/heard , but he was also someone I looked up to in regards of being able to call people on all their ( collective ) bullshit. His material on pop culture , religion , politics , race , society , etc. ... all made sense to me. He was able to put into words all the shit I think , but w/a brilliance & eloquence ( & obviously humor ) that I never could have. He transcended mere comedy & became somewhat of a great philosopher to me.

I think for a lot of us , George Carlin was 'a voice' ... a voice that pointed out all our little inane bullshit ... a voice for common sense ... a voice that was able to articulate all of the wrong we see & experience but maybe aren't quite sure just how to speak out against it.

I know it might seem just a tad melodramatic , but I feel that a big part of 'my voice' has just been silenced.

Mr. Carlin ... George ... I am really ... really ... gonna miss you.

 

[baldadonis]

George Carlin was my absolute favorite comedian, but beyond that he was an icon, a visionary who saw all the stupidities, eccentricities, foibles and inconsistencies of the human condition, specifically the American human condition.

He was brilliant at saying the things about life that we all subconsciously know to be true, but we don't think about, much less say, because they are too outrageous and unpleasant to hear. Carlin said those things and certainly didn't care that they were unpleasant.

He loved unpleasant. He was entropy fan he said on more than one occasion, reveling in the eventual decline and breakdown of all things. His material was a good reminder of how ridiculous this life and the people on it can be at times, so look at things from a broader perspective and have a laugh while you're here.

When I'm listening to my ipod, whenever I feel like a laugh, my first instinct has always been to put on George Carlin. I know his routines almost inside and out. Carlin was probably the single biggest influence on my own sense of humor. I never met the man, but I feel like I have lost a friend and one of my favorite voices to hear when I need a laugh.

 

[Ivory Tickler]

The world is going down the tubes...

The world is going down the tubes....

<i>"Down the tubes -- hear that one a lot. People say, 'Ah, the country is going down the tubes.'

What tubes? Have you seen any tubes? Where are these tubes? And where do they go? And how come there's more than one tube?

It would seem to me, one country, one tube. But is every state all of a sudden have to have its own tube now? One tube is all you need. But a tube that big? Somebody would have seen it by now."</i>


(just needed to add one more to this post)

 

[Bugman]

I have not read the entire thread but i'm sure anything i could say would be repetious so i'll leave it at this.RIP George.🙁

 

[SlaverTickler]

When I heard this little ditty I was rolling on the floor... literaly!

Ta-rara Boom Tee-A
Did you get your's today
I got mine yesterday
Thats why I walk this way.

I heard that and I just siddenly exploded and fell off the couch, my friend had to pause the video tape (yep it was that long ago) and busted up watching me busting up over that bit.

I'll miss him he was the man.

 

[mabus]

Here's an excellent article posted on Reason.com:

The Cunning Linguist
Remembering George Carlin's literary genius

Every obituary for George Carlin will cite his "Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV" routine in the first paragraph, if not the first sentence. The monologue led to Carlin's arrest and a 1978 Supreme Court obscenity case. (Carlin admitted that he was "perversely...proud of" the federal legal drama that his dirty words caused.)

But Carlin's comedy was not simply about dirty words; it was about the English language, and our collective fear of it. He used more expletives than Howard Stern, but his obsession was linguistics, not lasciviousness. As Carlin told CNN in 2004, "f I hadn't chosen the career of being a performer, I think linguistics would have been a natural area that I'd have loved-to teach it, probably...Language has always fascinated me."

He was especially fascinated with the blunting of language for comfort's sake. Carlin ridiculed our watering-down of sexual descriptions and ethnic categories, not to mention our mourning clichés, all of which he believed were the real-life manifestations of George Orwell's "Newspeak," utilized to obscure reality, numb the mind, and discourage criticism. As much as Carlin loathed theology, war, greed, and hypersensitivity, he was most disgusted when religous puritans, the military, corporations, and P.C. "classroom liberals" mangled the language for the purpose of soothing the masses. When I saw Carlin perform in the ‘90s, the biggest laugh of the night came from his observation that "the unlikely event of a water landing," discussed in every preflight safety lecture, sounds suspiciously like "crashing into the fucking ocean."

In fact, Carlin was disgusted with the mangling of English for any reason. He hated anyone who pronounced forte as "for-tay," insisted that "no comment is a comment," and advised us that "unique needs no modifier; very unique, quite unique, more unique, real unique, fairly unique, and extremely unique are wrong and they mark you as dumb, although certainly not unique." For all of his lifelong ranting against conservatism, Carlin was a diehard traditionalist when it came to grammar and vocabulary.

This mastery of the language allowed Carlin to craft his puns ("Soft rock music isn't rock, and it ain't music...it's just soft," "I thought it would be nice to get a job at a duty-free shop, but it doesn't sound like there's a whole lot to do in a place like that"), but also gave him the ability to see how we pad our existences with pleasant lies. In Carlin's mind, language should not be safe, and neither should life. Children, he argued in his final HBO special, this year's It's Bad for Ya, should play with sticks, not have "play dates" under the ever-watchful eyes of overprotective, micro-managing parents. (He had previously complained, with his trademark growl, "We've taken all the fun out of childhood just in the interest of saving a few lives.")

Near the end of his career, Carlin was more bitter than funny—It's Bad for Ya is a righteous tirade that provokes more nods than laughs—but he never lost his unparalleled ability to play with words. He deconstructed the phrases that we use absentmindedly, exposing our hypocrisies—and our human condition—in the process. He was a comic genius because he was a linguistic master. As Carlin said in his most famous routine: "I thank you for hearing my words... They're my work, they're my play, they're my passion. Words are all we have, really."

Marty Beckerman is the author of Dumbocracy, which will be released this September. His website is www.MartyBeckerman.com