Comic genius

John Merli
Published: June 26, 2008

The last time I paid to see George Carlin as a stand-up comic, he was not particularly funny. Nor, I suspect, did he really mean to be. That, admittedly, is an odd attitude for a professional comedian, but
Carlin, who died Sunday at the rather tender age of 71, was hardly your typical entertainer. Some of us remember the first George Carlin rather well — the clean-cut, all-American wise guy. (“Weather in a
word before sunrise? Dark!”… “Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?”) Funny stuff. Funny then and still kind of funny now.

But the last time I saw the former hippy-dippy weatherman in person was a few years ago in Las Vegas, and I’m not sure the audience really laughed once in his entire 45-minute stand up. From what I’d
read since his death this week, he may have oddly gotten some satisfaction out of that. It seems he grew to distain nightclubs and nightclub audiences, and I can only presume that may have extended
to Las Vegas. (Why did he keep playing there? Money, I suspect.) College kids and other young people were his favorite crowds, because when he spoke about current events, they had a clue what he
was talking about.

What he did that night in Vegas was more or less preach about politics and social ills, about starvation and guns and even bathing (“you really don’t have to bathe every day, you know”), similar to some
mildly charismatic college professor who gets slightly off-course from the curriculum, much to the amusement of his class.

But Carlin was different, too. Although some of his routines were often acerbic and always insightful on the nature of human foibles (if not particularly funny, per se) he did use the English language — the
logical placement of words and the words themselves — as a skillful weapon to reek havoc on his enemies, real or imagined. (He partook of drugs for a while in the Seventies.) His most famous encounter
with both the federal government and the law itself (leading to some local arrests) centered on his “Seven Words” campaign, which also drew a ton of international publicity that most entertainers would kill
for.

This odd little chapter of show business history did much more, however; it actually stimulated hundreds, maybe thousands, of discussions in schools and at the office cooler (and the media at-large) over
the impact that words and phrases have on society and the human condition. Sticks and stones, indeed. Words can harm, apparently.

There is perhaps also something to say for Carlin’s longevity, as well, especially in the Seven Words controversy. More than three decades later, those seven infamous words continue to be banned on all
public airwaves licensed to broadcasters — despite their frequent usage (by Carlin, too) on the unregulated channels of cable and satellite companies. In fact, cable has always tried to distinguish itself
from broadcast stations by the mere fact that it does not censor its players.

While talented past and present comedic observers like Robert Klein, Bill Cosby, Mort Sahl, Stiller & Mirra, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and Alan King (albeit, very different types of artists) all had little
choice but to evolve in their humor through the socially turbulent ‘60s and ‘70s, none took their transformations to such extremes as Carlin, who seemed to relish in presenting a new persona to the public
every decade or so: the fresh, crew-cut hipster of the ‘60s; the bearded, anti-establishment hippy of the ‘70s and the gray-beard, ponytailed, socially attuned man-in-black of the ‘80s, ‘90s and now.

Across those particularly momentous decades of the past 40 years, which witnessed some of the most wrenching, game-changing events in our history, George Carlin used his obvious intellect and
superior command of the English language to make us (at least briefly) consider the ironic, sometimes funny, often tragic, bittersweet sides of peace and war, of race and gender, of presidents and
governments not worthy of us, of the lunacy that frequently surrounds us that we otherwise may not notice — and to help us consider a world where Carlin saw the irony first and then shared it with the
rest of us.

John Merli has been a Potomac News columnist since 1985. E-mail him at .