Death From Above 2008, or The Guy Also Swears

So, farewell then, George Carlin. The world's a poorer place without the guy; it's a pity he'll be remembered more for his crudity than his comedy per se. This isn't to say that crudity is a bad thing, or even an unfunny thing; some of the finest comedians of our time had their heads firmly in the gutter. It's just that Carlin will be better known for saying "shit" and "tits", than the way he used "shit" and "tits", which was a hilarious slap at censorship and American prudery, as well as a glee-filled use of the words in an almost poetic, musical way. As it is, he'll be defined as "edgy" and "controversial" by the news, which is the word used by our fair media to describe anything on television not wearing pastels and talking about property prices. Motherfucking Skins, which was about as original and interesting as a paperclip, was considered "edgy" by the media, for fuck's sake, which just tells you how denuded their limited imaginations are. George Carlin will just be remembered as That Guy Who Swore, or perhaps That Atheist Guy, instead of a funny, warm man driven to despair by the world he had to experience. In a word, he was excellent.

As if to prove my prediction, in comes James Lileks before the body's even cold. Lileks is a Minnesotan journalist who lives in a world where it is perennially 1955; before the Soviets challenged American superiority with Sputnik, before the Negroes got uppity, before Watergate, Vietnam, and dirty, smelly hippies. Before America Fell. This is hyperbole, but only slightly. In anyone else his relentless categorising of the cultural minutiae of the mid-20th century would be a cheerful quirk, an interesting peccadillo, even a way to break the ice with guests. With Lileks, you get the feeling it seems to be no less than stockpiling ordinance for the Coming Cultural War. And of course, like any good conservative, he gets off a quick spotting round at the present every now and then, in a cheerful, laconically Minnesotan way.

In any case, after a slight ramble into what Carlin was all about, Lileks gets to the meat of his own obituary, having hinted around it by talking about Carlin's later years as "the preachy, self-important Teller of Truths who eventually traded comedy for Social Commentary, and always seemed about one blow on the head away from reading Warren Commission transcripts on stage." Lileks continues:

Some projection there, perhaps. I never heard Carlin be as hard on himself as he was on his favorite strawmen. That wasn’t his job, of course, and you can’t fault him for the routines he didn’t do. But the more you confront and accept your own human faults the less outrage you find in the small mishaps of others, and I never got the feeling Carlin spent a lot of time interrogating his own character with the same confident derision he brought to things much greater than himself. As I said, I listen to a lot of comics on the satellite channel; half are banal and profane and occasionally funny, a few are Angry Critics whose words shrivel and die without the hoots and whoops of the audience - and then, every so often, you get the blessed ration of Mitch Hedberg - stoned, goofy, sweet, doomed, and insanely hilarious.

It's charitable that Lileks doesn't fault him for the routines he didn't do; the airline food seam, or the self-depreciating fat joke seam, are rich ones I assume Lileks still wants mined. But note that tone of opprobrium. Carlin, especially in his later years, wasn't "self-aware", he was an "Angry Critic", he attacked "things much greater than himself". The inference is one of cool disapproval to Carlin attacking his bete noirs - American culture, censorship, religion - that we get the internal monologue running through Lileks; "Sure he was funny, but he can't attack that, it's a cornerstone of our society. It's what we believe in. If Carlin would just look at himself, see himself how I see him, maybe get a haircut and a tie and a good job somewhere in Des Moines, he'd see what's so good about America. He'd stop being so angry, if he were more like us." (You'll note this is also the standard conservative public policy proposal for the poor, gay, black and female) At the end of it, Carlin is attacking the same things which give Lileks his security myth, and he doesn't like it when it's taken away for washing.

Lileks is sad, of course, as us humans are when someone we can relate to dies. But a part of him is relieved, an ugly little part of him that can't be hidden by Midwestern charm and good writing skills. Social Commentary, after all, isn't very hip.