Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television
C June 25, 2008

In Memory of George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Fortunately, I’m not on TV…

Shit. George Carlin is dead. And after I had been so looking forward to news of his next album. But what this famous comedian and troublemaker will be best remembered for, more so than his black suits and pony tails, more so even than cynical and perverse views on humanity, is his simple penchant for biting observational humor that made everyone and everything a victim. More than anything else, Carlin liked to examine the ways we behave as human beings and point out how little sense it really made.

Take, for example, his “Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television” routine, probably his most famous routine, which was meant to severely Piss off the gentle sensibilities of the day, and does a good job of it even today. In July of 1972, he was actually arrested at Summerfest in Milwaukee for using indecent language in front of wheelchair-bound children. The next year, a radio station attempts to play the “filthy words” bit during a daytime show and is subsequently punished by the FCC. The station next took the FCC to court, a case which would take five years and go all the way to the Supreme Court, eventually leading to a national ruling that allowed the FCC to prevent certain words from being said on air during the daytime when children might be listening. Carlin later said he was “perversely kind of proud” to be a footnote in American legal history, despite a big “Fuck you” delivered by the Supreme Court which seemed to contradict the very essence of his sketch.

“There are 400,000 words in the English language,” wrote Carlin, “ and there are seven of them that you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven. Bad words. That's what they told us they were, remember? 'That's a bad word.' 'Awwww.' There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad Intentions. No bad words.

 Perhaps it was this, his reasoned approach to topics others consider inapproachable, that made him such a good comedian, but that gave him so much difficulty in early life. Though it is difficult, knowing the man he became, to imagine him wearing a Cunt-cap and carrying a rifle, Carlin actually did spend some time in the United States Air Force, for which he proudly received three courts martial and numerous Article 15 citations. However, it’s clear his attitudes had been formed long before that, for on the very same 1972 Class Clown album in which he stirred up his seven words, he also bragged of his upbringing in a Catholic school in which the principal was interested in concepts of higher education so that “by sophomore year many of us had lost the faith, because they made questioners out of us and they really didn’t have any answers.”

Hence religion would become another very important subject for which he had numerous dealings, including claiming to worship the sun but pray to Joe Peschi, because he looks like a guy who can get things done. Many are surprised to know that Peschi and Carlin actually did have a close relationship (professionally, and not of the Cocksucker variety), as did most every other comedian and celebrity he met in the course of doing business.

Another very good friend of Carlin’s, Jack Burns, with whom Carlin initially began his comedy career, often spoke fondly of Carlin even after the two parted amicably in March of 1962. Interestingly, Burns always regarded Carlin as the more conservative of the two, that is until the two happened to see Lenny Bruce. When present at Bruce’s famous arrest for indecency, Carlin refused to give his identification to the police and was subsequently detained with Bruce in the same vehicle. It is therefore appropriate that Carlin would place just ahead of his mentor Bruce on Comedy Central’s list of top 100 comics of all time, in which he placed a daunting second, just behind Richard Pryor.

And yet in many ways, despite a lifelong drug problem and numerous professional hurdles, Carlin never entirely shook his conservative roots. Being the man he was, I would like to think Carlin would have proudly agreed with being a Motherfucker, that is, one who literally has sex with a woman who cares for a child, because of his thirty-six year marriage to one woman with whom they raised a baby girl. Carlin has stated that he has very few regrets in life, being well pleased with most of his old material, but confessed that if he could change on thing it would be the extent to which his drug use affected his daughter. On Carlin’s official website he writes “Thirty-six great years together even with all the shit we put ourselves through in the 70’s. See ya, Dink. Miss you a lot.”

Though Carlin frequently spoke of how he felt humanity was circling the drain as a species, his inability to believe in an invisible man with a list of ten things he does not want you to do, and his general love of entropy, he never really discussed his deepest beliefs. This final message to his belated wife, I believe, gives a look into a Carlin the rest of the world might never see, and shows once and for all that if there is a hereafter to go to, Carlin is most certainly there now.

Comedian George Denis Patrick Carlin, May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008, will long be remembered as a comedian, a poet, a movie star and voice actor, and an influence to a new generation of comedians including Lewis Black, Bill Mahr and Jerry Seinfield. If he is to be remembered, let it be for his favorite pastime which was vulgarity in all its forms, and for his first love: Tits.