The death of seven dirty words
Back in the
'70s, my friends and I used to enjoy the comedy of George Carlin, who
died of heart failure on Sunday, June 22. He was irreverent and
represented a lot of what we thought back then.
He started out as a coat and tie comedian in the '60s, appearing on such fair as The Ed Sullivan Show. He was not run-of-the-mill but he didn't really stand out either. One of the characters he would play in his routine was the Hippy Dippy Weatherman.
"Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark tonight, turning to partly light in the morning."

Fair warning: The content in the
links and text below may contain offensive language... which is what
made it all the more fun back in the
'70s.
The
weatherman was mildly amusing, and typified most of his early routines.
But in the '70s, Carlin shed his coat and tie and seemed to take on the
persona of the Hippy Dippy Weatherman --long hair and beard--except the
new weatherman was less wasted, was more socially opinionated and
conveyed a political consciousness that stood up to the establishment,
left or right. As a result, many of his routines were considered too
radical, and certainly too hardcore for main stream media. He critiqued
society, especially American society for it obsessions, such as its
fear
of germs: "In prison, before they give you a lethal
injection, they swab your arm with alcohol!" And he also pointed out
that eating unhealthily leads to overweight people: "Huge piles of redundant
protoplasm." He was over the top and his humor was very crude, usually
insulting large sectors of society while he was at it.
But above all, Carlin was a word-meister,
and he was most amusing when he talked about language and how some of
it is too politically correct or simply didn't make sense, like legally
drunk: "Well if its legal, what's the fuckin'
problem? Leave my friend alone, officer. He's legally drunk!" But he was
most famous for the Seven dirty words you can't say on TV: Shit,
piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits. He later added three
more: fart, turd and twat. He talked about the hypocrisy of these TV
standards. According to Carlin: Even kids know what a "fart" is--taking
a shit without the mess--but you couldn't use the word on TV. But you
could use the word "prick" because it was only a part-time dirty word;
you could prick your finger, just don't finger your prick.
His routines were not for the fainthearted or holier-than-thou crowd, but his humor, in many cases, was simply an expression of a lot of things we had thought of before with new twists, which is what made it so funny. Sadly, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in DC announced on June 18, four days before he died, that they would award Carlin the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in November. I'm sorry that this award will be awarded posthumously.
