Man, when I heard for this, I almost started to cry. It happened this past Monday when the news came on that George Carlin, at the age of seventy-one, died from heart failure. It’s an end of an era, the man who stood up to conservatives and spoke his mind. George Carlin broke all kinds of barriers throughout his career, using his wit and knowledge taught from an early age. He was the man that kept the torch that Lenny Bruce started in the mid 1950’s, and soldiered on with it till his death. Without him, there would be no Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Steven Wright, Mitch Hedberg, and the list goes on. Almost at the beginning of birth, Carlin was deemed to make some noise. He was born on May 12, 1937 in Manhattan, New York. He grew up in a neighborhood called Morningside Heights, which the resides called in short “White Harlem”, because it sounded tougher. Carlin grew up in a Roman Catholic environment, which he was of Irish decent, and was raised mostly by his mother due to his father leaving the both of them when he was two years old. As a child, Carlin was exposed to the reality of life, as he noted what his grandfather would tell him, “I’m going upstairs to fuck your grandmother.” He said the reason behind it was that his grandfather was an honest man and wasn’t going to bullshit a four year old. Also, Carlin was a trouble maker in his youth. While in Junior High, he got expelled for selling a kid pieces of erasers and telling him it was heroin. Carlin was expelled and would end up jumping from school to school until dropping out at seventeen to join the Air Force. There, he studied to be a Radar Technician, and also was a disc jockey for a local radio station where he was stationed at nearby Shreveport, LA. After three years of service, Carlin was discharged for being an “unproductive airman” by his superiors. In 1959, he met Jack Burns and the two of them became a comedy team while both were working at a radio station in Fort Worth, TX. Performing around the city, the two captured huge success at a local beat coffeehouse called The Cellar. Then, in 1960, Carlin and Burns decided to move to California to gain a wider audience. They made an audition tape for the radio station in Hollywood called The Wright Brothers, and ended up getting a spot on the station for three months. As the two worked at the station, they worked on their material by performing at local beatnik coffeehouse in the area. With their popularity increasing, Carlin and Burns recorded an album called Live at the Playboy Club Tonight. The two would continue to perform together for two more years until parting ways. During his touring, Carlin would meet his wife Brenda Hosbrook. They would end up getting married in 1961, and in 1963 his daughter and only child, Kelly, was born. In the 1960’s saw Carlin becoming a popular comic, appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show, and on the comedy show Away We Go. In 1967, he would record his first comedy album, Take Offs and Put Ons. Also, during this time Carlin sported a more conservative look, wearing suits and keeping clean cut. It wasn’t until a performance in Las Vegas in 1969 where Carlin began to cuss at the audience, which consisted of older people and wealthy business people. It was here that a turning point came to Carlin’s future performance as a comic. In the following year, Carlin began sporting a beard and wearing faded jeans in place of the suits, which resulted in losing some TV bookings. His performance on The Ed Sullivan Show in the early 1970’s entitled “Hair Piece”, showed renewed popularity and would set track to what was to come. In 1972, Carlin would shock the airwaves by releasing his album Class Clown, which featured his famous skit, Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television. While performing in Milwaukee, he was arrested for violating the obscenity laws that resulted in a dismissal for causing no disturbance. This caused Carlin’s skit to be broadcasted on the radio in the afternoon, where a father of a child complained to the FCC about his son hearing it. The Supreme Court upheld the action by the FCC with a vote of five to four, that the routine was indecent but not obscene, so as a result the broadcast of the skit was to times when children were not asleep. The controversy would lead to a Supreme Court case in 1978, FCC vs. Pacifica Foundation, to challenged the seven words that were considered obscene. It would result in the words still being obscene, but Carlin’s popularity mushroomed in the 1970’s. He would appear in the first episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975 as their host, and in 1976 and 1977 would appear regularly on the variety show Tony Orlando & Dawn. In 1982 and 1983, Carlin would perform at Carnegie Hall that would result in an HBO special, Carlin at Carnegie. As his popularity was still rising, Carlin began to appear in numerous movies. His breakout hit came in 1987 with the movie Outrageous Fortune and in the same year would appear in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The 1990’s also saw Carlin appear in children shows such as Shining Time Station as the conductor from 1991 to 1993
, narrating on the show Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends until 1998, and appearing in the TV special Mr. Conductor’s Thomas Tales in 1996. Also, Carlin would appear in movies such as the sequel to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey in 1991 and in the same year Prince of Tides. Against his wishes, Carlin would host a sitcom series The George Carlin Show, appearing as a taxi driver named George O’Grady. The show ran twenty-seven episodes in 1994 until it was cancelled after the first season was over. In 1997, Carlin would release his first book, Brain Droppings, which became an immediate best seller in that year and would continue to sell in the years to come. However, it was also a year when his wife, Brenda, would die from liver cancer just before his sixtieth birthday. It would be in 1998 when Carlin remarried to Sally Wade. The tale end of the 1990’s would feature Carlin in two Kevin Smith movies Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and in Dogma played a Roman Catholic Priest. In 2001, Carlin received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 15th Annual American Comedy Awards, and in 2003 would appear in another Kevin Smith movie, Jersey Girl. But in 2004, Carlin would again have problems in Las Vegas, when he got fired from his headlining position at the MGM Grand Hotel after an altercation with the audience. His set was poorly received by the audience, due to the content he was talking about that included suicide bombings and beheadings. Then, after being fired, Carlin said he couldn’t wait to “get out of this fucking hotel”, and began to insult people that go to Las Vegas just giving their money to the corporations that run it. Afterward, Carlin would enter in rehab for his alcoholism and addiction to pain killers. In 2006 saw Carlin going back into the children’s shows with the movie Cars, doing the voice of VW motorbus hippie. In 2008, he would appear in his last HBO special called It’s Bad for Ya, which featured topics on American Bullshit, Death, Old Age, and Child Rearing. Then, four days before his death, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC announced Carlin as a nominee for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. After his death, the committee talked to the Carlin family that he will be receiving the award, making it the first posthumous recipient. The legacy that George Carlin opposed on pop culture was that of different views. Some say he was too offensive on putting his point across, or he was the one responsible for opening the floodgates for profanity on the television, books, music, and even in some newspapers. I can see this being true, but I always saw how the language was being used. To me, George Carlin brought a new form of comedy, talking about society’s flaws and even at times addressing them through his skits, which was never been done before with the exception of Lenny Bruce. However, the difference between Carlin and Bruce was that Carlin was able to relate to an audience much better than Bruce, whom seem to insult just about everyone. Also, Carlin challenged conservative politics by simply revealing them, to show how dumb society can be. His religious views I wouldn’t agree upon, however, that was his opinion.
