George Carlin’s legacy of wit
George Carlin was brilliant. Carlin died in a Santa Monica hospital last night from heart failure. He was 71.
He could have been a philosopher and I suppose he really was, and through comedy he gained a much bigger audience. His routines about “stuff” and “the seven words you can’t say on TV” are legendary and still hilarious and awe inspiring today.
When Carlin’s recording of those seven words was aired on a New York radio station in 1978, it sparked a Supreme Court ruling upholding the U.S. government’s authority to sanction radio stations for broadcasting offensive language.
Carlin’s mellifluous and friendly voice made his strong and potentially polarizing political opinions easier to take. Some might have said he played God. And he came close! He played a Cardinal in the movie Dogma. He appeared in many movies and became a hero to millions of children as the narrator in the Thomas The Tank Engine series. He played Rufus, the wise advisor in the Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure movies. He was also a best-selling author. His Brain Droppings book, for one, offered a collection of little nuggets that revealed the mind of a truly thoughtful and bent individual! He was loved by comics and audiences alike.
Carlin was also a living example of loyalty and a stable personal life. He didn’t “go Hollywood.” He and his late wife, Brenda, were wed for decades until she became ill, and he tended her until her death in 1997. He remarried and is survived by his second wife, Sally. He also had a daughter.
Some classic Carlin-isms:
“You have to stay in shape. My mother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She’s 97 now and we have no idea where she is.”
“Where do forest rangers go, to ‘get away from it all’?”
“Recent polls reveal that some people have never been polled. Until recently.”
RIP George.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Absolutely +1 to everything said Lisa!
R.I.P. George! You’ll be missed but never forgotten!