Remembering George Carlin
Mark Palermo
 I was thinking back over the
past summer and the death of comedian
George Carlin. In the 1960’s, I
first heard Carlin’s routine,
“Seven Words You Aren’t Allowed
to Say on Television,” and I
considered it boring and infantile.
Carlin broke the barrier against cursing
on television, which unfortunately
contributed to the potty-mouthed
coarseness and lowered standards that are
now commonplace. I have mixed feelings
about Carlin; he was crude and vulgar,
but now I realize he was so much more.
I changed my opinion of Carlin, and the
way it happened was mysterious- as it
always is when the presence of the
unconscious mind emerges to reveal the
impostor inside me and you, the place
where all our visions meet. The
unconscious is a great trickster and
manipulator of human beings, especially
those smug humans who, in their egotism,
think they have their world under
control. (If you want to make God laugh,
tell him your plans for the future.)
But back to Carlin. I was in the
Haver-hill library when I spotted a
George Car-lin CD on the shelf. I took it
on impulse, although I had never borrowed
a comedy CD in my entire life. Two days
later, driving to Boston, I put it on,
not expect-ing much. But I was surprised
to find my-self laughing out loud, and I
realized then how funny the guy is.
I got home later, had supper and went to
my office to check my email. The first
thing that came up was “George
Carlin, dead at 71.” Carlin had been
in show business for 50 years, yet I
discovered him the day he died.
The unconscious mind doesn’t speak
in words, but rather in dreams,
intuitions, visions, memories, and
meaningful -amazing-coincidences, which
C.G. Jung termed synchronicity, one of
the pillars of his life’s work. I
have been loaded down lately, and I had
asked the Higher Power to show me how to
carry the burdens of life more
gracefully. And on the road to Boston, I
received my answer.
I laughed so much at Carlin’s jokes,
I could actually feel the endorphin
hormo-nes releasing in my bloodstream. I
felt lighter. How could I have not
thought of it before? I made the decision
then to seek laughter every day, even
when there appears nothing to laugh
about; not to seek to become a child
again, but to cul-tivate humor in the
face of all the storms of life. Carlin
swore a lot in his perfor-mances, and it’s
too bad that for some, his name is
associated with cursing.
Nowadays, of course, almost all comedians
overdo it. The problem with excessive
cursing is that the public always
requires a “rougher grade of
sandpaper” to be en-tertained. With
vulgarity, a little can go a long way,
but maybe some people need rough
sandpaper to blow off the world’s
contradictions. Carlin was so intelligent
and clear thinking, his performances so
loaded with underlying truth and
resona-nce that the curse words were only
secon-dary component of his absurdist
humor.
Carlin became more relevant as an old
man, and continued to attract young
people to his performances. What comes
through after listening to his material,
is the black humor of a sensitive,
intelligent human being who was angry at
institutional religion, mass media and
government, and profoundly disappointed
at the wasted potential and missed
opportunities of the human race.
Underneath the coarseness, Carlin had a
lot going on in his performances.
Unlike Andrew Dice Clay, for example,
where all you get is cursing and
misanthropy -which is funny for about ten
minutes- Carlin’s persona could
morph rapidly, almost imperceptibly from
a gravelly voiced tavern blowhard, to a
slick radio announcer, to a sober
intellectual to a 1960’s stoner to a
raving maniac. He could challenge society’s
sacred cows, make you laugh, and come
away seeing things from a different
angle.
As to my mixed feelings about Carlin- the
barrier he broke was not about mere
words- as if words could ever be “mere.”
With the right words you can win love,
advantages, friendship, money and more.
And with the wrong words you can lose
them in about five seconds.
The barrier Carlin broke had to do with
the corruption of language- which leads
to the degeneration of a culture. The
danger is that some future generation may
find their vocabulary reduced to only one
angry four letter word- and people will
have forgotten how to tell each other who
they are and what they need and desire
from each other.
And about those mysteries of the
un-conscious, which brought Carlin’s
humor into my orbit. I have heeded its
promp-tings. I need to laugh more. We all
do. It has been said that life is a
tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy
to those who think. I thank George Carlin
for helping his generation think
and-because everything, after all, is
connected- for making me rediscover the
value of humor.
Mark Palermo is a professor at Northern
Essex Community College in Haverhill. You
can email him at markpalermo@gmaiil
.com. Visit his website at http://markpalermo.tripod.com
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