Goodbye, George
Today is a sad day. George Carlin died suddenly yesterday at the age of 71. Anyone who knew me very well knew that George was by far and away my favorite comedian; in fact, I blogged about him earlier this year. But he was more than a funny guy. He was a philosopher -- a "world observer" as he called himself -- it's not too much to say the world lost a brilliant mind. Even if you didn't like Carlin's style of comedy, you can't deny the man was a genius.
The things he said would make you laugh until your sides hurt, but at the same time, he made you think. The way he played with the English language was brilliant and his "observations" of the world around him -- particularly American society -- were not only hysterically funny, but he said things that most people thought, but were afraid to say because of today's age of hypersensitivity and political correctness. One of his biggest pet peeves was euphemisms, and half of one of his books (I own every book he wrote) is filled with "Euphemisms That Piss Me Off." One of them that I remember off the top of my head went something like this (I am paraphrasing here)...
Cripples were called cripples for a long time until someone, somewhere took offense to it for some reason. So someone, somewhere thought it would be nicer to call them handicapped, and "handicapped" became the euphemism of choice until that word developed a stigma. Then someone decided that "handicapped" people were actually "disabled," until someone else suggested that "disabled" sounded even more negative than "handicapped" and now we are to use the euphemism differently-abled. Differently abled? So now we are acknowledging that being crippled makes your different?! How politically incorrect is that? Hey, what happened to just being called a cripple? What's wrong with that? Folks, the Bible talks about cripples all the time, it's a perfectly honorable word... Jesus healed the cripples! I guess the Bible is politically incorrect too, and it's time we revised it to meet our modern American standards, lest someone be offended by it.
Say what you want, I think that's both hilarious and grounded in truth. That, my friends, was the genius of George Carlin.
So goodbye, George. You were a brilliant man and I will really miss your insights on life. At least we still have books, DVDs and CDs of your wisdom to pass down to the next generation. But the world won't ever be quite the same.
As Carlin would have said, "Oh, shit... the party's over."
