23 June 2008

RIP George

George Carlin died yesterday of an apparent heart attack. He was 71. Carlin was one of the great comedians and, for better or worse, he picked up Lenny Bruce's mantle and kept pushing the edge of the envelope.

While I always found his early material funny, and his analysis of modern wordplay wonderful, with the hindsight of years I will remember him - as with Lenny Bruce - as someone fully of his age. In Carlin's case that was the 60's - with that adolescent "I wanna say poo-poo whenever I want! It's all about me!" mindset. Carlin, like so many of the 60's generation, broke barriers without thinking through if they needed to be broken, or what to do once they were. The repercussions of that era are still reverberating through our society today with mostly tragic, if well-intentioned, results.

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