George Carlin’s Wonderful, Important Offensiveness
By Jesse Singal - Jun 23rd, 2008 at 10:11 amGeorge Carlin has died at 71, and I want to do that blogger thing where I provide my unsolicited opinion on the matter. Carlin had a pretty big impact on me. He’s best-known for his groundbreaking “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” routine, but I was always most drawn to his biting attacks on religion.
It isn’t always easy to be a nonbeliever in the United States, and it was certainly much harder when Carlin launched his career. His take on organized religion can be summed up in two words: it’s bullshit. This isn’t a particularly nuanced or sophisticated view, but in a country where civic religion is so important, where every major political candidate’s faith is vetted, it’s a vital one. Carlin looked at the figures draping America in religious symbolism, compared their words to their actions, and viciously, righteously attacked them. He did so in a blazingly, at times gratuitously offensive way, but that’s the whole point of his act, and maybe of his career: Free speech is free speech. If the good words are supposed to be protected, then the bad ones are, too.
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