George Carlin, author of “banned” book When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, announced that he is entering a rehab clinic for alcohol and drug addiction. He says he’s addicted to wine and Vicodin. (A good, earthy red burgundy would match well with Vicodin, I think.)
Carlin’s latest book was “banned” by Wal-Mart because the title was offensive to many Christians, as well as the dustcover art that showed Carlin in the place of Jesus at the Last Supper. As modern blasphemy goes, that is pretty tame: it’s smirking parody, as opposed to out-and-out maliciousness. Like night follows day, a bunch of “civil libertarians” rushed to defend Carlin’s right to…well, nobody’s really sure which of his constitutional rights were violated. He was free to write it, his publisher was free to publish it, Christians were free to protest it, and Wal-Mart was free to reject it. Wal-Mart can’t “ban” books any more than they can make war, levy taxes, or coin money — only governments can do those things.
Although he is technically too old to be a baby boomer, Carlin has followed that generation’s degradation, going from gadfly commentator to intellectually bankrupt performer to grumpy, nasty old man. My parents thought George Carlin was funny and raunchy back in the ’60s. In the ’80s, I saw one of his HBO concerts, and I agreed that he was raunchy. As for funny, he was sporadically amusing, but the audience must have been comprised of boomers who were thinking of his old routines, because the material wasn’t particularly clever or pointed.
Today, he’s apparently reduced to making fun of such things as “the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, dopey athletes and cutthroat businessmen.” Here are some quotations from the book:
—Carlin on the media: The media comprises equal parts business, politics, advertising, public relations, and show business. Nice combination. Enough bull for Texas to open a chain of branch offices.
—Carlin on the battle of the sexes: Here’s all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid….
—Carlin on evasive language: Just to demonstrate how far using euphemisms in language has gone, some psychologists are now actually referring to ugly people as those with “severe appearance deficits.” Hey, Doctor. How’s that for “denial”?
—Carlin on politics: No self-respecting politician would ever admit to working in the government. They prefer to think of themselves “serving the nation.” To help visualize the service they provide the country, you may wish to picture the things that take place on a stud farm.
Keep in mind that the quotations above are supposed to whet your appetite for buying the book. This reminds me of “The Simpsons,” where Bart and Milhous pick up Mad Magazine and see an article called “The Lighter Side of Hippies.” “They don’t care whose toes they step on!” Bart laughs. It’s part of a running joke, that Mad’s humor tends to be obvious and about ten minutes too late. (“They’re really sockin’ it to that Spiro Agnew guy again!”)
When he’s not trodding the same ground as a thousand other second-rate comics, Carlin takes on groups that no one else has thought to challenge, mainly because there’s nothing particularly funny about doing so. He dismisses peanut allergies as a fantasy, saying that people who think they have that condition are delusional.
As it happens, my brother is highly allergic to all nuts, among other things. Wherever he goes, he has to carry an adrenaline-filled syringe in case he accidently eats food with a slight trace of nuts. If he isn’t treated, his throat swells up, he turns blue and will die soon after that. I’m not offended at Carlin for insulting people like my brother. I just think it’s bizarre and sad that he would resort to mocking a serious, medically verifiable, genetic condition. Is he going to mock Down Syndrome kids next? Or has he already done that?
Predictably, the prefab “controversy” over the book has brought out the best on both sides of the cultural divide. On the right, you have the folks WHO HAVE A CAPS LOCK KEY AND THEY ARENT AFRAID TO USE IT BUT THEY DONT CONCENTRAT ON GOOD SPELLIN OR PUCNTUATION. On the left, you have people like this reviewer on Amazon, who titled his review “Hey Morons and Idiots”:
First off let’s get one thing straight, Jesus Christ, to me, is Lord and Savoir, everything else that followed after his resurection was man done. The Catholic Church, a bunch of morons and hipocritical idiots, the Protestants, ugly women that gather to protest abortion. Methodist, them I don’t have a problem with, at least the one’s I know, liberal to the bone, they have methods to their love.
Lord and Savoir, eh? Jesus did have panache, that’s for sure. Lesson: if you’re going to mock someone else’s intelligence, you should at least know how to spell the words you’re using.
Unlike Rush Limbaugh’s detractors, who rushed to call him a hypocrite, liar, child-abuser, forger, cross-dresser, and whatever else they could think of, I wish Mr. Carlin well and I sincerely hope he emerges from the clinic having turned his bad habits into good ones. A relative of mine had similar problems, and met with an unhappy end. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
I do reserve the right to make jokes about it, however. He’s a comedian, after all. He can take it.
Hey…I wonder if SNL will follow their disgusting Limbaugh satire up with an equally disgusting ‘rib’ on Carlin’s foibles….I won’t hold my breath….hope everyone had a truly merry Christmas!!
Poor George Carlin. (I’m serious.) The intensity of the venom he directs at religion and, particularly, the Catholic Church can come only from a very lapsed Catholic.
And the wages of sin: Eric, you are absolutely right that his humor, which was once bitingly funny, is now just biting (more accurately, bitter) without the funny. Totally lame.
I pray that his suffering with substance abuse and rehab will ultimately reconcile him with the Church.
I agree with you, Robin, even though he has wrapped himself in a shell of cynicism that is a firm defense against God’s grace. You can only maintain a critical attitude if you have a central core of beliefs. Carlin’s half-baked, half-remembered left-wing politics worked for a while when it was fresh, but he doesn’t seem to stand for anything other than invective. Acid can cleanse if used properly, but if you use too much for too long, it corrodes.
The Holy Spirit has cracked harder cases, and I pray he cracks Carlin, though I suspect the medicine will be painful.
I truly wish him the best. For now, however, he reeks of anger and denial. The Washington Post reported:
Speaking of his current problem, he said: “My levels of use are nowhere near the worst you hear about these days; I could easily have continued functioning at a good level … for awhile. But my use would have progressed, I would have been in deeper trouble, and I didn’t want to tolerate that.”
He’s functioning “at a good level”??? Yeah, right. If his use progressed any more, the next WaPo article about him would say he was found dead on a sidewalk.
When he gets to step 3 his bias against religion will change.
Here is the link for step 3 http://home.capecod.net/~rogerg/recovery/WkgAA.html#anchor3330535
Herb,
In your hyperlink above, did you enclose the http://home.capecod.net/~rogerg/recovery/WkgAA.html#anchor3330535 part in quotes? Movable Type seems to absolutely require that you do that, or it will produce an empty link like the one above. Your code should have looked like this:
<a href=”http://home.capecod.net/~rogerg/recovery/WkgAA.html#anchor3330535″>text</a>
I guess I just don’t get this prescription drug thing. I’ve had both vicodin and percocet in the past year (2 surgeries) and I just didn’t get excited about either of them.
Prescription drugs, as any other “substance” foreign to the body, will affect every individual differently, for a variety of reasons, including weight, genetic anomalies, gender, and other factors I cannot think of right now.
Savoir Faire is everywhere!!!!
Was that from the Tennessee Tuxedo series?
Hooray for George Carlin. As a younger reader, who wasn’t exposed to him in the 60’s and 70’s, i find George Carlin great! I must say, however, that i don’t find any more offense in his attack on the Catholic Church, of which i am a longstanding member, than i would about anyones attack on anything else. Lets remember: America is an idea, and it doesnt work unless everyone buys into it. Part of buying into it is accepting that by enjoying the protection of religion, we accept what comes also in the constitution in terms of free speech. basically, want one, take the other.
Ash
Ash, another one bites the dust,
Ofcourse America is an idea, but no…. everyone does not have to buy into it. Actually only 51% of the voters buy into it, understand it, and cherish it. That would be 286 electoral votes.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–”
France gives it’s citzen’s their rights. In America, it is known that God has given us our rights and the Goverment can never take those rights away.
George Carlin opinions are not being censored, but to rush out and embrace a shock jock mentality is getting, plainly…. a little blah. A typical cry is to have a certain group of people state that someone is being repressed, and half the country runs out to buy it. When confronted by friends family or such, “I am just keeping an open mind.” If that same certain group of people tell them that 60 decorated veterans are lying, no one goes out and buys that book, to keep an open mind. And when a major news anchor manufactures papers, against a sitting president …. you get the point.
I don’t want to ban anything I am just sick, and so is the majority of the country (51%), of people not playing by the rules. This is the same crowd that should remember the book, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” There is that rule, that you don’t moon the class. Or the good one, you don’t stand up and scream during nap time, just so people can understand you are a victim because your Dad “abused you” by making you eat all the food on your plate.
I wake up every morning, put on a tie and go to work. I use to put on steel toes, the point is I understand the structure in the world and the honor there is in using the talents God gave me to survive.
I don’t slap the people in the face who are raising a child alone, taking care of a sick spouse, or caring for an aging parent. These people are slapped in the face when their values are attack every day by the splattering of people telling them they are too sheltered, to rigid, to conservative, and forcing them to watch while mocking a majority of what they believe in.
I am glad to hear that you did read it. But Ofcourse you read it alone. You may not have had your 6 year old sitting by you during a superbowl game when another shock jock decided to mock everyone who is teaching their family respect for women and ….
So before you cherish his ability to gleefully look at the hypocrisy in the world. You see there is a word, forgiveness. And the people who make a living out of pointing out hypocrisy really do not know how to forgive. No solutions or ideas that they offer improve society. For every answer to every problem becomes, “everybody does it, you did it once to.” Rather than, “that was really bad, it had long reaching repercussions, lets not do it again.”
Well you see forgiveness when asked for is a wonderful thing. It is to acknowledge and admit what you have done, repent, and then not be bound by it so that you will not make that same mistake again. It is in that not be bound by it that most the great leaders come into being. They understand what the consequences are and lead away from that.
People in the shock jock world can bring up dirt on anyone. Myself ,you , your parents or anyone you respect. Should all your good work through out your life be washed away to, “well that is all nice and good but you know they really were a …..” Regardless of admitting your sin, and then the change in your life since that time. You see in normalizing people like this author, sin is being antiquated and forgiveness irrelevant. A slow loss of hope of our potential and .
P.S. I am a “old” reader as well. 33 Proudly what is called a genXer.
http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/charters/declaration_transcript.html
P.S. If anyone responds about how to post a link, don’t, figure out how to copy and paste.