Image of George Carlin from NY Times
George Carlin died Monday at the age of 71. The NY Times obituary says of Carlin:
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth, read a message on Mr. Carlins Web site, GeorgeCarlin.com, and he spent much of his life in a fervent effort to counteract the forces that would have it so. In his always irreverent, often furious social commentary, in his observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and in groundbreaking routines like the profane Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television, he took aim at what he thought of as the palliating and obfuscating agents of American life politicians, advertisements, religion, the media and conventional thinking of all stripes.
If crime fighters fight crime and firefighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? he asked in a 1980s routine, taking a jab at the Reagan administrations defense of the Nicaraguan Contras.
I remember as a kid staying up late to watch him on the Johnny Carson show and as the first host of Saturday Night Live. My favorite George Carlin routine was on the differences between baseball and football. From NY Times:
He used the ascent of footballs popularity at the expense of the game he loved, baseball, to make the point that societal innocence had been lost forever.
Baseball is a 19th-century pastoral game, he said. Football is a 20th-century technological struggle. Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park. The baseball park! Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.
You Tube video of George Carlin Baseball/Football comedy routine classic