George Carlin, American comedian, died Sunday evening according to
his publicist. He was 71. You can find all the pertinent information
here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/06/23/carlin.obit/index.html?
eref=rss_topstories
For me and many of my generation, Carlin’s death is the end of an era.
The end of a ground breaking time when we were still finding out what
the power of words was and how to make that power work to our
advantage. I don’t know that we have solved all of that yet, but we
have at least started.
Carlin gave us 7 Dirty Words and, with that, virtually insured that we
would use each and every one of them in a sentence. Carlin asked us
to think about the vagaries of the English language with such thoughts
as, “Tennis seems like the wrong word. It suggests a whole herd of
people crowded on the court. Why not Twois? or the odd game of
mixed Fouris?”
Carlin’s comedy, while on the surface was funny, also gave us things
to think about. He was an intelligent man and in many ways, a
profound one.
George was the original snarky comment in the face of too much
seriousness. I know I will miss his humor, and his point of view.
