That exacerbated it, but he was already toadying up to the good-ol-boy conservative side years before.
It is very telling when Jay Leno (who is typically a pandering suck-up) becomes more politically critical and insightful in his comedy.
Around the 2000 election, he basically favored McCain (as I stated before, the campaign slogan and the like).
He once said, “George Bush is so dumb he thinks the W. in his name stands for Arthur.”
But even if he had a right-wing slant, it was slight, and he still managed to skewer each side, equally. Then after 9-11 he shit himself and started kissing Bush’s ass. And that’s just…wrong, for any commedian. But especially one who made his mark skewering all things political and current events.
Yeah, but if he just pulled the plug on George Bush jokes and continued with the rest of his stuff, that’s be one thing. He didn’t – none of his stuff is funny anymore. It certainly doesn’t help if yopu voluntarily give up skewering the current administration, but even his non-political stuff isn’t funny. Back in the days of Ollie North he gave us “E.T. – Fawn Hall” and similarly hilarious inanities. Now we don’t even get those.
Carlin has evolved. He warned about the direction we were going in his comedy for years . I think he believes its over for us. The man ,the ownership. of us has won. That leaves little room for laughs.
We walked out of a Carlin show last year. The jokes were not funny, but just ugly. It boiled down to a lot of mockery and name-calling. The mood of the crowd shifted in that direction as well, and after about an hour my partner and I both were feeling like we didn’t want to be in the crowd or driving with them afterward. It was very disappointing.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion. If he believes this then he should get out of the business of making people laugh. Maybe he should take all his money, build a bunker and wait for the end. Fans and HBO are still paying him good money for comedy. I haven’t seen any for a while. And for the record, I used to be a big fan.
I think his best work was in the 1990’s, right up through Complaints and Grievances(made in 2001).
I’ll admit Life is Worth Losing isn’t funny, but it’s a minor blip from a usually funny guy. Part of the reason is wasn’t as good was the delivery. I think he is still getting over his recent sobriety. I’m just hoping his next album is better.
Very nicely said.
Well, I don’t follow comedians or watch a lot of stand-up. I just turned on the TV and there he was.
I agree with a lot of the comments here about bitterness. But I also think Carlin and some of the others mentioned who lost their mojo (Dennis Miller, Margaret Cho) lost it when they started to take themselves seriously. It hasn’t happened yet, but I think the comedian in the most danger from going this route next is John Stewart. When you have peole writing articles about your cultural relevance, I can see it going to his head. But I’m loving his show in the meantime.
What makes Jon Stewart so good is that he knows this very well. He has said in a few interviews that it upsets him when he gets applause and not laughs. You can even see him telling the audience to cool it during the show whenever they start applauding.
Margaret Cho and Dennis Miller were once funny? When?
For some reason I see him walking away before that happens. I may be wrong.