Count me in with the folks who thought he was funny earlier on, but later turned into a ranting angry old man. However, he is responsible for one of my all-time favorite quotes: “You wouldn’t believe how stupid the average person is. But what’s worse is, half the people are even dumber than that!”
I listened to the audio version of his last book, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops. The delivery was impeccable, the comedic mind was still there, the whimsy was not entirely absent, and I have to respect him for putting out so much material. But yeah, it wasn’t a laff riot, and the bitterness and misanthropy were there. If latter-day Carlin were a Doper, he’d be the subject of a couple Pit threads before eventually being banned for trolling.
The shell-shock routine always baffled me, because I drew the opposite conclusion from the progression. I saw it as the military originally giving the disorder a cartoonish name as a form of dismissive mockery, and progressively referring to it more seriously (and medically) as it became better understood. I mean, did Carlin really think society was kinder and more sympathetic post-WWI to veterans with shell shock than it is now to veterans with PTSD?
I guess that’s a hazard with “it’s funny because it’s true” humor. If one doesn’t agree that it’s true, then it doesn’t come across as funny.
There are many people who will tell you that Iraq veterans with PTSD and brain injuries are receiving woefully insufficient care, but I can’t make that comparison. His broader point was that the terms reflected the horrors of war less and less, and it’s part of a trend or a tendency to reframe language to try and shift the way people look at a given situation or problem.
He was a keen observer of usage, but he was no linguist. He used only so far as it served his comedy, and should not be taken as reliable linguistics.
For example, his “in dio”/India bit was complete bullshit.
Seconded. I don’t remember the specifics of his word bit in Braindroppings, but I do remember being actively irritated at the bullshit he was spouting. Gallagher was more spot-on with his usage observations, frankly.
Bang-on. Carlin had a riff about how the white people came from Europe to own black people and wipe out red people and eventually drop an a-bomb on yellow people that I find just insipid, with contempt for the audience that’s lapping it up. Some of his material was very entertaining. Some of it wasn’t. My personal favourite bit, and it’s more clever than hilarious, was how Hell existed, but there was also a Heck, which was not as severe.
Hell, yeah, he was one of the best. I can watch one of his HBO performances and go from just plain giggling to outright howling with laughter over the course of an hour.
When Johnny Carson died, David Letterman called him the true King of late night and said that people like he and Leno were merely pretenders to the throne. I’d like to think the same can be said about George Carlin. I’m too young to remember Lenny bruce, he died too young. But Carlin debuted about the time I was old enough to appreciate good, adult comedy.
I understand; I just see it the opposite way. The shift in terms strikes me as a move away from a term originating in mockery to one that recognizes a real medical problem.
But I’m a lawyer, so my mental wiring for words may be calibrated toward prolixity. 
You’re assuming the origin of the words was derisive rather than descriptive, but I don’t know if that’s true.
Incidentally, according to Wikipedia, the current term for this ailment is “combat stress reaction.” A little shorter than “operational exhaustion” and shorter, and more specific, than “post-traumatic stress disorder.” (It’s not even a disorder now; it’s a reaction.) Whether it’s more or less euphemistic, I leave to you. But based on a quick glance at the article in question, the reactions of society and the military to this illness has always been lacking. Sensitivity to the issue is greater, but I’d say he was arguing that the increased awareness of the problem is being canceled out by euphemisms that make the problem sound less severe.
His old stuff is now dated, but it was funny at the time. I believe we have gone beyond drug references being automatically funny.
His mid-career stuff could be extremely funny, and he never quite fell prey to the notion that saying “fuck” was automatically funny. His Seven Words riffing was brilliant, precisely because there was more to it than shock value.
His later stuff - forget it. Famous Comic Syndrome, defined as “My thoughts are too important to joke about”. You can certainly make social commentary part of the act, but jokes are the bribe to get me to listen to your ideas about the world (if that’s how you want to play it). If you are going to present as a comedian and then just rant, no thanks. I am there to be entertained. If you can slip something else by me, well and good, but the entertainment part is non-negotiable.
As a pure stand-up he was good. Not in the league of Richard Pryor or Robin Wiliams or Bill Cosby, but good enough.
Regards,
Shodan
Agreed. Actually, I’ve just done a bit of looking around, and it seems that the term “shell shock” may have originated from a belief that the disorder was a physical consequence of an exploding shell – one’s brain literally being shaken around. The move away from that term may have reflected a better understanding of the nature of the problem.
So I should back off from suggesting that the coining of the term was derogatory, but I do still think that the attitude of the military has become more accepting with time (as the name for the problem has changed). And personally, I think public understanding of the horror of war is actually much better than it used to be. But that’s just one person’s opinion.
I’m just suggesting that Carlin was making assumptions as well, and that the reason I didn’t find that bit funny was that I found myself stopping to think, “wait, is that really true?”
So I listened to that compilation of his 70s albums I mentioned at work today. A little redundant, because some of his bits were repeated like three times, so I think I got screwed. But anyway, it was funny, he made some interesting observations, I chuckled inwardly, but no more than that. The recording ended, and I switched over to John Pinette. Inside of 5 minutes I’m having to struggle to keep from cracking up and drawing attention from coworkers. And I’ve heard this act before.
I don’t dispute Carlin was awesome. But funny’s subjective, and on my personal list he’s nowhere near the top.
Here’s a nice little tribute from Jerry Seinfeld.
Now that is funny.
Well, that was my reading of your list. I’m not big on comic strips, but I’ve read plenty of Calvin and Hobbes and my share of Get Fuzzy, the Far Side and Peanuts and I’m passingly familiar with some of the others. I’ve watched a good amount of SNL and Kids in the Hall and a lot of Monty Python. I’ve seen every Simpsons and Futurama many times, much of Family Guy, some King of the Hill and I remember Beavis & Butthead and Ren and Stimpy pretty well. There’s not much in that group that I’d call abrasive, at least in the sense I was using it about Carlin, who was provocative and sometimes was at war with American culture. For the most part it sounds like you prefer stuff that’s more absurd and a little softer. I like a lot of that stuff too, but it doesn’t sound like you’re into angry comedy, and Carlin in his later years was angry for sure.
The best.
No one comes close.
He made personal insights, mixed it with linguistic queries, combined it with political and social satire and made it all extremely funny.
I know it’s all subjective, but if you can’t find ANY humour in Carlin then I don’t think you have a funny bone in your body.
Both Bill Maher and Jerry Seinfeld called him the best ever on Larry King the other night.
Yep, “angry for sure”, and I don’t get the love lost for that. I compare Carlin to Twain for becoming more terse and misanthropic in later years. Why was that? Aging my ownself, I see it. In youth, your talent is ebullient and gushing, everything is anew, possible, and entertainment is a certain spiking rush. The laughs are easy with an intelligent person, and ya do what plays well. In aging, you pay more attention to what you’ve seen, and, often, it’s the same crap over and over, the same damn human foibles, and yer mind gets terser and wants to shout out loud above what is seen as ignorance.
Simple “entertainment” becomes frustrating , and I imagine that Carlin saw enough of that in his career, and wanted to keep pushing the envelope of his art. He was at a different level, had gone beyond the applause and kudos phase, again, best comparison is to Twain. The best question then might be, why do these brilliant men, who start out making us laugh in a Hahaha sense, end up with a scathing tone? Why does their youthful, more playful self, end up with what then takes folks aback?
Fucking life, man, 'tis a gas. Sometimes it’s sweet entertainment, and othertimes it’s a plaguing miasma. To me, Carlin cut through it til the end.
What was the show (I think it was an awards one) he came out on, and stood there, totally silent. For like 10 minutes and people just roared.
Also, I’ve always wanted to try his suggestion of getting on a bus with one eye closed as if it were a disability, turning away, and coming back with the Other eye closed. 
I’m watching Carlin at Carnegie right now and I just love the guy and always will. I think his profanity is over-reported. A lot of his humor is observational and silly, though it got less goofy when he got older and he got more bitter. Don’t know what it says about me, but he never got too bitter for me to find him entertaining.