George Carlin's HBO Special: I'm A Whiny, Mean Old Man

For me, it was a long, slow road to the realization that over the years George Carlin has turned into a paid version of a babbling homeless person.

I used to love Carlin. I'd laugh all the way through his HBO specials, then think about things he'd said for days afterwards and still laugh. Nowadays I just laugh once or twice, think about that hour or so of wasted time (sometimes while I'm still watching), and end up vaguely depressed by the time the credits roll. I don't think comedy is supposed to make you contemplate suicide.

Well, maybe if you're watching Dane Cook.

His routines used to be about the weird things in life we all do out of habit, and how silly it all seems when you pause to consider it. He always had an edge, but it was always tempered. As he aged the edge took over, his shows turned into an endless rant on how we're all fucked no matter what we do - God doesn't give a shit about us (even though there is no God to not give a shit about us), the government lies, people are mindless sheep - and really, if you stop to think about it, we'd all be better off dead. I mean, it's an hour of him basically telling the audience they're all pieces of shit, and at the end of every show they give him a standing ovation for telling them that, then go out and buy the album or download it off itunes.

I need a gig like that.

One of the themes of the show is how people never question authority. I call bullshit on that. Has George ever read a blog, watched other HBO specials/documentaries, looked at the op-ed page of a newspaper....uh, listened to one of his own fucking albums? Questioning authority has been a major American pastime for over forty years now. People question the world's bullshit all the fucking time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, twice on holidays. Just think about how many times you've read or heard "no one ever questions what the government/their parents/the news tells them." Shit, I've probably read that half a dozen times today. No, everyone is just full of questions...but decidedly empty of solutions. Who doesn't love to whine and bitch about everything under the sun? It's easy, it's always easy to complain - but hardly anyone wants to sit down and figure out ways to fix these damages at their source. See, that's hard. That requires effort. And I'm just as guilty of it. Me jacking off and whining about stuff on a blog? Easy. Me fixing the things I'm jacking off and whining over? Hard.

For instance, George talks about how kids are never taught to question what they read or see. Again, bullshit. George, have you ever even been around a kid? Questions? Asking questions is all they do. And I mean, about everything. It runs the gamut, man. Why is the sky blue, why is is the grass green, does the light in the refrigerator go out when you close the door, why are poor kids around the world starving, why do people have to die?

The problem isn't that no one's teaching kids how to question the world around them, because kids are already full of questions. The problem is that there aren't a lot of people teaching kids that these questions require answers, and they're going to have to work to find the answers to some of those questions themselves.

Another thing is this blaming the rich, which is always hypocritical of a rich celebrity - let's say, a comedian who stands to make more money off an hour-long TV special and the resulting DVD/CD than most people in the world will see in decades of their lives. George, compared to 95% of the rest of the world, you're rich. Therefore, according to the rules you've established, you're guilty. Get off your wrinkled ass and redistribute some of your own wealth before you go pointing a lumpy finger at anyone else. Easy to complain about the imbalance of wealth, hard to fix - no, wait, all you have to do is write a check. Writing a check is easy. Writing a check might put an end to at least a tiny fraction of human misery somewhere in the world. Then, you might have a little less to complain about in your specials. Of course, then you also might have to shave fifteen minutes off your routine. And, well, that would mean less HBO Special/DVD/CD money. Yeah, I think I'm starting to figure out the answer to my own question.

Now, you could make the case that I'm getting all worked up over a TV show, over a stupid comedy routine. You could make that case, but you'd be full of shit. Carlin hasn't made a comedy special in over ten years. What he's made are filmed diatribes, recorded rants, accusatory sermon-on-the-mount type shit on the same level as the religious zealotry he pokes fun at.

Besides, it would be disingenuous of anyone to get upset over what I wrote. After all, I'm just doing what George suggested - questioning.