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Mostly I think he's right there, including when it's about religious power, but he's wrong to say that traditionally comedy has targeted those in power. Go back to the comedians from radio and early television, and that wasn't usually their target (although the Three Stooges, oddly enough, often were).
You can find political and quasi-political contexts in older comedian's material, you just have to know where to look for them because they had to cloak them pretty well. Many early comedy legends such as Laurel & Hardy were really skewering privileged elites but the characters they were abusing were exaggerated so that the elites could say, well, we're not like THAT (but they actually are at heart). For example in their Academy Award-winning short subject The Music Box they are two working men lugging a crated player piano up endless flights of stairs up a hillside when a stuffy college professor coming down the stairs happens on the duo taking a breather. He stands impatiently and finally raps the piano sharply with his walking-stick. "Well, are you going to move out of my way?" "What's it to you?" Asks Ollie. "I should like to pass!" Whereon he starts angrily shoving the piano to one side, and Stanley, incensed, whacks the professor's top hat off. The hat sails down the hillside, and just as it reaches the bottom of the steps, the camera pans up ever so slightly and a passing truck runs over it. The professor fumes off, sputtering, "I, professor Theodore van Stuffenhousen, FFF and F, should walk around?!" I mean what is this but an indictment of the entitlement of the elites, exaggerated so the elites will think it's not about them generically but about tenured professors specifically? All the elements are present -- the disdain for hard working people, the expectation of utter deference, the assumption that even taking a breather means you're lazy, the resort to violence if need be to get their demanded privilege? I mean that is why it was funny to people, after all. Comedy is about laughing at painful realities.
Other L&H shorts and features most often had exaggerated villains in the form of class exploiters: landlords, factory foremen, etc. In one, Stanley even was revealed as having been a long-disappeared Oxford don, who became stupid by a blow on the head and wandered off. When this is reversed by another blow to the head, he becomes erudite and, effecting a heavy British upper-crust accent, starts calling Ollie "Fatty" and begins ordering him around, making him his miserable and exasperated servant. In the end, he's hit on the head again, and returned to his old lovable stupid self. I mean you could not ask for a more explicit commentary really on the contrast between the exploiters and the exploited, and how ordinary people have only each other and their solidarity and friendship.
It is true that a comedian staying relatively politically neutral might be best in the long run for business but remember when you are near end-of-career there's not much of a long run, you're getting fed up, and you want to cement a legacy. Most of the stuff we play back from Carlin's oeuvre now that looks prescient and insightful is the political stuff and the anti-religious stuff, and part of its charm is the "up yours" style of delivery -- at least if you mostly agree with his take. If not it might pierce your veil of indifference and get you to think a little. I tend to see Carlin more as seeing the headlights of an oncoming freight train, warning us here 50 years later who are finally starting to pay attention. As a father I have to believe he also had his daughter's future in mind and by the way, she is very affectionate about her late father's legacy to this day.
Besides, is an environmental or anti-corporate rant REALLY political when it's centered on how it impacts ordinary people? My answer to that is not entirely yes.
It's a little like how the owners of this site try to keep politics and religion separate when they are almost indistinguishable from each other anymore. Politics and worker's rights / unionization or politics and the environment are similarly intertwined. You can't fully discuss one without the other.
In 2008 it is estimated he was worth about $10 million. My guess he simply talked about what he wanted to talk about.
<snip>He seemed to get much more angry and cynical with age. <snip>
That happens to everybody, even the eternal optimistic's. Eventually life wears you down, some more than others. George was spot on with his observations though.
That happens to everybody, even the eternal optimistic's. Eventually life wears you down, some more than others. George was spot on with his observations though.
That's not been my experience thus far. ( still in my 60's though )
In fact I find myself becoming more tolerant of others, less dogmatic.
Even a bit more progressive.
That's not been my experience thus far. ( still in my 60's though )
In fact I find myself becoming more tolerant of others, less dogmatic.
Even a bit more progressive.
That's the benefit of being a believer. I still lean heavily optimist but I have no expectation that there is some grand design that will make everything alright or make sense. I do have faith in my fellow humans but we can only do so much and we need to speak up. That's the one thing I miss and I still struggle with fairness.
Finally watched it. He's talking about Andrew Dice Clay? Never watched him.
I want to laugh, not get stressed out, riled up or ticked off.
You know who I loved who was very sneaky about his political digs? Bobcat Goldthwait.
I'm a Dry Bar kinda girl. Light but generally intelligent. Clean. Joyous entertainment. No political bandwagons. No preaching, in your face, agree or you're stupid feel to it.
Finally watched it. He's talking about Andrew Dice Clay? Never watched him.
I want to laugh, not get stressed out, riled up or ticked off.
You know who I loved who was very sneaky about his political digs? Bobcat Goldthwait.
I'm a Dry Bar kinda girl. Light but generally intelligent. Clean. Joyous entertainment. No political bandwagons. No preaching, in your face, agree or you're stupid feel to it.
I watched Clay. I felt like he was an exaggerated version of a certain type of guy. His appeal was mostly edgelord which gets old fast so I didn't watch much of him. Maybe Carlin knew this wasn't an exaggeration.
Do you remember the late George Carlin, the comedian:
“Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.”
I remember George carlin. Think about what the quote is implying. That we must see a man do something to do it. Think about phone calls, think about influence and inspiration on the media. What about the essence of time, and something called generational effect.
Wet paint has just as much probability as a invisible man in the sky. Both require attention, both require experience and insight, and both have warnings attached to them.
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