The American Dream Worked Out Just Fine For George Carlin

 

"They call it the American Dream,

Because you have to be asleep to believe it."

 

There's been a lot of talk online about the work of George Carlin recently and what he would say if he were alive today. While I can't speak to that, I know what I'd say to him.

First I would be polite and say that I loved a lot of his material. The differences between baseball and football hysterical. His routine about 'stuff', wonderful. And every time I go to an airport I get in the plane. But that's not the stuff they're talking about.

I would say: "Mr. Carlin, you spent many years struggling to become successful. Eventually you did. You worked yourself up from obscurity to become rich and famous. You are considering by many comedians as the greatest whoever lived and you're quoted by millions to this day. How can you not believe in the American dream? It worked out just fine for you."

Now I do realize much of the darkest material in Carlin's oeuvre came as he got older and the closer he came to death. I also know about he was famously someone who had no use for organized religion or the afterlife, so that couldn't have been easy. (I'll get back to that.) But I have the same issue I have with Carlin that I do with so many other prominent and successful celebrities. America has worked out just fine for you. Indeed you've managed to make a fortune playing to sellout crowds telling them that every institution they believe in – politics, corporations, education, religion – is something that only an idiot would be dumb enough to believe in. I grant you there's always been an audience for this kind of market, but how do you never consider yourself the same kind of hypocrite as the evangelists and politicians and corporate shells you roast on a nightly basis? At least they are selling a solution, even if its flawed. You're getting your audience to laugh at all the people who are dumb enough to believe in these institutions, how screwed up the countries and really that believing in anything is kind of idiotic.

Now I realize other comedians have an equally cynical nature about mankind. But there's a very real difference between them and Carlin: they have a reason to believe in the worst of America that he doesn't. Let me give some examples.

If George Carlin isn't the greatest comedian who ever lived, it's considered that it's Richard Pryor. I've seen his material: there's a good argument. He was delivering material about the police shooting black people in the 1970s and sadly that's as evergreen as much of Carlin's stuff. Perhaps the material that I can write which would involve the least censorship would work:

"You see Logan's Run? There weren't no n----rs there? In the future white people ain't planning to have black people alive."

Very funny and also a very fair commentary.

Moving a bit forward, his spiritual heir Chris Rock. He had a more nuanced approach to America that Pryor did.

"America is the greatest country on Earth. But for black people, we look at it a little different. For black people, America is the rich uncle who paid your way through college… but molested you."

I've rarely heard a more accurate metaphor for African-Americans then that.

Or Lily Tomlin, your contemporary and still going strong. She had her own line about the American Dream:

"I worry that the American dream is being made in Japan, only cheaper or more efficiently."

Change that to China and that line still packs a punch.

What's the difference between the comedians I've listed and Carlin? To spell it out, he's a white man and they aren't. You can understand why it sounds different if a white cis male tells you America has no value and if someone who is a minority says the same thing. I might not agree with the minority but I can at least understand why they might think this way and sympathize. A white man tells me that exact same story and is called a truthteller? Seems to me things worked just fine for you.

And it's not just Carlin I have this issue with: the late Bill Hicks had much of the same attitude towards religion and advertising Carlin did and while some of his material was funny, far too often he had the attitude of the preacher, only telling you not to believe in anything. It's funny when Trevor Noah or Wanda Sykes says something about the way of the world; I have an issue with it Bill Maher does.

Another critical thing I different from the comedians I listed and the white ones: they almost never told stories about themselves. All of the comedians I mentioned over the careers were more than willing to laugh at themselves, make themselves part of the joke. The white comedians who made jokes about the world of politics I mentioned never make fun of themselves. They make it clear they held (or hold) themselves about the rest of the world, aware of the knowledge that has given enlightenment. And none of them, for the record, seemed particularly happy about it. It's a trait I could use about the demeanor of particularly progressive entertainers as a whole: Michael Moore and John Oliver never seemed particularly happy when they are addressing an audience and seem more involved in educating than entertaining.

To be fair, a lot of comedians have made their misery part of the act: Marc Maron gave a wonderful comic special about this just a few years ago and I've seen countless other comedians of both genders and colors. But the difference is, for the most part, they tend to make fun of themselves, their lives, their misfortunes. This was true of some of the other comedians I've listed: Prior was able to make a routine about how he set himself on fire, for crying out loud. Hicks and Maher never make themselves the subjects of their own humor unless they were taking the tone of superiority that Carlin definitely had in so much of his material in his later years.

Again I do get the reason to worship these guys given how dark the world is these days. But I really object to the idea of calling Carlin a sage or an entertainer, particularly a comedian. I get wanting to laugh at how much of a joke the world is but when you think about so much of Carlin's material, he basically saying America is a joke and his audience was showing a kind of elitism themselves by laughing at how dumb the rest of the world is. There's something very cynical in the kind of entertainment calling out hypocrisy when you're not willing to call yourself one of them or even make yourself part of the joke. Other comedians who I have loved over the years have done this and done it well.

So perhaps I should close this op-ed by quoting another late, great comedian Richard Jeni, a man who was just as cynical about the world but was willing to try and be optimistic about it. He had a different view of advertising than Carlin did and he thought we could use it to make us realize what is good about America:

"Here's the slogan. America. Twenty million illegal immigrants can't be wrong! There it is!"