Word: carliner
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...comic who spent much of his career railing against America's war culture, George Carlin had some pretty good war stories of his own from his tour of duty on the 1960s cultural battlefield. Once a popular, short-haired comedian who did parodies of commercials and fast-talking DJs, Carlin saw the counterculture revolution and decided he was talking to the wrong audience. So he grew long hair and a beard and began doing routines about drugs and Vietnam and uptight middle-class values...
...fans weren't ready for it. Carlin got thrown out of Las Vegas clubs twice for material that today would seem tame (one offending routine was about his "skinny ass"). At the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wis., his jokes about Vietnam nearly caused an audience riot. "One big blond guy, who would have made a casting director's dream for one of those Nazi officers, said, 'How would you know? You've never been shot at!'" Carlin recalled years later. "Then it became an uproar. Some were standing and leaving; some were shaking their fists at me." Carlin...
Like his idol Lenny Bruce, Carlin saw the comedian as a social commentator, rebel and truth teller, exposing hypocrisy and challenging conventional wisdom. He pointed out that America's "drug problem," for example, extended to middle-class suburbia, from office coffee freaks to housewives hooked on diet pills. He talked about the irony and injustice of Muhammad Ali's banishment from boxing as punishment for evading the draft: "He said, 'No, that's where I draw the line. I'll beat 'em up, but I don't want to kill 'em.' And the government said, 'Well...
...Carlin's material grew increasingly dark in later years, to the point where he was cheerleading (with only a trace of irony) for mass suicide and ecological disaster. "I sort of gave up on this whole human adventure a long time ago," he said a couple of years ago. "Divorced myself from it emotionally. I think the human race has squandered its gift, and I think this country has squandered its promise. I think people in America sold out very cheaply, for sneakers and cheeseburgers. And I don't think it's fixable...
...Carlin's career, and his comedy, was anything but a downer. He was unique among stand-ups of his era in remaining a top-drawing comedian for more than 40 years, with virtually no help from movies or TV sitcoms. His influence can be seen everywhere from the political rants of Lewis Black to the observational comedy of Jerry Seinfeld. He showed that nothing - not the most sensitive social issues or the most trivial annoyances of everyday life - was off-limits for smart comedy. And he helped bring stand-up comedy to the very center of American culture...