Comedian George Carlin dies at 71
Mon Jun 23, 2008 6:32am BST
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs and dirty words, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday, a spokesman said. He was 71.
Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug-dependency problems, died at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (2 a.m. British time) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.
Known for his edgy, provocative material, Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine called "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television." A regulatory battle over a radio broadcast of the routine ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the 1978 case, Federal Communications Commission vs. Pacifica Foundation, the top U.S. court ruled that the words cited in Carlin's routine were indecent, and that the government's broadcast regulator could ban them from being aired at times when children might be listening.
Carlin's comedic sensibility often came back to a central theme: humanity is doomed.
"I don't have any beliefs or allegiances. I don't believe in this country, I don't believe in religion, or a god, and I don't believe in all these man-made institutional ideas," he told Reuters in a 2001 interview.
Carlin, who wrote several books and performed in many television comedy specials, is survived by his wife Sally Wade, and daughter Kelly Carlin McCall.
(Reporting by Dean Goodman and Steve Gorman; Editing by Patricia Zengerle)
© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved.
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I love words. I think if you're hearing my words, I wanna tell you something about words that I think is important. They're my work, they're my play, they're my passion. Words are all we have really. We have thoughts, but thoughts are fluid. Then we assign a word to a thought and we're stuck with that word for that thought. So be careful with words, I like to think that ya know the same words that hurt can heal, it's a matter of how you pick them. There's some people that aren't in to all the words. There's some people that would have you not use certain words. Yeah, there are four hundred thousand words in the english language and there are seven of them you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. Three hundred and ninety three thousand, nine hundred and ninety three to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous to be separated from a group that large. All of you, over here, you seven. That word. That's what they told us remember, that's a bad word. No bad words, bad thoughts. Bad intentions and words.
Ya know the seven don't you, the seven you can't say on television. s**t, piss, ********, c**t, cocksucker, ********, and tits. Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that will infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war. s**t, piss, ********, c**t, cocksucker, ********, and tits.
Wow! And tits doesn't even belong on the list, ya know? It's such a friendly sounding word. Sounds like a nickname right? Hey Tits, come here man. It's Tits. Hey Tits meet Toots. Tits Toots, Toots Tits man. Sounds like a snack doesn't it? Yes, I know it is...Right. And I don't mean your sexist snack, I mean New Nabisco Tits. New Cheese Tits. Corn Tits and Pizza Tits and Sesame Tits and Onion Tits. Tater tits? Yeah, bet you can't eat just one, right? That's true, I usually switch off. But I mean that word does not belong on the list.
Well, none of the words belong on the list, but you can understand why some of them are there. I'm not completely insensitive to peoples feelings, ya know I can dig why some of those words got on the list.
Like cocksucker and ********. Those are...Those are heavyweight words, ya know. There's a lot going on there man. Besides the literal translation and the emotional feeling, they're just busy words. There's a lot of syllables to contend with and those k's. Those are aggressive sounds, they jump out you. Cocksucker, ********, cocksucker, ********. It's like an assault on you, ya know? Its like I can dig that. Now we mention s**t earlier of course and two of the other, four letter anglo-saxon words are piss and c**t, which go together of course but forget that. Little accidental humor I threw in there. Piss and c**t. The reason that piss and c**t are on the list is that a long time ago certain ladies said "those are the two I am not going to say. I don't mind ******** and s**t, but p & c are out. P & c are out." Which led to such stupid sentences as
"Ok you ********, I'm going to tinkle now." Then of course the word ********. The word ********, I don't really, well here's some more accidental humor, I don't really want to get into that now. Because I think it takes too long, ahh. But I do mean that. I think the word "********" is a very important word. It's beginning of life and yet it's a word we use to hurt one another quite often. And uh...People much wiser than I have said "i'd rather have my son watch a film with two people making love than two people trying to kill one another." And I of course can agree what a great sentiment, I wish I knew who said it first. I really do agree with that, but I'd like to take it a step further. I'd like to try to substitute the word ******** for the word kill. In all those movie cliches we grew up with, right? "OK Sherrif, we're gonna ******** you now. But we're gonna ******** you slow."
So maybe next year I'll have a whole ********' rap on that word. There are two way words, those are the seven you can NEVER say on television under any circumstances, you just cannot say them, ever, ever, ever, even clinically. You cannot weave them onto the panel with doc and Ed and Jonnie, it's just impossible forget those seven, they're out. But their are some two-way words, those double meaning words. Remember the ones you giggled at in sixth grade? "And the c**k rode three times." Hey, the c**k rode rode three times, ahh, hey it's in the bible, ahh. There are some two way words, like its Ok for Kurt Gowdy to say Roberto Clemente has two balls on him. But he can't say "I think he hurt his balls on that play Tony, don't you. He's holding them, he must've hurt them by god." And the other two way word that goes with that one is p***k. It's ok if it happens to your finger, yes you can p***k your finger. But don't finger your p***k, no, no, no.