Speaker 1: Calaruga Shark Media.
Speaker 2: How did July fourthom Johnny Mack with your daily comedy
Speaker 2: news Today, I thought I would talk about America's great prophet,
Speaker 2: George Carlin. If you're a regular listening there to this program,
Speaker 2: you've heard me say before. The stuff Carlin put out
Speaker 2: at the beginning of this century, it feels like it
Speaker 2: was recorded yesterday. At the time, I thought Carlan sounded
Speaker 2: angry and had lost his fastball, And I am so,
Speaker 2: so so wrong to have had that opinion. He is
Speaker 2: America's great profit.
Speaker 1: I just want to talk a little bit about that
Speaker 1: war in the Persian golf, big doings in the Persian golf.
Speaker 1: You know my.
Speaker 3: Favorite part of that war. It's the first war.
Speaker 1: We ever had that was on every channel plus cable.
Speaker 1: And the war got good ratings too, didn't it got
Speaker 1: good ratings?
Speaker 3: Well, we like war. We like war. We're war like people.
Speaker 3: We like war because we're good at it.
Speaker 1: And you know why we're good at it because we
Speaker 1: get a lot of practice. Those country is only two
Speaker 1: hundred years old and already we've had ten major wars.
Speaker 1: We average a major war in this country every twenty years,
Speaker 1: So we're good at it, and it's a good thing
Speaker 1: we are. We're not very good at anything else anymore.
Speaker 1: Can't build a decent car, got no steel industry left,
Speaker 1: can't get healthcare to our old people, can't educate our
Speaker 1: young people. But we can bomb the shit out of
Speaker 1: your country, all right. We can bomb the shit out
Speaker 1: of your country, all right.
Speaker 2: Now, Before we get into this, some housekeeping. If you
Speaker 2: go looking for George Carlin quotes online, a huge percentage
Speaker 2: of what you'll find is fig They're not exaggerated or paraphrased.
Speaker 2: They're just attributed to him by people who never bother
Speaker 2: to check. One example is something called the Paradox of
Speaker 2: Our Time. That's the one about taller buildings and shorter tempers,
Speaker 2: wider freeways and arrow of viewpoints that gets reposted with
Speaker 2: his name on it constantly. He didn't write that. That's
Speaker 2: from Bob Moorehead, a pastor who wrote it in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five. Carlan was reportedly furious that he would be
Speaker 2: credited for it, and said nothing should be attributed to
Speaker 2: him unless it actually came from one of his album's books,
Speaker 2: HBO Specials, or his own site. Let's start with the
Speaker 2: bit that's the actual backbone of this whole conversation. It
Speaker 2: gets quoted, the most it's understood, the least it's from.
Speaker 2: Life is worth losing. His thirteenth HBO special, recorded November fifth,
Speaker 2: two thousand and five, at the Beacon Theater in New York.
Speaker 2: The bit is officially titled Dumb Americans. And that title
Speaker 2: alone tells you something because the version of the bit
Speaker 2: that circulates online almost never gets attached to that title
Speaker 2: or that context. It gets cut down to the punchest
Speaker 2: twenty seconds. It passed around like a standalone thought. So
Speaker 2: here's my challenge here. I want to play a little
Speaker 2: in context here, but I can't go playing the whole bit.
Speaker 2: I'm just as bad as the people of critiquing. But
Speaker 2: here's George Carland.
Speaker 3: Only a really low IQ population could have taken this
Speaker 3: beautiful content, this magnificent American landscape that we inherited. Well,
Speaker 3: actually we stole it from the Mexicans and the Indians,
Speaker 3: but hey, it was a nice one. We stole it.
Speaker 3: It looked pretty good. It was pristine paradise. Have you
Speaker 3: seen it lately? Have you taken a good look at
Speaker 3: it lately? It's embarrassing. Only a nation of unenlightened half
Speaker 3: wits could have taken this beautiful place and turned it
Speaker 3: into what it is today. A shopping mall. That's all
Speaker 3: you've got here, folks, Mile after mile of mall after mall,
Speaker 3: many many malls, major malls and mini malls. They put
Speaker 3: the mini malls in between the major malls, and in
Speaker 3: between the mini walls they put the mini marts. And
Speaker 3: in between the mini march you got the car lots,
Speaker 3: gas stations, muffler shops, launder match, cheap hotels, fast food joints,
Speaker 3: strip clubs, and dirty bookstores. America the beautiful, one big
Speaker 3: trans continental commercial cesspool. And how did the people feel
Speaker 3: about all this? How did the people feel about living
Speaker 3: in a coast to coast shopping mall. Well, it's just dandy.
Speaker 3: They think it is cool as can be because Americans
Speaker 3: love them all. They love them all. That's where they
Speaker 3: get to satisfy their two most prominent addictions at the
Speaker 3: same time, shopping and eating.
Speaker 2: What was actually happening in that room that night? Carlon
Speaker 2: spent several minutes building a case about American voters, calling
Speaker 2: out what he saw as wilful ignorance, mocking people for
Speaker 2: not paying attention, and then he pivots hard into something
Speaker 2: much more structural. He says, there's a reason education in
Speaker 2: this country doesn't get better, and it's not in competence.
Speaker 2: It's designed Forget the politicians, he says, they're relevant. They're
Speaker 2: there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice.
Speaker 2: The real owners, he says, are the big wealthy business interests.
Speaker 2: They control the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the
Speaker 2: city halls, the judges, the media. They got you, in
Speaker 2: his words, by the balls two thousand and five. And
Speaker 2: then he lands the whole thing on the line everyone
Speaker 2: knows when they don't know where it's from. It's called
Speaker 2: the American dream because you have to be asleep to
Speaker 2: believe it.
Speaker 3: That's the big answer to everything. Education. They said, we
Speaker 3: need more money for education. We need more books, more teachers,
Speaker 3: more classrooms, more schools. We need more testing for the kids.
Speaker 3: You say to well, you know we've tried all of
Speaker 3: that and the kids still can't pass the tests. So
Speaker 3: don't you worry about that. We're going to lower the
Speaker 3: passing grades. And I said, they're doing a lot of
Speaker 3: these schools. Now they lower the passing grades, the more
Speaker 3: kids can pass, more kids passed, the school looks good,
Speaker 3: everybody's happy. The IQ of the country slips another two
Speaker 3: or three points, and pretty soon all you'll need to
Speaker 3: get into college is a pencil. Then everyone wonders why
Speaker 3: seventeen other countries graduate more scientists than we do. Education
Speaker 3: politicians know that word. They use it on you. Politicians
Speaker 3: have traditionally hidden behind three things, the flag, the Bible,
Speaker 3: and children. No child left behind, No child left behind.
Speaker 3: Oh really, well, it wasn't long ago you were talking
Speaker 3: about giving kids a head start, head start, left behind.
Speaker 3: Someone's losing ground here. But there's a reason. There's a reason.
Speaker 3: There's a reason for this. There's a reason education sucks.
Speaker 3: It's the same reason that it will never ever ever
Speaker 3: be fixed. It's never gonna get any better. Don't look
Speaker 3: for it. Be happy with what you got because the
Speaker 3: owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about
Speaker 3: the real owners now, the big, the wealthy that the
Speaker 3: real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things
Speaker 3: and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. They're
Speaker 3: they're they're irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give
Speaker 3: you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You
Speaker 3: don't you have no choice. You have owners. They own you.
Speaker 3: They own everything, They own all the important land. They
Speaker 3: own and control the corporations they've long since bought and
Speaker 3: paid for, the Senate, the Congress, the state houses and
Speaker 3: city halls. They got the judges in their back buckets.
Speaker 3: And they own all the big media media news, all
Speaker 3: the big media companies, so they control just about all
Speaker 3: of the news and information you get to hear. They
Speaker 3: got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars
Speaker 3: every year lobbying, lobbying to get what they want. Well,
Speaker 3: we know what they want. They want more for themselves
Speaker 3: and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what
Speaker 3: they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens
Speaker 3: capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well
Speaker 3: educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that.
Speaker 3: That doesn't help them. You know what they want. They
Speaker 3: want obedient workers. Obedient workers people who are just smart
Speaker 3: enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and
Speaker 3: just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier
Speaker 3: jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours to reduce benefits,
Speaker 3: the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears
Speaker 3: the minute you go to collect it. And now they're
Speaker 3: coming for your social Security money. They want your retirement money.
Speaker 3: They want it back so they can give it to
Speaker 3: their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something,
Speaker 3: they'll get it. They'll get it all from you sooner
Speaker 3: related because they own this place. It's a big club,
Speaker 3: and you ain't in it.
Speaker 2: What's important is the shape of the argument underneath that all.
Speaker 2: He's not telling a joke with a setup and a
Speaker 2: Twisty's making an accusation point by point, like a closing argument.
Speaker 2: And the laughs on the rum are happening because the
Speaker 2: audience recognizes something true in real time, not because he's
Speaker 2: surprised him with a punch line. That's why this bit
Speaker 2: has invaded the way topical material usually does. He wasn't
Speaker 2: joking about a specific two thousand and five scandal. He
Speaker 2: was describing a mechanism, and mechanisms don't expire on a
Speaker 2: news cycle. The second piece of that conversation, the fascism line,
Speaker 2: has a different and more interesting origin than most people assume,
Speaker 2: because it didn't come up from a stand up special
Speaker 2: at all. It came from a TV appearance September ninth,
Speaker 2: two thousand and five, on Real Time with Bill Maher,
Speaker 2: days after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. Harlan was
Speaker 2: on the panel and the conversation turned to President Bush
Speaker 2: calling for zero tolerance on looters and price gougers in
Speaker 2: the storm's aftermath. Carlin used the moment to say something
Speaker 2: he clearly believed. When fascism comes to America, it won't
Speaker 2: be in brown and black shirts. It won't be with
Speaker 2: Jack boots. It'll be Nike sneakers and Smiley shirts. And
Speaker 2: then he throws out in a side Germany lost the
Speaker 2: Second World War, fascism didn't.
Speaker 4: The real looting in this country takes place in the
Speaker 4: transfer of the wealth from the poor to the rich.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry that you don't like class and the truth,
Speaker 4: my friend, but you're just stuck with it. And the
Speaker 4: poor have been systematically looted in this country. The rich
Speaker 4: have been made richer under this criminal, fascist president and
Speaker 4: his government.
Speaker 3: Book.
Speaker 2: That line has had a second life, completely disconnected from Katrina,
Speaker 2: completely disconnected from two thousand and five, completely disconnected from Bush.
Speaker 2: It gets pulled out now by people across a wide
Speaker 2: range of political positions attached to whatever they're worried about
Speaker 2: in their own moment. And that's not a misuse of
Speaker 2: the quote. That's actually what the quote was built to do.
Speaker 2: Carlan wasn't describing a specific political party. He was describing
Speaker 2: the mechanism, the idea that authoritarianism doesn't need to look
Speaker 2: authoritarian if it can dress itself in comfort and branding
Speaker 2: and a friendly logo instead. Hmm, that's a structural observation. Hm.
Speaker 2: The great profit of our time. Then there's the bid
Speaker 2: that almost never gets the credit it needs next to
Speaker 2: the political stuff, because it's not really about the government,
Speaker 2: it's about the planet. This one from Jammin in New York,
Speaker 2: April nineteen ninety two, Paramount Theater inside Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 2: Carland reportedly said that one was his personal favorite of
Speaker 2: everything he ever did for HBO. George starts by going
Speaker 2: after the language of environmentalism itself. Everybody's saying something now,
Speaker 2: save the tree, save the bees, save the whales, save
Speaker 2: the snails, and then, in his own words, the supreme arrogance,
Speaker 2: save the planet. He says, we don't even know how
Speaker 2: to take care of ourselves. We haven't learned how to
Speaker 2: take care of each other, and we think we're going
Speaker 2: to save the entire planet, and then the turn the
Speaker 2: planet's fine. The people are the one who are finished.
Speaker 2: The planet's four billion years old, he said, it isn't
Speaker 2: going anywhere. We are pack your stuff, we're going away.
Speaker 2: We won't even leave much of a trace. The bit
Speaker 2: isn't really making a claim about climate change one way
Speaker 2: or the other. It's making a claim about human arrogance,
Speaker 2: the assumption that we are significant enough to destroy something
Speaker 2: that's outlasted ice ages and asteroid impacts. It's aged in
Speaker 2: a strange way because every time there's a wave or
Speaker 2: wildfire season dominating headlines, someone resurfaces the clip and it
Speaker 2: lands like he's narrating this week's news from thirty years
Speaker 2: in the past. He wasn't predicting anything specific. He was
Speaker 2: describing a posture, and the posture is still recognizable.
Speaker 1: See, I'm not one of these people who's worried about everything.
Speaker 1: You got people like this around you, Countries full of
Speaker 1: them now, people walking around all day long, every minute
Speaker 1: of the day, worried about everything, Worried about the air,
Speaker 1: worried about the water, worried about the soil, worried about insecticides, pesticides,
Speaker 1: food additives, carcinogens, worried about graydon gas, worried about asbestos,
Speaker 1: worried about saving endangered species. Let me tell you about
Speaker 1: endangered species, all right. Saving endangered species is just one
Speaker 1: more arrogant attempt by humans to control nature. It's arrogant meddling.
Speaker 1: It's what got us in trouble in the first place.
Speaker 1: Doesn't anybody understand that interfering with nature? Over ninety percent,
Speaker 1: over way over ninety.
Speaker 3: Percent of all the species that have ever lived on
Speaker 3: this line, that ever lived are gone. They're extinct. We
Speaker 3: didn't kill them all.
Speaker 2: What ties all those pieces together, the owner bit, the
Speaker 2: fascism line, the planet bit, is that none of them
Speaker 2: are about a specific event. That's the difference between material
Speaker 2: that ages and material that doesn't. Jokes built around a
Speaker 2: particular scandal, particular politician, a particular headline, those need a
Speaker 2: footnote a few years later to even make sense. Carlin,
Speaker 2: especially in his last decade, was mostly building arguments about
Speaker 2: systems and habits of thought that don't get retired just
Speaker 2: because the news cycle moves on now. Some people would
Speaker 2: say Carlin himself would have mocked this framing. Not every
Speaker 2: bit in his catalog is aged the same way. Some
Speaker 2: of the broader targets from early in his career land
Speaker 2: differently now than they did in the room at the time,
Speaker 2: the way almost any comedian's full body of work as
Speaker 2: a material that was much of the time. He was
Speaker 2: a comedian who, over five decades got progressively sharper and
Speaker 2: angrier and more precise about one specific question, Who actually
Speaker 2: holds power and what does it cost regular people that
Speaker 2: they mostly don't notice. He spent his final specials narrowing
Speaker 2: in on that question with more focus than almost anyone
Speaker 2: else working in the format, and he answered it carefully
Speaker 2: enough and meant it specifically enough that the answer has
Speaker 2: not needed an update. That is the case for calling
Speaker 2: him a profit. There has nothing to do with the
Speaker 2: seven words, nothing to do with hippie, dippy weatherman George Carlin,
Speaker 2: America's prophet. Enjoy your Independence Day. Hope you have an
Speaker 2: awesome weekend. See you tomorrow.