George Carlin, RIP (via Silicon Alley Insider)

It's interesting to watch the bulk of someone's career over time. When I first saw George Carlin it was on the Ed Sullivan show, and while he was obviously not middle-of-the-road as a comic, neither was he a rebel. (This also describes his colleague Richard Pryor at the time, who was even more mainstream, and correspondingly went even further outside the mainstream when he went.) When Carlin grew his hair long I thought he was an opportunist, cashing in on the Woodstock generation. I was wrong. He was an original, and if he never hit the manic heights of Pryor or Lenny Bruce, he found and worked a deep well of word-based and/or politically rooted humor. The Bush II years seemed to exasperate him more than even most people, but this did not necessarily make him do better work.

Here is the best appreciation I was able to turn up. At the end is a clip of Carlin in his prime.

George Carlin, RIP - Silicon Alley Insider

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